La Merced Market

This guide to La Merced Market in Mexico City follows an annual September tradition: vendors building towering altars of marigolds and candles to Nuestra Señora de la Merced, a saint tied to a religious order that once ransomed captives out of slavery. You'll hear how a Mercedarian monastery, built here in the fifteen nineties, stood on this ground before the land became a produce market in the eighteen sixties. Listen for how the vendors, who sell chiles and cheese for a living, fund the altar entirely out of pocket each year.