THE ROGUE MARKET
A sprawling unlicensed bazaar threatens to engulf Managua,
For years, Oscar Arrechavala watched as the monster known as Mercado Oriental nibbled on the edges of his neighbourhood.
Arrechavala could do nothing as the ever-growing, 130-block marketplace began to claim his barrio of Ciudad Jardin, leaving its people with a choice: sell their homes to escape the market or learn to live surrounded by a throbbing complex of stalls, vendors and thousands of shoppers.
The 85-year-old Arrechavala stayed, adding tall metal bars to a gate guarding his modest house after someone climbed into his driveway and stole the tires off his car.
His street has, for the moment, avoided the fate of others nearby but vendors now hawk their wares just a block away. In the war pitting Ciudad Jardin against the mercado, he has no doubt about the eventual outcome. “The market comes in a little more every day,” he said, resigned. “I don’t know where it’s going to end up. It’s the most disastrous market that exists.”
In a continent known for its free-form, if not haphazard markets, Mercado Oriental seems unrivalled. The market has no single owner, no governing body. Thousands of merchants operate out of metal sheds, stands covered with tarps or umbrellas, or in former houses, although some homes have been bulldozed to make way for more sellers.
“It’s a market that grew in a spontaneous way, in complete disorder. It’s a disaster,” said Roberto Sanchez Ramirez, a Nicaraguan historian. “There is no comparison. Not in size or in physical characteristic.”
In a country with pervasive poverty, the market attracts residents looking for products on the cheap. In a shopping centre, a pair of pants can cost $30 or more. In Mercado Oriental, it goes for about $15. At the mercado, pork tenderloin costs 70 cordobas a pound versus 90 cordobas at the supermarket.
“The rich don’t come in here,” said Victoria Espinal, as she organized wheeled backpacks in her shop also stuffed with bras, shirts, shoes and backpacks. “They have their nice Mercedes and stay in the stores. Poor people come to the mercado.”
Within its vast bounds, the market contains an underlying danger: robberies, prostitution, drugs and even the occasional homicide are part of life. In some of the most perilous areas, including its callejon de la muerte — alley of death — security guards paid by the vendors and customers enforce a semblance of law and order.
“No authority, not even the police or the city, has been able to bring order to the market,” Ramirez said. “I don’t see a solution.”
Mercado Oriental was born more than 70 years ago, fewer than four square blocks. Inside, there are now restaurants, barber shops, a medical office and a child development centre. The destruction of other Managua markets after a powerful earthquake in 1972 spared the mercado and, with competitors removed, the market continued to grow, said Ramirez.
An estimated 20,000 merchants work inside the market, but the number of vendors could approach 70,000 because multiple families sometimes sell from the same stall, said Augusto Rivera, general manager of the municipal corporation of Managua markets.
“The Mercado Oriental is like a miniature country,” Rivera said.