We visited three or four mercados (markets) in or near Oaxaca, places where tourists can come into close contact with indigenous people. These collections of market stalls offer a much more intense experience than any set of ruins or museum. Sadly, we saw almost no Northern Europeans or Norteamericanos during our visits. Such people will leave southern Mexico with little idea of how the descendants of the Zapotecs and Mixtecs live.

Mercados offer food more than anything else: prepared walk-away food, sit-down stalls where you can get enchiladas or chicken mole, or produce and staples for stocking your larder. But they're also the place to buy tee shirts, cold chisels, watches and blender parts. In this post, we'll look at some of the non-food items offered in marketplaces.

Like copal.

In my post about Monte Albán, I related how our guide, Rolando, pointed out various plants, naming them and explaining their medicinal uses. One of them was copal, a bush with red berries useful as a vermifuge and to make a salve for acne. At the time he told us all this, I had a vague sense that copal was something entirely different, but I couldn't remember just what. Did Rolando really know what he was talking about? A little investigation revealed that there is indeed a bush that grows in southern Mexico, Bursera copallifera, commonly called copal.

OK then. I must have misremembered. Later, I ran across a powdery substance for sale at a stall in a mercado. I asked what it was. The seller said, "copal."

Hmmm. More than one thing in this world is called copal. The powdery and chunky kind is sold here for use in ceremonies and in church. People burn it to make sacred smoke; a sort of incense, that is said to be trance-inducing. It is made from sap collected from trees related to the one that produces the medicinal berry, or more commonly, from the pitch pine. Sellers offer two grades: premium and economy. Looking at the pictures, can you guess which is which? The unattractive blackish substance costs more. The lovely amber colored pieces are the cheap stuff. I don't know why.

Hammocks are widely sold in the mercados. They're not frivolous decorator items. They're what people sleep in, who live in rude houses in the tropics where insects would infest mattresses.

Expensive ones are made of soft, fine yarns and are very nice. But I think the ones you can buy in Yucatan are better.

Less practical are metates and manos. The decorated ones shown below are given as traditional wedding gifts; no bride's home is complete without a set.

While some grandmothers living in thatched huts still grind corn with them, most people anymore take their corn to someone who has an electric mill. The pace of life is picking up even in the jungles of Oaxaca, and only the poor still do the backbreaking labor to grind corn that way.

Incidentally, the copal vendor also sells lime for use in soaking dried corn to make hominy. Hominy is used to make pozole, or can be ground on a metate while wet to make masa nixtamalera, which used to make tortillas or other foods. Dried, masa nixtamalera becomes the familiar corn flour called masa harina, found in U. S. supermarkets.

(Here I am, talking about food again. Hard to stay on topic when there's so much good stuff to eat in Mexico.)

Ribbons find lots of uses: braided into hair, appliqued onto blouses and dresses, but rarely used to wrap presents. It's too expensive for that.

Many vendors sell yarn and embroidery thread. Every woman's, every little girl's Sunday best includes an embroidered blouse, a beribboned skirt and pigtails braided with ribbons.

As for yarn, Mexicans rarely knit. They crochet. You can just make out a bunch of crochet hooks in the upper right corner of the photo.

Clint saw these sharpening stones and was immediately captivated, as was I. Neither of us had ever seen anything like these huge things.

The seller demonstrated their utility by sharpening Clint's pocket knife. He worked hard at it, ultimately producing a respectable edge, but I thought the stones to be too coarse to make knives razor sharp. Clint was satisfied though, and bought one of them. The biggest stones are for sharpening those ubiquitous Mexican outdoorsman's tools, machetes. For that, they're ideal.

People who work outdoors often own draft animals. They're an important source of power and transportation in the Oaxacan campo, and so there's a need for tack.

Leather is too expensive, so tack is made from cotton, hemp, sisal or plastic rope. The ropes displayed on the pavement are hand-spun.

Even furniture is on sale. I didn't see any trendy equipal chairs, but these horrid upholstered pieces apparently were manufactured in great quantity, because I saw them everywhere.

They're so awful, I was tempted to buy one as a conversation piece. Sort of like seeing Plan Nine from Outer Space, their vileness makes them almost good. Too bad I didn't manage to get a photo of the burnt orange ones. Truly ugly.

Most of rural Mexico shops in mercados, as do many city dwellers. Fierce competition keeps prices low. The selection is incredible. But sooner or later, Wal-Mart is gonna come. And ultimately it'll displace the mercados. But not for awhile yet. Even when they come, most mercado shoppers can't afford the big box stores' First-World prices. So you all have a few years left to get out and experience these markets for yourselves.