La Perseverancia Distrital Marketplace

This guide to La Perseverancia market in Bogotá follows Luz Dary Cogollo, known to everyone here as Mama Luz, from a childhood on Colombia's Caribbean coast to a stall in this market after an earlier market's closure nearly emptied her of customers. For weeks she sold only two or three plates a day, until she began cooking ajiaco, the potato and chicken soup that belongs to Bogotá. She entered it in a citywide contest against more than three hundred cooks, professional chefs among them.