San Juan De Dios

I don't have a lot of time to write today, so I thought I'd just share one experience from the trip so far. One of the more unusual things I've done on this trip is go to San Juan de Dios in Guadalajara.
If you have never been to Mexico, it's going to be hard to visualize, but I'll try to describe it the best I can, because I couldn't take pictures for reasons that will be obvious as you read along.
In Mexico they have a place in almost every major city called the "Tianguis." The best approximation in the U.S. would be a swap meet or flea market, but those are much to clean and civilized and the merchandise too random to really translate.
The tianguis are arranged like flea markets- open air, usually, with individual booths, stalls, or tents where vendors display their merchandice on tables and racks. Some have cash registers, but not most. Usually money is exchanged via a cash box, shoe box, fanny pack, or some other mysterious source. The tianguis are kind of the Mexican equivalent of an American shopping mall as far as merchandise goes- they sell cosmetics, perfumes, clothing, electronics, shoes, cd's/dvd's/mp3's, etc. Most even have a food court. The merchandise is almost always pirated or otherwise infringing on copyright laws (such as rip-off perfumes sold in recycled bottles and Chinese-made immitation brand name clothing). The food is traditional Mexican fare, including fruit that you can pick and have chopped up for you on the spot, served with fresh lime juice, chile powder, and salt... or possibly Chongos Zamorranos, a caramel flavored milk based treat that has the consistency of squeaky cheese and comes served in a flan-like syrup... roasted chicken quarters or tortas... and so on.
Most tianguis are crowded, dirty, noisy, chaotic, and somewhat smelly (the toilets are usually located WAY too close for comfort to the actual shops and are never more than poorly maintained outhouses). They are also the only place most Mexicans can go to get really affordable American-style stuff, including latest releases for videos and music. Since piracey is legal in Mexico (yup, even cable tv is pirated off of American satellites... no big surprise there) it makes a lot more sense for Mexicans to buy their movies 10 for 150 pesos (that's like $12 American) than to go some place legit and buy one DVD for 275 pesos (like $25 American), especially if they are poor working class families like most of the country are. To buy a DVD released from the production company who made the film is really impossible here because even if you can afford to pay for them, they are impossible to find. Stores like Best Buy don't even exist here and WalMart is a joke. It's basically an overblown grocery store with a few shirts and shoes tacked on. So the only place to get stuff is really the tianguis, hence their popularity.
Well... back to my story. We were going to buy Andrei's Christmas gifts here, so we wouldn't have to cart so much stuff around to so many different places (see previous post). However, our usual tianguis (Tianguis El Sol) is only open Fridays and we were going to be in Manzanillo on Friday so we headed over to San Juan de Dios on the recommendation of Luis's cousin Rogelio who was the deputy Chief of Police over that area of town for like 8 years. However, he warned us that they are truly cesspools, more crowded, and WAY more dangerous than regular tianguis. The trade off is that the stuff is even cheaper there than most places.
So on the 25th we drove over there. That might sound odd, but in Mexico most Christmas celebrations occur on the 24th, last until like 4 in the morning, and the majority of Christmas day is spent sleeping off the insanity of the night before. Gifts are opened at midnight on the 25th, so the kids play while the parents are hung over. Merry Christmas, right? Since we didn't stay up that late, relatively speaking, and since we weren't tired or hung over (not drinking is always a good choice I believe), and since Santa only brought Andrei a couple of cars and a story book, we had nothing to do all day. We figured, why not go see if SJdD was open.
Wow.
The only way I can describe the place is Hell on Earth. Not because we were actually suffering but because it was the lowest I've ever seen humanity sink. I was instructed before I went to leave my purse, camera, and all jewelry in our room and to wear dark sunglasses the entire time I was there and avoid speaking so that people couldn't guess I was American, since that would make me a target for robberies and violent crime. Luis hid all of his identification, credit cards, American cash, and most of his Mexican cash in the owner's manual of the car we were driving so that if someone broke in while we were shopping they wouldn't grab it. Andrei was instructed to not say anything at all unless absolutely necessary.
When we got there we waited in line for 30 minutes to get into the parking lot. When we got out, we walked down a flight of slimy stairs into an open air plaza where there were horridly tacky touristy looking clothing and toys, and dirty beggars pleading for Pesos. It's like if pergatory had a gift shop that's what it would look like. We walked through the plaza and down some more stairs into a dark tunnel, and that's where things got really interesting.
It looked like an enclosed storage unit or military storage locker and smelled like exhaust fumes, urine, and vomit. Everything was painted a garish shade of red, covered by gum, old ads for bands and porn, graffitti, and general grime. We wandered around in some rat-like tunnels and finally emerged into what looked like a post-apocolyptic shopping mall. All the storage units we'd seen closed were opened here with tents set up and cardboard boxes layed over the tents, which looked strange looking down on the floors below because you could see uncovered sidewalks with people walking around and the tops of the tents, but no actual shop fronts. The tops of the tents were all covered with garbage and other undisclosed substances, hence the boxes to prevent it from seeping on to the shop owners and clientele below. Everything was terribly filthy and you had to gingerly pick your way between the garbage and fluids on the ground to navigate your way around the place.
There were so many people I can not even begin to estimate, and the temperature was a balmy 85 degrees. It was so noisy you had to shout to be heard and the only light that came in was a thin stream of dirty sunlight from a small opening on the top floor (I think there were 3 or 4 floors, but it was hard to tell) and the assorted flashing lights put up around the individual stalls . Everywhere people were trying to grab your attention, and sometimes literally your arm, to get you to stop and look at their wares. There were more beggars strewn around on the ground, sitting on cardboard hunks to keep from dirtying themselves on the ground below, and there were a few random assorted drunks reeling about. There was also a very strong aroma of marijuana in a few places.
We spent about 1 hour there, and it was intense. Imagine babies crying, people shouting, music blasting at Disco-Club volumes, and strobe lights flashing, mixed with the aroma of gas, smoke, exotic foods, pot, B.O., perfumes, incense, cheap plastic, and garbage... then you can begin to get an idea of what San Juan de Dios was like. We got a lot of cool stuff for cheap, but if we ever go back I'm not bringing Andrei. This is surprisingly not because of saftey reasons. If you've ever seen my husband you can guess why I wasn't ever truly scared for our safety. Rather, this is mostly due to the fact that Andrei was throwing one of his "I'm only going to speak English because I'm an American" fits and we missed out on a few things we really wanted to get because people doubled their prices as soon as they heard him blabbing on and on in English. In short, no one was robbed and no one was stabbed, and we got a bunch of MP3's (like 20) for $5. All in all I think it was a good day of shopping. Towards the middle I started to feel like I was going to either faint or vomit or both, so I had to sit down and drink some ice water to make it through. I spent the rest of the day in bed with a fever and nausea. I don't want to know why.
Anyway, Merry Christmas! Where were you on December 25th?