In this atmospheric 1992 narrative, former Guadalajara Reporter editor Allyn Hunt relates a tale of haggling for dog bones with a hungover butcher named Eladio Vázquez during a saint’s day fiesta in a rural Jalisco pueblo.
The heat of May is searing in the mountain ridges surrounding Guadalajara now. Below, where the great bowls of extinct seas are hosts to rural pueblos, the air is still cool at seven o’clock. There, women rinse the cobbles in front of their homes with pails of water, raising the sweet odor of dampened dust.
Going down a lane lined with stone fences, the two of us turn onto a wider cobbled street. There, the church is crowded. Worshipers kneel in the doorway as tiny bells sound inside and candles flicker.
At the plaza, set out under one corner of the portales are several tin tables with the words “Cerveza Tecate” dramatically spelled out in red letters at their centers. Beside one is a metal stand supporting a white enamel basin, a soap dish, and below it an enamel pitcher of water. We wash our hands, toss the water into the street to dampen the dust, and order café con leche—coffee in hot milk—and nopales and scrambled eggs.
Saint’s day celebration
A short way down the block, several men with musical instruments gather and, after considerable preparation, begin a stirring rendition of “Las Mananitas.”
I ask the aproned woman who is our waitress and cook whose birthday is being celebrated. “It’s the saint’s day of Eladio Vazquez they’re celebrating. In truth, it was yesterday but everybody was working, so they’re marking it today.”
There is a tuba and a trombone, a guitar, a violin and a clarinet grouped before the closed front windows and doors of a one-story house set flush with the cobbled sidewalk. No one seemed to be responding to the careening music.
“He has a butcher shop across the street from the mercado publico?”
“Yes, he and his wife and two sons butcher pigs and goats, once in a while a cow. His prices are usually good. Not the best, but almost.”
“But isn’t he at his shop this morning?”
“On no. They had a pachanga last night, and he’s still in bed with a cruda.”
We smile, and I wonder how she knows such a thing.
“He’s my sister’s husband’s cousin,” she says, guessing what I’m thinking.
“I was supposed to talk to him today about ordering some bones.”
“Bueno. Talk of business will do him good before he starts celebrating again.”
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