The music has stopped in Guadalajara’s once landmark Plaza de los Mariachis, where grown men could hang out with beer and tequila, openly shed tears and sing along to soulful melodies of requited love.
On Tuesday evening, some 30 Guadalajara city hall workers, accompanied by municipal police officers, moved in to confiscate tables, chairs, food booths, refrigerators and other furniture set up by the dozen or so food and drink businesses operating in the plaza without permission. Various wooden structures were dismantled before city crews clad in rubber suits were given the green light to move in to clean and disinfect the plaza.
The traders had allegedly been given plenty of warnings to vacate the plaza. A lack of hygiene was evident, representing a real risk to public health, said Oscar Villalobos, municipal director of Inspections and Vigilance. He said the vendors also routinely ignored basic safety procedures, working with incompetent electrical wiring and using substandard stationary gas tanks located right next to customers’ tables. The high crime rate and lack of security in the zone was another reason why city hall decided to act, Villalobos said.
Villalobos said no evidence exists of agreements supposedly signed during the 2006-2009 Guadalajara municipal administration converting the plaza into a private concession. Guadalajara city hall will take control of the plaza from now on, he said, declining to comment further on its future.
Exactly how much the closure will affect mariachi musicians’ income is unclear. Nowadays bands mostly use the zone as a base from which they are hired and taken to perform at private functions in other parts of the city. Only a few actually ply their trade in the plaza. Many bands prefer to wait until a client whisks them off to play for an hour or two at a party rather than hawking their services to penny-pinching customers in the plaza.