Mexican Produce

Much of the fruits and vegetables sold in Chihuahua are imported from the United States. This surprised and disappointed me. When I moved to Oaxaca I thought all the fruits and vegetables sold would be locally, or at least Mexican, grown.

For the past year I’ve shopped at two different Mercados, Mercado Noria and Mercado Canadi. A Mercado is a building that houses many stalls where vendors sell their merchandise.

Although I wondered where the vendor at Noria got his produce, until recently I trusted it was all locally grown. When pears individually wrapped and stickered appeared in his stall I suspected they were imported. Still naive, I believed the pears to be an anomaly. A short time later I noticed the plums were stickered with “U. S. grown”

“Is it possible to grow plums here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why are you selling United States produce?”

He grinned. I winced.

When I paid a visit to Canadi I asked whether the strawberries were grown in the United States or Mexico. They were grown in the United States. The same was true of the peaches and grapes.

I’m thinking of restricting my purchases to fruits and vegetables that are locally grown.