Su Casa es Mi Casa

by

Turk Pipkin

(originally appeared in Texas Monthly)

Having done more than my fair share of shopping in the interior of Mexico, I fully expect to come across some wondrously beautiful things that I can never take home. So as I stood in a shop in San Miguel de Allende, transfixed before a gigantic carved retablo resplendent in painted saints and soaring angels, the usual voice of moderation kept mumbling in the back of my head: “Keep moving; you can’t afford it and you can’t get it home.” Still, I thought, it wouldn’t hurt to ask the price.

I had never seen anything like it. Each of its twenty-one saints and angels had been carved and painted individually, then assembled in multiple rows on hand-hewn ledges and columns. The total formed one statuesque wall-hanging eight feet high and four feet wide, just the size of the empty space above my fireplace at home. Made in the state of Michoacan, it seemed a bringer of miracles and good fortunes, and would surely shower its blessings upon my house and family.

I had thought I was only browsing when I strolled into Casa Armida, an amazing store stacked two stories high with hand-painted furniture, massive iron chandeliers, and one very old cannon. The salesman quoted a price of six hundred dollars for the retablo, less than I expected and no doubt a fraction of its value in the States. Still, six hundred bucks is a lot of money for a piece of folk art. And though my truck was parked just outside, my intention was to bring back a cedar dining table I had seen on my last trip in the nearby town of Dolores Hidalgo. The truck would not hold them both.

Postponing a decision between the two, I decided to wander around town. One of the oldest and most beautiful cities in North America, San Miguel de Allende somehow manages to maintain its Colonial identity despite large numbers of tourists and foreign residents. The flourishing art and craft scene features a wide selection from all over Mexico, but the best deals are for the local products. The light fixtures made of copper and etched glass or intricately punched tin were such a bargain that I considered replacing every fixture in my house. Concho belts were also a steal, starting at $25 for leather belts with conchos made of alpaca, an alloy made of nickel, copper, and zinc. Belts with sterling silver conchos (check for the official sterling stamp reading, “.925”)were two to three times higher.

If your Mexican shopping has been limited to border towns or the stalls near the cruise ship docks, you haven’t begun to explore the wonders that await you in the interior of the country. One of my favorite areas to find a wide range of goods is the historic colonial triangle of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and Dolores Hidalgo. The area is easily reached via flights to nearby Leon, but since it is just 700 miles from the border on generally excellent highways, it is my preference to drive. Armed with Sanborn’s Mexico auto insurance and their equally reliable road log, and taking the precaution of never driving at night, I have covered thousands of miles on these roads without incident. In addition to seeing a lot of spectacular country, I’ve brought home purchases that air travelers can only dream about.

Sanborn’s can also help with your car permit and tourist visa for going into Mexico, a crossing that rarely takes more than fifteen minutes at the new Columbia Bridge north of Laredo, When you cross back to the States, Mexican authorities won’t even give you a passing glance. U.S. Customs will likely remind you that American citizens are allowed just one $400 duty free allowance every 30 days, but don’t let that stop you from shopping to your hearts content. Under the GSP (General System of Preferences) regulations, non-competitive items including almost all arts and crafts, works of fine art, and hand-made furniture—if they are not meant for resale—are duty free. For more information you can call the U.S. Customs Service at 202-566-8195.

Less than an hour from San Miguel de Allende, the town of Dolores Hidalgo is famous for two closely connected reasons. In 1810, on the steps of the town’s main cathedral, Father Miguel Hidalgo, issued his “grito” or call to independence which sparked the Mexican Revolution against the tyranny of Spain. Just a few years earlier, the same Father Hidalgo, hoping to help the local Indian population to escape poverty and serfdom,had introduced the craft of ceramic tile making to this backwater region. Talavera de Dolores, as the tiles came to be known, were modeled on the famous Talavera de la Reina tiles of Toledo, Spain, a tradition which itself was imported by the Moors in the Eighth Century. A sturdy tile with intricate hand-painted patterns, the typical Talavera de Dolores tiles are white and cobalt blue, sometimes with dashes of yellow, green, and red.

You can purchase the tiles at bargain prices directly from a large number of local manufacturers, my favorite being Talavera Vásquez, located in the middle of town at Puebla 56 and 58. The 600 tiles and matching hand-painted sink I purchased here two years ago for $250 dollars now adorn my guest bathroom at home. This trip I noted that the same pieces would now cost about half as much.

Most of these shops will ship to the U.S., but be sure to order extra tiles to compensate for possible breakage. In a courtyard behind the Vásquez family showroom, you will also find dozens of local artisans painting intricate designs on unfired vases, and a huge pile of rejected tiles for sale at less than a nickel per piece.

Ceramics were not the only craft brought by Father Hidalgo to Dolores Hidalgo, a town whose name was changed from simply “Dolores” in his honor. A long tradition of woodcarving still flourishes here. On the way into town from San Miguel de Allende you will find several furniture makers with carved colonial furnishings, as well as centuries old doors, ironworks, and some huge horse drawn wagons. My favorite, Muebles y Decoraciones, had a cedar table even larger and more beautiful than the one I remembered. Big enough to seat twelve around its matching pedestal bases, the price was only $350. I wanted it, without a doubt, but the prospect of moving the massive table into my house in Austin was daunting. Still unable to choose between the retablo back in San Miguel and the table in Dolores, I set off on the dramatic two hour drive over the mountains to Guanajuato where the best goods are not in shops, but in the hands of strolling vendors.

My first purchase in this light-hearted University town of narrow streets and outdoor cafés was a wonderful toy ceramic bus—a classic piece of folk art made in the state of Guerrero near the West coast. This colorful rural bus had the figures of a dozen carefully sculpted people inside, with all their belongings loaded on top. Handing over the quoted price of fifty pesos, I held up the little bus to admire it again and said to the vendor with great satisfaction, “This is a present for my wife.”

“And this,” the seller told me, holding up the fifty pesos bill, “is a present for mine.”

With regards to how to treat and bargain with vendors on the street, I can only advise that you must follow your heart and your head to what seems like a fair price for one and all. And you might try to remember that the last couple of dollars you save will probably mean more to the seller than to you.

Whether you are shopping on the street or in stores, the continuing devaluation of the peso has provided plenty of bargains. But for many Americans the biggest quandary of shopping south of the border is knowing if they are being offered a fair price or being given the full tourist treatment, often referred to as the gringo price. Despite the fact that most stores have fixed, clearly marked prices, many tourists mistakenly assume that everything is negotiable. If you are uncertain, there are three ways to accomplish the goal of paying less. First, ask if there is a discount, especially if you are buying several items. Second, if an item is priced too high, simply say you can’t pay that much and leave it to the seller to offer a discount or let you leave. Finally, when all else fails, smile. I have found that almost everyone in Mexico is susceptible to a genuine smile.

The vendor doing the steadiest business on the Jardin or main plaza of Guanajuato was a woman selling beaded jewelry and belts which she and her three teenage daughters made during breaks between sales. All four women could have been lifted from a postcard depicting the colorful side of traditional Mexican costumes, wearing blouses and skirts adorned with exquisitely embroidered multi-hued patterns. The only exception to their traditional dress was the mother’s pair of elastic-strapped Plexi jeweler’s glasses which she wore to magnify the thousands of tiny beads that she strung so tirelessly. I bought an elegant black and white bead belt for my wife for $17, and the woman threw in a small bracelet for my daughter.

I did consider bargaining with the same lady for an embroidered tablecloth—one of the most beautiful items I’ve ever seen for sale in Mexico—which she had draped over the back of her park bench. The family was from the small village of Tenango de Doria which is inland from the Gulf coast city of Veracruz. Despite its remote location 30 miles from the highway on an often impassable dirt road, Tenango de Doria is famous for its colorful embroidery, ranging from small cloths for wrapping tortillas to giant wall-hangings and tablecloths like the one I began to lust for. The most popular designs are a multi-colored panoply of animals of all shapes and sizes, with such an abundance of fine yarn in the embroidery that dozens of hours of work must be required for even the smaller pieces.

The giant cloth I coveted was unique to my experience in that it featured, not a rainbow of colors on the white muslin, but only one: gold. There were a thousand yards, it seemed, of spun golden threads, embroidered into hundreds of beasts of land, sea and sky. The price was also exorbitant—$200—although it sounded even higher in pesos: a million two hundred thousand!

It was not until later in the evening that I realized the tablecloth could solve my difficult choice between the carved cedar table and the retablo, as I could cover our funky old table with the beautiful cloth and still have enough room in the truck for the retablo. But the next night, the bead lady told me the cloth had sold. No, she answered, there was not another. It was one of a kind, made by a neighbor at home. “Lo siento,” she consoled me: I’m sorry.

I had broken the number one rule concerning shopping in Mexico, which is, “If you really want it, buy it now.” To make matters worse, I began to worry that the retablo would also be sold by the time I returned to San Miguel. I was willing to forego the table for another year, but I could not stop thinking about that wall of saints.

Arriving back in San Miguel, I was relieved to find that the angels were still there smiling down on me. Within an hour, the clerk had the retablo packed in multiple layers of straw, shredded newspaper, heavy brown paper, and thick plastic. I charged the purchase on my credit card or tarjeta, and would advise you to do likewise whenever possible in Mexico. With a credit card you’ll get a much better rate of exchange for your dollars and you won’t have to carry large amounts of cash. You can also get the same excellent exchange rates by using either your bank card or credit card to get cash from Mexican ATM machines, a big time saver over waiting in two different lines at the local bank.

With my truck loaded for the drive to the border, I decided to make a final loop through one of my favorite drives in Mexico, the Juventino-Rosso Road heading west from San Miguel de Allende. The town of Juventino-Rosso, by the way, is distinguished by shopping of a different sort, as it is known for the highest concentration of curanderos or healers of any town in Mexico. As the road climbs from the dam over the rocky gorge of the San Miguel River to hilltops overlooking broad highland valleys, tremendous vistas lead the eye across fields and ranchlands to the mountains in the distance. Close by the highway, I passed families working their land: the men walking single-bladed plows behind horses, women washing clothes in the deep ravines, and children waving bouquets of fresh-picked flowers which they hoped to sell to the occasional passing motorist.

At the top of a hill, I slowed to look at a group of men working atop a large pile of rocks, each chiseling a heavy stone into a precise sculpture: slender pyramids atop decorative bases, perfectly round obelisks, and one beautiful pink stone pig. I pulled over and was greeted with wide grins by one and all. How much for the pig, I asked a man who climbed down from the pile of slag and introduced himself as Federico.

“A hundred pesos,” he told me, “but there’s a problem: it’s not finished.”

Indeed, walking around it, instead of the other side of a carved pig, I found a large rectangular stone with only the outline of a pig traced from a metal template which lay nearby on the ground.

Despite this, I knew that I had to have this pig, especially for the bargain price of sixteen bucks.

“How long to finish it?” I asked.

“If I hurry,” he answered. “Maybe two or three hours.”

I gazed off to the mountains in the north where storm clouds were gathering strength for their late evening rush to the rich farmlands below, and I thought of how great the pig would look in my own garden at home.

“Three hours?” I said. “That’s okay, I’ll wait.”