Culture
Inside a Mexico City ‘Market On Wheels’
Why the roving vendors of Ruta 6, one of Mexico City’s Mercado Sobre Ruedas, keep at their craft, and maintain customers despite the rise of Walmart.
Three small mounds of fruit are on display at 90-year-old Maria Juárez’s stand in one of Mexico City’s many itinerant street markets. Her stall consists of wooden planks set on a metal frame, topped by a plastic tarp in a city government-approved shade of pink.
“When I arrived here from Veracruz at the age of 14, I sold the same products,” says the white-haired fruit seller while picking up crates directing her great-grandchild. Juárez is one of the founders of the Mercado Sobre Ruedas’ (“Market on Wheels”) Ruta 6 market, which opened in 1969.