สถานที่ตลาดโซโนรา (เมร์กาโด เด โซโนรา)Mercado de SonoraMercado de Sonora

The city built it. Mercado de Sonora opened on 23 September 1957, one of a set of public markets set up to organise and regulate retail trade, descended from the pre-Hispanic tianguis, the street market. At the market's fiftieth anniversary in 2007 the party included mariachis and a limpia, a cleansing, to clear the building of bad energy.

Herbal medicine and ritual goods are not two trades here but one, because Mexican herbal medicine has been tied to religious and magical practice for centuries. Avocado leaves for inflammation, chiranthodendron for the heart, jacaranda flowers for the stomach. Dried rattlesnake against cancer. Crosses of ocote wood for luck; chains of garlic against harm; and a seed called deer's eye — ojo de venado — against the evil eye. Candles come in sizes, shapes and colours, each colour with its own function.

The traffic is countable. An estimated 2,000 people come each weekend specifically for that section, which is one of the city's centres for Santería and for the veneration of Santa Muerte. The most popular goods are for love: candles, oils, amulets, soaps, needles, lotions, herbs, and services — spell casting, cleansings — sold under names like ven a mi, come to me, and miel de amor, honey of love.

Prices carry their moment. During the H1N1 scare of 2009 trade fell by about half, but a ten-herb blend against flu — eucalyptus, bougainvillea, tejocote — kept herb sellers solvent at 80 pesos a kilo; Santa Muerte sellers reported moving white dresses for the images, white being the colour of health.

The market carries its costs in public. Street peddlers fill what is left of the car park and spill into the surrounding lanes on Saturdays; the building leaks, its floors and ramps are in poor condition, and market representatives put that down to borough corruption and to officials extorting traders. Police have raided the animal aisles over protected species.

Trading, with Saturday the busiest day and the widest stock. The Linares family, five generations of cartonería makers and the inventors of the alebrije, still work in workshops just behind the market. No day is marked open or closed below: stall hours are the traders' own.