Paola

"I work as a social researcher. I did fieldwork at the tianguis for one year."

My name is Frances Paola Garnica. I was born on July 22nd 1981 in Mexico City. I spent my childhood in Tetouan, Morocco. After six years my family and I moved to Malaga, Spain, where we lived for almost seven years. At the beginning of 1998 we came back to my mother’s city of origin, San Salvador, El Salvador, where I graduated in Anthropology in the Technological University of El Salvador. I wrote my thesis about “Gender and Development: women communal organisation in Barra de Santiago” under the direction of Dr. Anne Olesen and in collaboration with Lola Ramírez-Amador.

Afterwards, I studied the MA in Visual Anthropology in the University of Manchester, funded by the mexican National Council for Science and Technology CONACyT. I wrote my thesis in “Horizons: a study of university students in Mexico City” under Dr. Rupert Cox’s supervision. In this university I am currently doing the Ph.D in Social Anthropology with Visual Media supervised by Dr. Andrew Irving. I just submitted my doctoral thesis: “Street Markets of Mexico City: Strategies for being and encountering with others” that includes a written piece of six chapters and this website.

I came across Route 8 street market through my family. They are regular customers of Sundays’ tianguis and during my previous touristic visits to Mexico City they often took me to this market to have lunch together and hang around. When I finally moved to Mexico City to live, I continued visiting this market with my family and friends. When I decided to do this project, I felt confident and comfortable enough in the street market to convert it into ‘my fieldsite’, even though I did not know any of the vendors nor they knew me by name.

The following is a transcription of my notes after my very first day of fieldwork in the street market, when I was looking for access and participants willing to collaborate with me in the PhD project:

I became different things at the market. I was a customer, although very often vendors gave me free merchandise. I was a friend accompanying another friend to have grocery shopping at the tianguis. I was a woman; this was never off the table. I was a researcher, as many times Roberto introduced me to other vendors and representatives: ‘this is la licenciada…’. I never felt like an ‘outsider’ nor like a ‘part of the market’ as the vendors or the residents were. I cannot say I was ‘one of the vendors’, ‘one of the residents’ or ‘one of the customers’. I was at the market as me, along with the trajectory that brought me there, which I shared with the people I talked to. A great part of me being at the market was photography. Photography demonstrated to be one channel of bonding with participants. During my last month in Mexico City I brought some printed portraits to the street market as small good-bye/thanks gifts. A few days later, some vendors gave me the following photo signed by them on the back: