Blake and Deborah in Mexico: Chapala

Retail works a little differently in Mexico. An expat may not be able to find every little favorite food item or electronic gizmo his heart desires, but most things are available here and there is a well-populated heirarchy of choices where to buy them. At one end of the spectrum there are big American-style grocery stores, shopping malls, Costco, Walmart, Home Depot and many other large-scale venues with which we are familiar. But you also have a plethora of tiny mom and pop stores, many of which sell a dismaying variety of goods which might include, for instance, brooms, toothpaste and fried pig skins. Then you have the vendors with individual stalls in the weekly outdoor markets or the daily indoor markets, selling everything from produce to baked goods, meats, leather goods, clothing, handbags, kitchen utensils, nuts, candies, spices and DVDs (probably pirated). Other individual vendors have much more informal spaces like a spot on a crowded sidewalk where they sit next to a tiny table piled high with their home-made tamales or pre-peeled mango on a stick. These sidewalk vendors were much more in evidence in Oaxaca and Mérida than here in Chapala.

And then you have the mobile vendors. Here at our Chapala apartment the agua guy rings the buzzer every Thursday morning to see how many 20 liter (5 gal) bottles of water we want, and he takes the empties away. If you need a gas canister replaced just flag down the trucks rolling by with their loudspeakers blaring “zeta gaaaaas.” In Mérida we had a guy riding through the neighborhood on his cargo trike tooting his annoying little clown horn in case anyone wanted to come out and buy some bread from him. Other people walking or riding by had their own callout or whistle or bell so everyone knew whether they were selling flowers or tamales or ice cream. In Oaxaca the mobile vendors were more likely to be on foot. These included tiny Indian girls with their arms and shoulders piled high with scarves (and often with a baby strapped to their back as well), women balancing plates of snacks on their heads, others selling carved forks and spoons, even children offering little packages of candy and gum. If you are short of cash and really desperate, you could even buy an individual cigarette.

With the exception of Progresso, a cruise ship destination north of Mérida where the hawkers were annoyingly aggressive, I'm generally not bothered when I'm approached by those peddling things I don't need. A simple, subtle shake of the head conveys the appropriate, unoffensive signal and sends them veering off towards other potential customers. But if you look at their goods for more than a second or two you are indicating a sufficient level of interest to prompt them to hang around and flip through their catalog of offerings so you have every possible chance to lay your eyes on something you might actually pay money for. These people are entrepreneurs and are on their feet most of the day, often selling something they made themselves, and so deserve respect. They could be begging instead, after all.

Not that there aren't beggars in Mexico; in a poor country with no real social safety net outside the family there always will be. But the beggars here seem much more deserving than those in the US, who by comparison seem like spoiled brats. I seldom give money to panhandlers back home. Here I do give, although I favor the crippled up old women and those poor folks with physical deformities. They've earned the right not to be out there selling chotchkies.

Selling scarves in Oaxaca's lively zocolo.

Reverse window shopping. This gentleman was standing outside a Merida hotel enticing those in the lobby to come outside and look at the Panama hats he made.