Today, I went to Tepito. Tepito is a Mexico City neighbourhood, known for its enormous open-air market (it’s literally many kilometers of street turned into a market), and for being almost completely lawless. The police only enter when there’s nothing going on, and they don’t hassle the locals. Police raids happen, but more often than not, they end in the police being driven out, both by armed criminals, and by the average locals throwing stones and debris at them from the rooftops. It’s a small free state in the middle of the city, and although I’d heard a lot about it, I’d never been, until today.
We started out in the Lagunilla market, a similar open-air market in streets adjacent to the real Tepito neighbourhood. It’s considered less dangerous and more legit, and the focus is on clothes, with a few areas selling antiques and all sorts of used items. After an hour or so there, we went on to the real Tepito. It’s hard to tell exactly where it starts, since both the Lagunilla and Tepito markets are at their largest on Sundays, and they join together.
But you know when you get inside Tepito a bit, things change. It’s denser, the market stalls are larger, and there are more people. While Lagunilla mainly has clothes, when you start going into Tepito, you start getting into more contraband. Pirated DVDs and CDs at first, and an enormous amount of pornography, is what you’ll find out in the larger market streets. We got tired of that after a while, and ducked into a side street, then into another. A lot of people have told me that Tepito can be extremely dangerous, but I never felt like I was running any risk. I was betting on the sellers in the market stalls keeping things reasonably safe for their customers, and it seems I was right.
Down the third side street, we started getting into more unusual stuff. It wasn’t just porn now, but also all sorts of sex toys. The porn was in anonymous DVD covers labelled in marker, some of it advertising hidden camera recordings from hotels in the city, others claiming to be home videos. There was animal porn, and some things claiming to be kiddie porn, meticulously labelled: “13-14-15 years old”, “High school students”, “Kids: Boys with girls”, etc. I’m not sure if the DVDs contained what they claimed, but it’s not entirely impossible.
Another stall had a table full of drugs. Not illegal drugs, but packages of mostly Viagra and Levitra. I picked one up and studied it, and sure enough, they were labelled “Doctor’s sample - Not for resale”. I’m fairly sure it was the real thing, though, the pills were in still-sealed blister packs. There were aphrodisiacs, potency enhancers, and everything else you’ve probably gotten spam about, and something that was at least marketed as a date-rape drug: “Put it in a girl’s drink, she’ll get horny and crazy”.
Inbetween all this, watches and perfume, and rows upon rows of brand-name alcohol bottles. Then there was a stall that sold police and army effects, gun holsters, etc., along with gun replicas, air guns, and knives and daggers, including T-handle daggers, telescoping batons, stun guns, pepper spray, and so on. I’ve been told you can fairly easily get real weapons in Tepito, including automatic weapons, hand grenades, and the like, but that they’re not displayed, only available on request. I don’t doubt it.
There are plenty of electronics and cameras, too. I saw a decent looking IBM Thinkpad for 10000 pesos, not extremely cheap, but cheaper than you’d get anything similar in the store. LCD TVs and DVD players seemed to be the most popular wares, as well as digital compact cameras.
On our way back, in the part of the Lagunilla market selling antiques, I spotted a human skull on a blanket. There were lots of carved and ceramic human skulls around, but this one was old and worn, and one side of it was chipped and flaked in a way that looked very real. I asked, and the seller confirmed: It was real. He wanted a 1000 pesos for it. If I’d had the money, I might have bought it. Noticing my interest, he casually remarked “We’ve got the body too, it’s just in pieces at the moment”. I made a surprised face, and he pulled out a cardboard box, and opened it. Sure enough, there was a pile of yellowed, badly kept human bones in it. “1500 for the body and the head”. I told him I was sorry I didn’t have the money, and moved along. The whole thing looked like it might have come from a doctor’s office or the biology lab of some high school, but it had clearly not been very well kept. I vaguely want to go back and buy it, but what the hell would I do with it?
All in all, Tepito is very interesting. When you get in a bit, it’s very enclosed, you don’t hear the car traffic from the larger streets, and the plastic tarps strung across the booths and most of the streets makes it feel like you’re moving down into a weird labyrinth. It doesn’t feel hostile at all, even the guys selling kiddie porn were friendly and nice while promoting their wares, but it’s very different, insular, like you’re in a totally different place. I can understand why cops don’t often go in; I’m sure it can be very threatening if you give the people there a reason to dislike you.
