Sweets and crafts market

Its official name is the Valentín Gómez Farías Sweets and Handicrafts Market, a name that honors the man who in the first decades of the 19th century promoted the expropriation of church property.

It cannot be said that Gómez Farías had thought that the land would be occupied in the future by a market, whose artisanal character would be attractive to tourists and visitors, but the actions he undertook made it possible.

The market was once a vegetable garden where residents of the Jesuit convent - now the Clavijero Cultural Centre - grew vegetables for their own consumption.

But the land was taken from the church by the state, to be used for other purposes, whether civic or commercial. Although it did take more than a century from the disincorporation of the ecclesiastical assets, in the first decades of the 19th century, until the Market was opened: Sáenz Gallegos shared that it was inaugurated on September 14, 1968.

There is little information available indicating what uses the place had before being a market. It is generally considered that the place was a vacant lot, since the government offices were in Clavijero.

But what is known is the resentment that the expropriation of the properties generated in the church, since it was said that in the mid-nineteenth century there was a cholera epidemic in Mexico City, an event that according to the hierarchy of the time "was divine punishment, that God had punished the government or Mexico for having taken away its property."

Despite Catholic anger, the land remained in the hands of the state and the Market was built, which is made up of around 150 shops. Its existence provided a base for merchants who previously roamed around other areas. Some say that in the 1930s, in the portals and cathedral there were some vendors selling sweets and canned fruit, and it is also said that it was built in 1968 to provide formal spaces for vendors who offered their products in the Matamoros Portal.

The name of the person who designed the building is unknown, although it is very likely that such a record exists, but there is little documentary research regarding the recent history of the city, that is, from the second half of the 20th century.

Historians have generally focused more on the history of the cathedral or the aqueduct than on other issues such as the houses themselves, which are stories that have been lost with the renovations.

This plaza with abundant candied fruits, cocadas, ates, milk rolls, wafers, moreliana, dried fruits, cajetas, rompopes, mezcals, jams, tamarinds and more than 300 sweets that can be found here, was remodeled in 2015 with resources from the FONATUR program, then floors were changed, the premises were expanded and the roofs were maintained.