[dropcap size=big]T[/dropcap]he informal swap meet is conjured every weekend on Main Street along the corners of 46th Street, 47th Street, 47th Place, and 48th Street, more or less surrounding Holy Cross Catholic Church, which is how street markets across Mexico and Latin American frequently begin: around the temple.
It’s been there for about fifteen years, vendors say. People setting up and selling things, people walking by, buying. With a view of the downtown skyscrapers, the unofficial street market is in so many ways a reminder that the immigrants have already won. Every sensory signal here reflects a north-of-the-border remix of the various cultures of Mexico, southern Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and the traditional African-American current in South-Central that binds them all.
Humberto Yauli, an immigrant who came to the United States from the department of Huánuco, of Peru, in 1999, sits before a folding table on the northside of 47th Street, in front of the public library. On Saturdays and Sundays, from dawn to about sundown, he sells otherwise throwaway-type things that are perfectly sellable in his trained eyes. One day it was a yellowing cardboard box of imported men’s briefs, with a totally 80s packaging design of an oily model. Another time, he offered vintage baseball cards. Yaoli can sometimes be found selling tools or photo frames, anything, really, that he can collect or get his hands on.
His wares are things that were manufactured long ago, far away, and since forgotten. “Kids toys, clothes, what people give to me, or what I buy,” he says.