Central de Abasto: nocturnal heart of Mexico City’s food future

While the city sleeps, at the Mexico City's Central de Abasto it is decided what reaches the markets, how much it costs, and how the climate rewrites the map of what we eat.

Almost half a century after it was born, the Central de Abasto is still Mexico City’s great concrete monster, a fascinating beast that breathes to its own rhythm while the rest of us sleep. This place also works as an unwitting oracle. It is here, between the smell of diesel and fresh cilantro, that economic decisions and climate whims converge to sketch the map of what we will eat tomorrow. It only takes stepping onto its loading bays before dawn to understand that the city runs on two clocks. While silence rules outside, inside the hand trucks already roll by loaded with tomatoes, and entire walls made of produce boxes rise with a fleeting, precise architecture. In those hoarse, early-morning negotiations between the buyer who haggles and the loader who grunts, the immense fragility of our food system is revealed.

Bodega de ajos y cebollas con costales apilados hasta el techo.

Pasillo profundo con carretilleros, cajas de limón y de jitomate.

Montones de tomates en cajas de madera con un trabajador.

That nocturnal life is the key to its mystery. In the very early hours, lines of trailers cross a kind of toll gate, slow as a procession, carrying in their containers both food and origin stories. Strawberries that arrive almost sweet but too early because of a sudden heat wave; chiles that are scarce after a quiet frost; onions that grew expensive because a road blockade kept them from passing through. These scenes work as a thermometer for how our fields are breathing. The Central feels the countryside’s fever before anyone else, and its symptoms, hours later, will appear with price tags in neighborhood markets, fruit stands, greengrocers and street tianguis all over the city.

Vista vertical del patio de tráileres desde el puente peatonal.

Contenedor con desperdicio de verduras frente a bodegas y camiones.

Exterior con diableros empujando cargas sobre la avenida.

There is something in its origin that explains this resilience. When Zabludovsky and Provencio drew their lines in the late seventies, they imagined a machine of pure efficiency; a machine that would help relieve the streets and surroundings of La Merced and welcome hundreds of warehouse owners and traders. Today, those 327 hectares sustain a daily choreography of twenty thousand tons of food moving at dizzying speed. The people who inhabit it hold a kind of memory you won’t find in any book. The diableros, the porters who have spent decades wearing down their soles in the same corridors, read the territory better than a geographer, weaving through the thousands of people who fill the aisles day after day; understanding which warehouses change owners, which move to another hallway, which products are disappearing and which regions of the country, little by little, stop appearing on the origin signs.

Diablero empujando su carrito entre sombras y cajas.

Pasillo de especias, chiles secos y ajos a granel atendido por comerciantes.

These corridors also stage a very particular dance. It’s not only about opening and closing hours for each warehouse, but about the almost choreographic shifts in the products that appear and vanish season after season and how their colors slowly transform the look of each aisle. Joining this dance are the promoters of the thousands of brands sold at the Central who, no matter the time of day, remain there in uniform, offering the promotion of the moment.

Muro de chiles y pimientos acomodados por color.

Exhibidor de jitomates, cebollas, limones y zanahorias en bloques simétricos.

Papayas abiertas y enteras formando patrones.

Panel de frutas y verduras ordenadas por tono.

Cremeria, con cubetas de lácteos y tostadas colgando

Techos llenos de plátanos colgantes y piñatas, vista de profundidad.

At the Central de Abasto, time folds in on itself like in a Ray Bradbury story: there is no clear morning or night, only the continuous flow of trucks, warehouses and diners with their lights on. As in No Particular Night or Morning, the rules of the clock are suspended and only the present exists: there is always a stall open, a pot of stew bubbling, a freshly made taco, even if the city outside insists that it is “not time” to eat. Here, a suadero taco at the “wrong” hour, an al pastor on the next corner, or a taco de barriga rayada with finely chopped onion, better than at any Michelin-starred restaurant, and its little chile “de amor” can appear at any moment of the day, as if the Central refused to obey the city’s schedule and insisted on dictating its own.

Interior de taquería y juguería

Parrilla con tacos al pastor.

Puesto de pollos rostizados iluminado de noche con comensales de pie y sentados.

Trompo al pastor, al amanecer.

Close-up del taco de barriga rayada en plato amarillo, con limón y chile jalapeño.

To understand the Central as an archive of the future means inhabiting that rush of relative time and learning to listen to the murmur of its corridors. When a producer from Veracruz mentions in passing that the rains came late, or a distributor from the Bajío admits he has had to roof over his crops to save them from the sun, they are delivering climate-change headlines in real time. These are brief chronicles, dropped between loading and unloading, that strip bare the reality of a broken seasonality and an agricultural map being forcibly rewritten.

Bodega de manzanas con cajas perfectamente apiladas y personas negociando.

Papayas acomodadas y exhibidas en una bodega.

Bodega de guayabas con letrero “Calvillo 2” y cajas de guayaba acomodadas para embarque.

Commemorating the Central’s anniversary is acknowledging that this place is never still. It is a living system that records our climate tensions and logistical adjustments. Thinking about the future of Mexican food means looking toward Iztapalapa, because the questions that echo through its warehouses are urgent ones. Which lands will withstand the climate, how much it will cost to move a kilo of fruit, and who will still be farming are riddles that already have answers here. The Central is that privileged observatory where economy and land meet, a vital window through which to glimpse the challenges and flavors that will define the years to come.

Pasillo lleno de producto y personas trabajando.

Pasillo lleno de producto y personas comprando.

Pasillo con vendedor sentado mientras organiza su producto.

Pasillo con personas caminando.

References 

El País. (2014). La Central de Abasto desde dentro [Reportaje fotográfico]. El País. https://elpais.com/elpais/2014/10/26/album/1414277794_063140.html?

Fideicomiso Central de Abasto. (n.d.). Acerca de la Central de Abasto de la Ciudad de México. FICEDA. https://ficeda.com.mx/acerca-de/?utm_

Secretaría de Desarrollo Económico de la Ciudad de México. (n.d.). Central de Abasto: datos y operación. SEDECO CDMX. https://sedeco.cdmx.gob.mx