If the cathedral held the soul of the city, then the market held its pulse.
We stepped out from the cool shadows of the church into heat and noise so immediate, it felt like stepping onto a stage mid-performance. The plaza outside the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe had transformed—no, it had always been this way—we had simply stepped into it late.
There were shouts and laughter, sizzling oil, horns in the distance, stray dogs weaving through stalls. The rhythm of commerce was in full swing. The line between sidewalk and store was erased. Men hawked bootleg DVDs and milagros. A woman passed with a tray of tamales balanced on her head like a crown. Behind her, a boy tugged at his mother’s dress, eyeing a wall of plastic toys that glowed in the sun like stained glass.
I ducked into a small store just off the cathedral, still half in a spiritual fog. On one wall, rows of rosaries hung like fruit; on another, crosses in wood and metal, some ornate, some rough. I chose a simple black crucifix, no taller than my palm—Christ rendered in silver, the wood almost matte in finish. Embedded in its center was a Benedictine medal, a small shield of protection tucked into the very body of the cross. I held it for a long moment before purchasing it. It felt like something I was meant to carry home.
Just outside, José helped me find a magnet. I could’ve chosen the cathedral, or the Virgin, or something kitsch and funny. But I chose the Equis—that giant red X on the city skyline, visible from nearly every direction. Stark and modern, political and poetic, it rises where the border bends, unapologetically bold. My little magnet version is glossy and loud, and I suspect it will claim its own space on my wall at home—standing out with the same grandeur and clarity the real one commands here.
From there, we wandered.
Color spilled from every awning. Music pulsed from alleyways. There were food stalls steaming with tamales and fried fish, shoe shine boys tapping rhythms on their wooden boxes, men in zoot suits dancing in the street with a kind of joyful defiance. Everyone had a hustle. Everyone had something to sell, something to sing, something to say. The market was alive in the fullest sense of the word.
This wasn’t the sanitized market of travel brochures. It was a living economy—built on necessity and grit and flair. It felt both improvised and ancient. I thought of medieval marketplaces outside European cathedrals, the way the sacred and the profane once existed side by side without contradiction.
Here, they still do.
People bartered with full voices and open hands. A teenager called out jokes from behind a stack of phone chargers. Two old women bickered over the price of bananas. Music clashed across invisible borders—ranchera from one stall, techno from another, mariachis from somewhere I couldn’t find.
This was no accident. This was a system of motion, and everyone here knew the steps. The market didn’t just sell goods. It sold identity, presence, survival. It wasn’t a backdrop to the city—it was the city.
We didn’t stay long—just enough to buy what we wanted and witness what we didn’t know we needed to see. And as we made our way toward the bridge back to the United States, the sounds of the market stayed with me like a radio left on in another room.
There was a holiness here. Not the kind measured in incense or sacraments, but the kind you find in effort, in color, in people doing what they must to make another day work.
The woman selling gum beside a Virgin statue.
The man dancing in the sun with no hat.
The teenager negotiating a discount like a diplomat.
It is not less sacred because it is loud.
It is not less meaningful because it is for sale.
If the cathedral was a sanctuary, then the market was a heartbeat.
And together—impossibly, beautifully—they make the music of life.