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Slices of Indian Life Are on Display in Zimatlan

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Five shiny hammers were upended on the table, their steel claws splayed like petals on a flower.

A knot of copper fuses gleamed near a grid of white plug outlets, as tidy as a set of dominoes. Perfectly coiled black cords, each hung with a single socket, said much about the pride of the young hardware vendor and much about this part of southeast Mexico, where electricity is precious and hillside shanties are lighted by a single bulb.

The arrangement of goods was as impressive as the diversity and quantity, there in the weekly market at Zimatlan.

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Indians come each Wednesday to sell produce and flowers, weavings and woodcarvings. They come to buy household needs, stones for grinding corn or a new machete or hammer.

There is a lively open market every day, somewhere in the state of Oaxaca. Craftsmen stream in from neighboring villages with their black unglazed pottery and green pottery, their bold rugs and serapes. Stalls sell radios, shoes and baby pigs.

The historic provincial capital--also named Oaxaca--is the home of the Saturday market, perhaps the grandest in Mexico. All Oaxaca turns out to shop and barter. Savvy tourists bring their cameras and lots of film.

But I arrived on a Monday morning and had only four days. So, after touring the ancient hilltop ruins of Monte Alban and wandering the city’s colonial heart, I drove to nearby Zimatlan.

It was easy to find the marketplace: I followed a woman with a live turkey under one arm and a watermelon under the other. Her children trailed behind, dragging net shopping bags.

The open markets are as organized as a department store: live poultry, rabbits and goats in one area, hardware in another. Sombreros, sandals and shirts are grouped, as are fruits, flowers and vegetables. Blankets and newspapers are spread on the ground and covered with merchandise. Canvas sheets provide shade.

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In the first aisle at Zimatlan, an Indian girl flicked a braid over her shoulder as she concentrated on building a pyramid of grapefruits, balancing the top one as carefully as if it were a fragile tower of blocks. Other barefoot youngsters stacked oranges into perfect piles.

When not weighing produce and making sales, the women and children tied up fresh clusters of garlic and smoothed the patterns of green peppers. They laughed and traded news and gossip. They told me I could buy one bulb of garlic or the whole strand. They asked where I was from, and when I said California, they asked if there were jobs in Tijuana.

Vegetable displays reminded me of gem-and-jewelry tents in a Turkish bazaar: polished emerald cucumbers, ruby-red chili peppers and peeled white onions that glistened like mother-of-pearl.

Heaps of medicinal herbs and spices added pungent smells. Open bags held coffee beans and chocolate and lentils, which whooshed as scoops pushed in and out.

An older woman was selling chunks of something hard and white. “Is it sweet?” I asked in Spanish, guessing that it was rock candy. The woman shook her head.

Cal ,” she said. It turned out to be the Spanish word for lime , as in limestone, and had something to do with preparing the corn to make tortillas. My vocabulary was petering out, as was my knowledge of Mexican cookery.

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Two men brushed by, bent under rolled hemp mats from which masses of yellow mums protruded. Plastic buckets bloomed with poinsettias, and red, white and pink carnations. Flower merchants were wrapped in aprons and armed with shears.

In another alley, tables glowed with skeins of yarn: fuchsia, orange, crimson. Beads, ribbons and buttons were sold nearby. Suitcases were lined up by size--small in front, large in back. Overhead lines held hammocks, shopping bags and embroidered blouses that wafted in the breeze.

Dozens of toddler-size dresses--pink-and-white confections of lace and embroidery--were stitched with an English misspelling: “Grandme Loves Babe.”

Teen-age hucksters wandered the market, their arms draped in watches with bands of black leather and purple plastic. Somewhere a burro was braying.

The afternoon sun glinted on metal pots and pans, and on crockery jugs and black basalt molcajetes , those sturdy mortars in which spices are ground. I had meant to go back and buy a carved wooden beater for chocolate, but I completely forgot.

When I turned to head for my car, I saw rows of stuffed bears and toys, as tempting as prizes at a fair.

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And that is much like the mood of the market: a clamorous celebration of the week that was . . . and the week that will be again.

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