La Lagunilla Market, Mexico City - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

La Lagunilla Market is a traditional public market

Traditional fixed markets in Mexico

Traditional fixed markets in Mexico go by a variety of names such as "mercados públicos" , "mercados municipales" or even more often simply "mercados"...

in Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

, located about ten blocks north of the city’s main plaza

Zócalo

The Zócalo is the main plaza or square in the heart of the historic center of Mexico City. The plaza used to be known simply as the "Main Square" or "Arms Square," and today its formal name is Plaza de la Constitución...

, in a neighborhood called La Lagunilla. The market is one of the largest in the city and consists of three sections: one for clothing, one for furniture and one for foodstuffs, mostly selling to lower income customers. The market is surrounded by small stores and street vendors, many specializing in furniture and dresses and other needs for formal occasions. On Sundays, the number of street vendors grows significantly, a weekly “tianguis

Tianguis

A tianguis is an open air market or bazaar that is traditionally held on certain market days in a town or city neighborhood in Mexico and Central America. This bazaar tradition has its roots well into the pre-Hispanic period and continues in many cases essentially unchanged into the present day....

” market called a baratillo which traditionally sells used items. One section of this baratillo has developed into a market for antiques, which has attracted higher income customers and even famous ones such as Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis

Carlos Monsiváis Aceves was a Mexican writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. of French decent He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers and was considered to be an opinion leader within the country's progressive sectors. His generation of writers includes Elena...

Main market

La Lagunilla is one of Mexico City’s largest markets, and the term usually refers to both the fixed buildings of the market proper and its associated tianguis

Tianguis

or street market. This tianguis is officially on Sunday, but in reality, there are street vendors around this market all week, who extend and merge into the neighboring Tepito

Tepito

Tepito is a barrio located in Colonia Morelos in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City bordered by Avenida del Trabajo, Paseo de la Reforma, Eje 1 and Eje 2. Most of the neighborhood is taken up by the colorful tianguis or open-air market. Tepito’s economy has been linked to tianguis or traditional...

tianguis. The market straddles a major east west road called Eje 1 North, also called Rayón, in Colonia Morelos, about ten blocks north of the Zocalo, just outside the historic center of the city

Historic center of Mexico City

The historic center of Mexico City is also known as the "Centro" or "Centro Histórico." This neighborhood is focused on the Zócalo or main plaza in Mexico City and extends in all directions for a number of blocks with its farthest extent being west to the Alameda Central The Zocalo is the largest...

.

The market is located in the La Lagunilla barrio (informal neighborhood), next to the Santa Catarina Church. The plaza of this church was the site of area’s main outdoor market or tianguis, through the colonial period to the late 19th century. Other landmarks nearby include the Guelatao Sports Center, and Plaza Garibaldi

Plaza Garibaldi

Plaza Garibaldi is located in the historic center of Mexico City, on Eje Central between historic Calle República de Honduras and Calle República de Peru, a few blocks north of the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The original name of this plaza was Plaza Santa Cecilia, but in 1910 it was renamed in...

just to the west, known for its mariachi

Mariachi

Mariachi is a genre of music that originated in the State of Jalisco, in Mexico. It is an integration of stringed instruments highly influenced by the cultural impacts of the historical development of Western Mexico. Throughout the history of mariachi, musicians have experimented with brass, wind,...

s. The area is a lower socioeconomic one and most of the market’s clientele are from this and similar areas. This market is always very crowded and very lively, especially those areas that sell food, clothing and over everyday items. The neighborhood has a dangerous reputation, but the market area is considered to be safe enough if visitors take basic precautions. About 2,000 families depend on this market directly or indirectly, but it faces pressure from commercial plazas and pressure from imports from Asia and other mass produced items. Many of the vendors are third generation at the market, but many have been forced to change the merchandise they sell or complement their traditional wares in order to stay in business.

Essentially, the entire Lagunilla neighborhood is commercial, and has been since Aztec

Aztec

The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...

times. It and neighboring Tepito have been the focus of a number of films, televisions series and other artistic creations as it is considered to be iconic of Mexico City’s lower classes.. One feature film focused on this area was “Lagunilla, mi barrio” and a telenovela called Lagunilla was in production in the 1990s. Eugenio Derbez

Eugenio Derbez

Eugenio González Derbez is a Mexican actor of film and comedy television. He created the television series of XHDRBZ, Vecinos, and La familia P. Luche. Derbez is also a Formula Three Auto racing driver.-Life and career:...

is a television producer who specializes in creating series based on the real life of ordinary Mexicans. He has sent actors and actresses to do “field study” in Lagunilla and other markets to learn how to imitate correctly the vocabulary and accents of the people they will portray. The market area was the subject of a late 1990s exhibition of black and white photographs taken by Manuel Alvarez B. Martinez in the 1960s and 1970s. La Lagunilla is one of the city’s loudest areas. The sound level in the market can be deafening, with the sounds of street vendors arguing police sirens, honking cars and blaring music from many of the stalls selling music and DVDs. In 2006, the city passed a law to impose decibel limits, but most residents felt it was futile.

The fixed market proper consists of three buildings, two larger ones on the south side of Eje 1 Norte and one smaller one on the north side. Building One has one thousand stands, and mostly focuses on new clothing and fashion. However, this area is greatly expanded by street vendors on Sundays, which add other items such as vintage clothing to the offerings. Building Two has 579 stands, 120 vendors and is dedicated to furniture and home décor. Furniture sold includes bedroom sets, bathroom appliances, kitchen cabinets, desks, dining sets, cribs, and much more. Much of the offering is rustic or minimalist ins style, with some modern designs. Much of the furniture sold at the market is made by the vendors themselves. On the streets surrounding this building, such as Allende, Ecuador, Paraguay and Honduras, there are a number of furniture stores as well as street vendors, which usually sell unfinished or rustic furniture

Rustic furniture

Rustic furniture is furniture employing sticks, twigs or logs for a natural look. Many companies, artists and craftspeople make rustic furniture in a variety of styles and with a variety of historical and contemporary influences...

and home items. It has had famous customers such as Antonio Aguilar, Sr., Yuri

Yuri (Mexican singer)

Yuri is a famous Mexican singer, actress, and TV host. She has maintained a significant presence in the entertainment business in Mexico for the last three decades...

and Irma Serrano

Irma Serrano

Irma Serrano is a Mexican actress of film, television, and theater; and also a singer, screenwriter and politician. Thanks to her beauty, her figure and her way of being controversial, coming out of the standards of the time, Serrano managed to attract the attention of directors and producers, so...

, as well as legislators and government officials as clients. However, the furniture market is better known to older generations than younger, with many preferring to buy furniture at upscale stores, even though prices are up to seventy percent higher. The furniture building contains various types of furniture from rustic to minimalist to modern. To help preserve and promote the furniture market, there is a Feria de Mueble (Furniture Fair) held each year in May. The fair features the local merchants but outside craftsmen are also invited. The fair includes exhibits by young furniture designers who are known for minimalist and modern designs as well as traditional ones. The fair is partially sponsored by the Autoridad y el Fideicomiso del Centro Histórico as part of conservation efforts. Building three is in a smaller building on the north side of Eje 1 Norte. It has 319 stands and mostly sells produce and other food items.

Another attraction of the market is that it is surrounded by a number of small specialty shops and many street vendors. Most of the specialty shops are furniture stores or those related to items for formal occasions, such as weddings and quinceañera

Quinceañera

Quinceañera , sometimes called "Fiesta de quince años", "Fiesta de Quinceañera", "Quince años" or simply "quince", is the celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday in parts of Latin America and elsewhere in communities of immigrants from Latin America...

s. Most sell women’s dresses in fantasy and princess styles for these events, as well as baptisms, presentations and many more, but there are also shops dedicated to elaborate decorations and party favors (either made or supplies to be made) along with some related services such as photography. Most of the these stores are located on Honduras, Allende and Chile Streets with some in Building 2 on the south side.

Street vendors crowd Eje 1 North and the side streets on either side in both the La Lagunilla and Tepito neighborhoods. Those closest to the fixed market buildings often sell items similar to that which is inside, and those located near the formal occasion shops emulate these as well. This informal market has grown such that vendors with stalls and vehicles now routinely block several of the main avenue’s six lanes. The problem begins from Comonfort Street, two blocks from Paseo de la Reforma

Paseo de la Reforma

Paseo de la Reforma is a wide avenue that runs in a straight line, cutting diagonally across Mexico City. It was designed by Ferdinand von Rosenzweig in the 1860s and modeled after the great boulevards of Europe, such as Vienna's Ringstrasse or the Champs-Élysées in Paris...

. Here, vendors have taken over the lane dedicated to buses, with stands selling clothing, food, pirated CDs and DVDs and more. In some side streets, traffic is cut in half and in the smallest, there is no passage of vehicular traffic at all on weekends. In total, there are eleven city blocks severely affected by this. Cuauhtémoc borough

Cuauhtémoc, D.F.

Cuauhtémoc, named after the former Aztec leader, is one of the 16 boroughs of the Federal district of Mexico City. It consists of the oldest parts of the city, extending over what was the entire city in the 1920s. This area is the historic and culture center of the city, although it is not the...

authorities state that they do not have enough personnel to effect an eviction of the vendors. Earlier attempts to do this have resulted in threats to administration officials. Another issue is that many roving vendors sell beer and customers in the market proper can be seen drinking their purchases as they walk through the aisles. The most popular form of buying beer here is a “michelada” with a large bottle of beer (940ml) called a caguama

Beer in Mexico

"Beer In Mexico" is the title of a song written and recorded by American country music singer Kenny Chesney. It was released in January 2007 as the fifth and final single from Chesney's 2005 album The Road and the Radio...

emptied into a large cup and mixed with lime juice, salt and sometimes chili pepper and Worcestershire sauce. These vendors do not ask for proof of age. This informal market has made La Lagunilla one of the main centers for the production and sale of pirated CDs and DVDs.

Sunday tianguis

Although the fixed market is surrounded by street vendors everyday, on Sunday street vendors are more crowded and extend over the more blocks of the neighborhood. This event is called the tianguis

Tianguis

day or mercado de pulgas (flea market), because it is based on the tradition of selling secondhand items, which is called “baratillo” (little cheap one). There are thousands of baratillo markets in Mexico City but the best known are Tepito

Tepito

, Santa Cruz Meyehualco, Santa Martha Acatitla and San Felipe de Jesús along with La Lagunilla. There is a popular saying in Mexico City that these markets “one can gather the pieces needed to build a helicopter.” These markets consist of a multitude of vendors selling parts of automobiles, televisions, bicycles, radios, computers, refrigerators, toys, stoves, clothes, shoes, chips, hens, turkeys, fighting cocks in various colors and more.

Shopping on this day begin very early as this is when there is the best selection. However, not all of the vendors on Sunday sell second hand items. Building One, the clothing section, is expanded by vendors who also sell clothes. While there is a notable presence of vintage clothing sellers on this day, most sell new and current fashions, many knock-offs of major designers. Stalls change merchandise frequently and currents modes of fashion can easily be seen from these stalls. One example was the proliferation of Indian style clothing which was popular in the mid 2000s in the city. There are also vendors selling other things related to fashion, such as henna tattoos and custom fingernail work.

The main distinction between the La Lagunilla baratillo and others is that a section of it has developed into an antiques market. This section is centered on Comonfort Street and attracts collectors and tourists from both Mexico and abroad. It is the best known of a number of antiques markets including Mercardo Cuauhtemoc, Mercado de Alvaro Obregon and Plaza del Angel in Mexico City along with Callejón del Sapo in Puebla

Puebla, Puebla

The city and municipality of Puebla is the capital of the state of Puebla, and one of the five most important colonial cities in Mexico. Being a planned city, it is located to the east of Mexico City and west of Mexico's main port, Veracruz, on the main route between the two.The city was founded...

and El Baratillo in Guadalajara.The antiques market is one of the most traditional in Mexico City as interaction between seller and buyer is intense and personal. Good bargainers can get discounts of as much as thirty percent. As part of selling, many vendors will relate stories about the pieces, which may or may not be true. The market has attracted some foreign buyers and sellers and with the Internet and other sources of information, most sellers are more aware of the prices their items can fetch. In the past, this antiques market was known as cheap, but that is not true anymore.

The types of antiques and collectibles sold is vast, but some of the most common include books, magazines, coins, toys, handcrafts and furniture. However, other finds include silverware, movie posters, jewelry, photographs, LP record

LP record

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

s, watches, cameras, 19th century brass beds, appliances and musical instruments. (mood163-164) While they can still be found today, one of the objects more often sold in the past in the market was pre Hispanic

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

artifacts, especially in the 1940s. These objects have included those from the Mezcala, Colima

Colima

Colima is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It shares its name with its capital and main city, Colima....

, Nayarit

Nayarit

Nayarit officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Nayarit is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 20 municipalities and its capital city is Tepic.It is located in Western Mexico...

, Chalco

Chalco

Aluminum Corporation of China Limited, also known as Chalco , is a multinational aluminum company headquartered in Beijing, People's Republic of China...

and Totonaca

Totonacapan

Totonacapan is the name given to a region located mainly in the northern part of the Mexican state of Veracruz. This region was originally comprised around the pre-Columbian city of El Tajín and later, during the Colonial era until our times, around the city of Papantla.Though it comprises a wide...

cultures, ranging from the pre Classic to the post Classic

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

periods. One of the objects in greatest demand today is toys made of tin, which can sell in the United States for up to 1,000 dollars. Antiques merchants here have found that economic downturns do not affect their businesses very much. They also commented that knowledgeable American and Japanese collectors pay significantly more for many items, especially for items such as comic books and toys.

During the 20th century, this antiques market developed a following among many of Mexico City’s wealthier residents and has boasted of a number of famous frequent customers. One was writer Juan José Arreola

Juan José Arreola

Juan José Arreola Zúñiga was a Mexican writer and academic. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the twentieth century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Latin American writers to abandon realism; he uses elements of fantasy to underscore existentialist and...

, who bought old books, sometimes as he sipped whisky from a glass. Another was engineer Guillermo González Camarena

Guillermo González Camarena

Guillermo González Camarena , was a Mexican engineer who was the inventor of a color-wheel type of color television, and who also introduced color television to Mexico....

, who invented color television. He reputedly bought the components to build his first video camera here in 1934. Other shoppers in the antiques market have included Dr. Adam Corder, Jacobo Zabludovsky

Jacobo Zabludovsky

Jacobo Zabludovsky Kraveski is a Mexican journalist. He was the first anchorman in Mexican television and his TV news program, 24 Horas was for decades the most important in the country.-Biography:...

, Jesús (Chucho) Reyes Ferreira, Manuel Contreras, Eduardo Manzao and Ava Vargas. María Félix

María Félix

María Félix was a Mexican film actress and one of the icons of the golden era of the Cinema of Mexico and also one of the myths of the Spanish language Cinema for her life style and personality...

and Irma Serrano

Irma Serrano

(La Tigresa) were known to buy and collect dolls here. Some of the markets most notable collector clients have included bookseller Carlos Ibarra, who amassed a collection of about 30,000 postcards, architect Jorge Zavala, noted for his restoration of historic monuments, bought books, masks, bottles, ceramics and crafts from the 19th and early 20th centuries. His collection of Mexican masks was amassed over twenty five years. Ava Vargas collected old photographs. German engineer Ernesto Richheimer was called the “Señor de las Cucharas” (Lord of the Spoons) because of is “incurable” affection for these utensils. He collected spoons over fifty years from markets all over the world. His collection of 2,300 pieces was displayed at the Museo Nacional de Historia

Museo Nacional de Historia

The Museo Nacional de Historia is a national museum of Mexico, located inside Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City...

and included samples from ancient times to the present and from all over the world.

One other major collector who was also famous was Carlos Monasiváis, who considered La Lagunilla one of his most important sources for his collections. During his first visit to La Lagunilla in 1968, Carlos Monsiváis found an old copy of “La familia Burrón,” when no one thought this series by Gabriel Vargas

Gabriel Vargas

Gabriel Bernal Vargas was a Mexican painter, artist and cartoonist, whose comic strip La Familia Burrón was created in 1937. This cartoon has been described as one of the most important in Mexican popular culture...

was collectible. He was regularly found here and other markets in the city to add to his collection which eventually filled his house in the Portales neighborhood to overflow. This collection was amassed over forty years and included stamps, postcards, scorecards, crafts by artisans such as Teresa Nava, Susana and Teodoro Torres, and Roberto Ruiz, photographs, popular toys, albums, calendars, comics, newspapers, notebooks and cookbooks. His collection eventually founded the Museo de Estanquillo in 2006, with about 12,000 objects that he collected over thirty years.

The market has also had famous seller, such as Ignacio Contreras, better known as “El Chacharitas,” who was noted among collectors as able to obtain all kinds of valuable objects at elevated prices. However, those who knew how to bargain could obtain significant discounts. El Chacharitas states that the sale of antiques was a very good business in the past but less so now. Much of the reason is the degradation of the neighborhood, and the invasion of those selling mass produced, pirated and counterfeit merchandise.The antiques market also has been hurt by Mexico City mayor Marcelos Ebrard’s decision to close roads in and around the historic center as well as Paseo de la Reforma to vehicular traffic on Sundays, the day this market operates. For some vendors, business is down by as much as sixty percent, as many upper class residents will not use public transportation to get to this market.

History

The La Lagunilla market was established and named after the La Lagunilla neighborhood, just outside the historic center of Mexico City

Historic center of Mexico City

. In the pre Hispanic era

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

, this land was a small lagoon

Lagoon

A lagoon is a body of shallow sea water or brackish water separated from the sea by some form of barrier. The EU's habitat directive defines lagoons as "expanses of shallow coastal salt water, of varying salinity or water volume, wholly or partially separated from the sea by sand banks or shingle,...

, which connected to the larger Lake Texcoco

Lake Texcoco

Lake Texcoco was a natural lake formation within the Valley of Mexico. The Aztecs built the city of Tenochtitlan on an island in the lake. The Spaniards built Mexico City over Tenochtitlan...

. This lagoon was important as docks for barges bringing merchandise into the Tlatelolco market

Tlatelolco (altepetl)

Tlatelolco was a pre-Columbian Nahua altepetl in the Valley of Mexico. Its inhabitants were known as Tlatelolca. The Tlatelolca were a part of the Mexica ethnic group, a Nahuatl speaking people who arrived in what is now central Mexico in the 13th century...

. The activities of ancient Aztec

Aztec

markets were commented upon by Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo

Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a conquistador, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards for Hernán Cortés, himself serving as a rodelero under Cortés.-Early life:...

and other conquistador

Conquistador

Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...

s who marveled at their size and variety of merchandise. However, all Aztec markets were outdoors, consisting of stands set up by the vendors themselves and taken down at the end of the day. During the colonial period, the lagoon dried along with the rest of Lake Texcoco and only the name serves as a reminder of the area’s former geography as “la lagunilla” means “the small lake.” The neighborhood of La Lagunilla was built over this dried lagoon. Originally, the neighborhood was filled with mansions for the upper classes. Many still remain, as they have never been replaced by more modern constructions. As the area’s economy has been strongly linked to commerce since the Aztec era, evolution of the area into a lower class neighborhood brought in large scale commerce.

The area had an important market in colonial times which was located at the plaza of the Santa Catarina Church. This church was founded in 1586. In 1640, it was converted from a monastery to a parish church. The current building on the site dates from 1740. The market held on its plaza was third in importance after the El Parían and El Volador during the colonial period. In 1833, a cholera

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

outbreak spurred the abandonment of the area by wealthier residents and the area become lower class. The plaza remained crowded and important because of its proximity to the Royal Tobacco Factory.

La Lagunilla is the descendent of a type of market called the “baratillo” (lit. little cheap one), which specialized in handcrafts, secondhand items and foodstuffs for the poor. It is from this tradition of secondhand items that the antiques market evolved. The first market of this type was El Baratillo in the Zocalo

Zócalo

in the 16th century. However, in 1609, the viceroy

Viceroy

A viceroy is a royal official who runs a country, colony, or province in the name of and as representative of the monarch. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the French word roi, meaning king. A viceroy's province or larger territory is called a viceroyalty...

of New Spain

New Spain

New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...

banned this type of merchandise from the plaza, citing health and public security concerns. These vendors then went to other markets such as those in Tepito and La Lagunilla, where they remain to this day.

The area was reorganized into formal neighborhoods called “colonias

Colonia (Mexico)

In general, colonias are neighborhoods in Mexican cities, which have no jurisdictional autonomy or representation. It is plausible that the name, which literally means colony, arose in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, when one of the first urban developments outside Mexico City's core was...

” as Mexico City grew outside of its traditional confines in the latter 19th century. The new colonias were Santa María la Redonda

Santa María la Redonda

Santa María la Redonda is a boulevard in colonia Guerrero of the Cuauhtémoc borough of the Mexican Federal District.During the 1920s and 1930s, the boulevard was home to numerous carpa theaters....

, Guerrero

Colonia Guerrero, Mexico City

Colonia Guerrero is a colonia of Mexico City located just north-northwest of the historic center. Its borders are formed by Ricardo Flores Magón to the north, Eje Central Lazaro Cardenas and Paseo de la Reforma to the east, Eje1 Poniente Guerrero to the west and Avenida Hidalgo to the south...

and Santa María de la Ribera. The La Lagunilla market was created to replace the Santa Catarina tianguis, on lands next to it related to Callejón del Basilisco, the Plazuiela del Tequiesquite, Callejón de los Papas and 2a Calle de la Amargura. This first market was built between 1912 and 1913 as a series of wooden stalls with roofs by engineers Miguel Ángel de Quevedo

Miguel Ángel de Quevedo

For the journalist, please see Miguel Ángel QuevedoMiguel Ángel de Quevedo was a Mexican architect, engineer, and environmentalist who founded Mexico City's Viveros de Coyoacán arboretum, as well as numerous other construction projects in Mexico City, and throughout the country, and promoted the...

and Ernesto Canseco. Initially, it was dedicated to the sale of produce, eggs and grains, with sections for domestic fowl and fish.

During the 20th century, the market absorbed merchants from the closure of markets located in and near the main square, or Zocalo, of Mexico City. In addition to the vendors on the square itself, merchants came from the closing of the tianguis at the Plazuela del Factors (today the site of the Assembly of Representatives), the Plaza Villamil (today the site of the Blanquita Theatre) and the Mercado del Volador (today the site of the Supreme Court) . This caused overcrowding and chaos in the area, with most of the area impassable to traffic by the 1950s. The government decided to replace the wooden stalls with new, modern warehouse type constructions, consisting of three section, built by architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez.

Like other traditional public markets in Mexico, La Laguinilla has struggled to remain solvent in the face of competition from chain stores and other more modern selling venues. (charcharear) However, it has withstood this competition better than many others of its kind in the city. In the late 2000s, the city has worked to renovate areas in and around Plaza Garibaldi, which includes some areas around the market. The focus of this project is to promote tourism to the area.

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