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INSTITUTE or SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 1 1 



duced persons may obtain bathing facilities — for 

 a consideration. All other amusements, such as 

 jaripeos, cockfights, traveling circuses and carni- 

 vals, horseraces, soccer and basketball games, 

 dances, etc., are sporadic. 



TRAVELING MERCHANTS 



Although much reduced since the revolution, 

 there is stOl a considerable group of traveling 

 merchants or comercianfes amhulantes. This term 

 is used for any merchant who has no fixed place of 

 business (puesto, despacho, expendio, venta, tendajon, 

 tienda, etc.), but hawks through the streets, visits 

 the ranchos and adjacent pueblos, or makes long 

 trips into other states. The term does not include 

 the merchants, no matter how small their supply 

 of goods, who occupy space daily or from time to 

 time in the plaza, on the sidewalks, or in the 

 arcades. The local street hawkers and peddlers (as 

 contrasted with those merchants who travel long 

 distances) sell such items as lime, ice cream 

 (paletas), candies, soft drinks, and bread. Quite 

 often such persons are known by their specialties; 

 e. g., a calero ambulante (traveling salesman of 

 lime), dulcero ambulante (candy peddler), etc. 

 Such merchants are probably as numerous as 

 ever. The reduction has been in the merchants 

 who traveled outside of the state and often would 

 be absent from Quiroga for several months. At 

 present there are fewer than 20 of such comerciantes 

 ambulantes or huacaleros as they are sometimes 

 called because they often carry their goods in a 

 large crate or huacal on their backs. The old- 

 fashioned huacalero who went everywhere on foot 

 is practically extinct. Although these merchants 

 still cover considerable distances on foot, they are 

 quite apt to take advantage of cheap-fare second- 

 or third-class busses going in their general direction 

 of destination. Among the goods packed out of 

 the Quii-oga area are pottery, bateas, scrapes, and 

 peaches. Frequently these merchants go by bus 

 to the large manufacturing towns to the north 

 (such as Le6n, San Luis Potosi, and Queretaro) 

 where they invest in textiles, leather goods, toys, 

 cutlery, etc. Then they return by bus to Quiroga, 

 or Patzcuaro, or Tacambaro, and then proceed 

 on foot or with a burro or two down into the 

 tierra caliente of the Balsas Basin and on to the 

 Pacific coast. Before they return to Quiroga they 

 may sell out their original load, restock with 

 products of the areas which they traverse, sell 



these goods, and repeat the procedure several 

 times. The return load from the coast and the 

 Balsas Basin may include such items as salt, 

 machetes, cheese, dried meat, palm fiber, coconuts, 

 pineapples, etc. Although most of this traffic 

 follows the ancient trade routes from the plateau 

 areas of Guanajuato and Michoacan to the coasts 

 of Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero (which were 

 all within the prehistoric Tarascan domain, and 

 which constituted the province of Michoacan 

 during most of the colonial period), there is some 

 commerce as far as Tabasco and Chiapas to the 

 southeast. However, with the extension and 

 improvement of rail and bus transportation from 

 the plateau to the tierra caliente there has come an 

 alteration of routes in detail and an over-all 

 reduction of trade through the medium of the 

 comerciantes ambulantes. Most of the viajeros or 

 "long- travelers" are old men and women (more 

 than 40, and with a mean of perhaps 60 or 65 

 years), and their children are taking to other 

 occupations. The principal distinction between 

 such comerciantes ambulantes and the old-time 

 arrieros (see Transportation, pp. 197-198) seems 

 to be that arrieros always used pack animals. 



MARKETS 



Although there are three plazas in Quiroga, at 

 present only the Plaza de los Martires between the 

 Calle Nacional and the parish church is used as a 

 market. We were unable to determine if the 

 Plaza Vieja or the Plaza Principal was used for 

 this purpose before the Plaza de los Martires was 

 inaugurated in the 1860's. The local market day 

 {dia del mercado, dia de plaza, dia de tianguis) is on 

 Sunday. Since Cocupao-Quiroga never has been 

 famed for its market, we do not know when it was 

 established, but probably the market on Sunday 

 dates back to the early Franciscan period or the 

 regime of Bishop Vasco de Quiroga when most of 

 the Tarascan villages were given their occupations 

 and were assigned their market days. Apparently 

 every community large enough to support a resi- 

 dent priest had some sort of weekl}^ market. The 

 size and importance of the market were propor- 

 tional to the position of the community in the 

 political-ecclesiastic hierarchy. Patzcuaro, from 

 about 1540 to the present, has had the most im- 

 portant market in the Patzcuaro Lake Basin. 

 The main market day in Patzcuaro is on Friday, 

 although there are minor markets on Sunday and 



