Mexico City  In the heart of La Merced

In the year 2018, a group of local artists and cultural managers inaugurated “El Corazón de la Merced”, a mural depicting one of Mexico City's most popular and iconic neighborhoods.

The current neighborhood of La Merced is one of the oldest areas of Mexico City: it dates back to pre-Hispanic times, when it was the eastern boundary of the urban area of Mexico Tenochtitlan, which bordered the ancient Lake Texcoco, according to research by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Today, it is the main hub for products (mainly foodstuffs) in Mexico City and one of the largest in Latin America.

When a city dweller closes her eyes and tries to imagine La Merced, Many colors come to mind at first: fruits and vegetables, kitchen utensils, shoes so cheap, and a variety of sweets that can be bought for children's parties — to sell or just for whimsy. Colors that, after thinking about them for a while, begin to merge with the smells: tamarind, dried chiles, and moles, medicinal herbs such as chamomile, rosemary, lemongrass or epazote; the smells of fresh or freshly cut meat and spilled blood, of people's sweat (so many people!), of rotten fruit or dog kibble. And, of course, the undeniable memory of its people shouting: “¡Aquí hay, aquí hay!” “¿Qué va a llevar?” “De a 30 el kilo, pásele!” or of its diableros looking to get through, even in the midst of the crowds.

This break with the uniformity that in all cases represents the market, was attempted to be captured in 870 m². A colorful background shows the Naves (small markets that make up La Merced), from whose center emanates a red adobe heart with nopaleras and pre-Hispanic figurines that seem to emerge from it. On the right, a woman of some native ethnic group carries her merchandise on her back to sell and, on her hand, a flame of fire; on the left, a diablero and his historical predecessor: the mecapalero. Undoubtedly, paying homage to the traditions of the great market.

According to the Dictionary of the Spanish of Mexico, the mecapal is a “wide band, made of ixtle or leather, with which the load to be carried is wrapped around the back, fastening it to the forehead”. The diableros, meanwhile, are workers who in a kind of hand cart with wheels called “diablos” carry heavy loads to move products within the market and its surroundings.

On December 13, 2018, the Colectivo Las Olvidadas de la Merced, the ORB Foundation and the Casa Talavera Cultural Center inaugurated El Corazón de la Merced, painted by artists Dan Silva, (Pólvora); Daniel González (Laite); Cecilia Gutiérrez (Meow Tse), and Antonio Hernández (Visa). The first two, creators of the idea and mainly responsible for the work, are part of the new wave of Mexican community muralism, that is, a form of mural art that includes the community where it is painted. At that press conference, Joaquín Aguilar Camacho, then in charge of the Public Space and Cultural Outreach Program at Casa Talavera Cultural Center, mentioned that transforming the environment "means not only transforming the walls, but also, through art, transforming the people who live and work in that place. And he continued: "The mural, rather than being an ornament, generates processes of appropriation by the people of the La Merced neighborhood; everything you see in it is a narrative that was built through dialogue with the neighbors." The artists described the two-month artistic creation as an enriching process. "Now it was our turn to work for La Merced, because La Merced has always worked for us," said Daniel González (Laite). "And as a communicative tool, art becomes a form of resistance."

The Colectivo Las Olvidadas de La Merced is a group of merchants fighting socially, politically, and culturally for the recovery of their spaces, which were damaged by the fire in the Nave Mayor market in 2013, affecting 1200 locatarixes who have not yet been able to fully recover their workspace.