Early Morning In The Zocalo
Vendors with hot chocolate, atole and red and green tamales stood at each end of the Zocalo at 7am…one giving free pan (sweet bread) and chocolate to two indigenous women selling the latest edition of the Noticias de Oaxaco showing a burning bus on the front page. (The rumor was…and it happened yesterday…two buses were burned.)
No more than half a dozen people strolled about…a couple young nortenos jogging…some people still asleep on the dirty sidewalks. Blessed quiet. Not one of the zillion CD vendors blaring their music so loud in front of the Cathedral you can barely hold a conversation in the cafes nearby. Not one TV blaring the millionth repeat of the June 14 early morning police rout of the teachers. Blessed quiet. I wondered what the city was like before the teacher strike started.
Walking up toward the Zocalo from my apartment I passed only one person… solemnly reading her Noticias as she walked slowly along. The Cantina Bar on Armento Lopez was blaring rock music…still going strong from the night before…one joven leaving on wobbly legs. As it neared 8am, restaurants began raising their metal doors…opening for business…and more people appeared. Walking back down 20 Noviembre, the Jenito Juarez Market was ready to serve desayanos (breakfast). Noisy buses were running. I walked into a Miscellania that, like 7-11’s in Asia, are on every corner. Musica muy bonita I said to the woman behind the counter. She smiled broadly…Sax, she said.
Yesterday, the Election Tribunal announced that it would only recount the presidential voting ballots of 11,839 polling places�of more than 130,000 nationwide…which is nothing. I read on a U.S. media web page that people camped out in the Zocalo in Mexico City are predicting attacks on the airport and oil refineries. And so it goes in Mexico. I read in another place that the military is disappearing from northern Mexican cities…standing by Mexico City perhaps?
But today I am looking forward to meeting a friend at Llano Park and we will go to a nearby Thai restaurant…the only one in the city. An American woman recently turned her kitchen into a take-out restaurant with two tables for the lucky ones. I hear it is good.
Tags: Food, Mexico, Oaxaca, Restaurants
Zoe