Tianguis del Chopo

When Jorge Pantoja began working at the Museo Universitario del Chopo at the invitation of Ángeles Mastretta, he immediately sensed an absence as firm as it was indelible: that of the dinosaur from the Natural History Museum which, before migrating to Chapultepec, had left its mark on the collective memory of the museum and the neighborhood.

Wanting to soften that emptiness and turn the museum into something else, Pantoja began organizing concerts, composition contests and exhibitions tied to rock, among other initiatives. The decisive spark came in October, when his brother Antonio suggested organizing a swap market.

Under the name Primer Tianguis de Publicaciones Musicales y Discos, collectors, music lovers and independent labels were called to what was meant to be a one-month adventure. Its success led them to turn the gathering into a permanent Saturday ritual.

From its beginnings to this day it has been a meeting point offering endless goods: collectors' magazines, records, specialized books, toys, crafts, clothing, leather jackets, T-shirts of every kind of band, and the banners of many countercultures — from punks and cholos to pachucos and metalheads.

In 1982 the museum staff, overwhelmed by the human tide that kept growing at El Chopo, voiced their discontent. It was then that the market was moved out into the streets, taking over the one that honors the poet Enrique González Martínez.

So began the era of the itinerant Chopo, a nomadic existence that sought refuge in the streets of San Rafael, the Casco de Santo Tomás, the gardens of Ciudad Universitaria and the Kiosco Morisco. After that long pilgrimage, the market finally found its harbor in 1988, on Aldama street in the Guerrero neighborhood.

Today El Chopo is a spiritual reserve of counterculture. A space where the emerging finds a voice and where alternative music has gathered for more than forty years. Declared Cultural Heritage of Mexico City, it survives as the beating heart of a community that keeps making noise, creating music and preserving the cultural diversity and youthful defiance a city like this one needs so badly.