CITY MARKET
Today we went shopping in the City Market and I got to see the other side of Mexico. As I guessed the other day when Martha was buying vegetables in the market stalls of the old market, somewhere in San Miguel de Allende, there would be contemporary big box stores. On the map there is a Home Depot and I bet it looks just like the Home Depot in Asheville. The City Market is a huge glass fronted building with a large parking area. But inside it puts any high end grocery store in Asheville to shame. It makes the Fresh Market and Whole Foods look like ordinary neighborhood grocery stores.
The City Market has aisles stretching into the distance being tended in every aisle by workers in red and black uniforms. It is spotlessly clean with a huge bakery, a huge wine shop, several different bars selling drinks and food, a restaurant with white linen table cloths and napkins.
In the San Miguel old market you would have to find your way around to get what you wanted. But here everything is for sale in multiple versions. The shoppers looked well to do, often appearing to be Americans.
And that word got me into trouble. A very pleasant man in a snappy hat approached me and offered to help me, speaking American English with no accent at all. I found later he had lived for twenty years in Chicago. We got to talking and comparing cultures, but every time I used the word, “American”, he stopped me. Don’t use that word, he said, unless you mean every American from Patagonia to the arctic circle. I agreed with him, embarrassed, and then inadvertently used it again, and was stopped again. I knew I was in the wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. When I use the word, I mean United States citizen. But he was right, for him the use of American by the United States, hogs both continents, indicates that we are the real Americans, and he didn’t like it, nor do other people from central and South America, who are just as much Americans as north Americans are. It is an example, whether we mean it or not, of American dominance and imperialism, a lesson learned, but I’m afraid I will keep on using the word American to refer to a United States citizen, although when possible I will find a substitute.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 