César Arellano
La Jornada newspaper
Sunday, August 3, 2025, p. 8
The San Juan Pantitlán meat market faces unhealthiness, insecurity, crime and extortion problems. This microcosm, which serves on average up to 15 thousand people a day, is one of the largest in Latin America, known for offering a wide variety and quality of meats, as well as products and tools for taquerías and butchers. It is located on the border between the Iztacalco and Iztapalapa and the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico; The last two, the most populated in the metropolis.
According to tenants, the market covers about 20 streets and has about 2,000 stores: large accessories that distribute meat and informal stalls installed on the Peripheral ridge. They occupy one of the vehicular stream lanes and accumulate tons of garbage daily.
That generates an intense cars traffic jam for the large concentration of people and motor rates who come to buy, as well as distributors that are parked in a peripheral lane and the bridge that crosses the Ignacio Zaragoza road, both ways, for loading and downloading their merchandise.
The congestion extends to the surrounding streets, which affects thousands of drivers and pedestrians who travel through that point. Peripheral is the main route that relieves this area towards Ecatepec-Texcoco and south towards Xochimilco and the Mexico-Cuernavaca booth.
To all the merchants that we sell within the market have given us in the tower the positions of the ridge of 7th Street. If before we were 100 butchers, now we are more than a thousand. Many properties around were houses, are now wineries or accessories that distribute, process and sell meat; Similarly, there are many improvised businesses in home courts
said Gabriel, seller of pork.
They invade sidewalks and the artery preventing people from walking on the sidewalk, because they place huge tables and metal supports on the public space to hang and tear tons of tons of cattle gutters and pigs; They also reduce the visibility and accessibility of formal businesses
he added.
Everyone takes care of their business
In addition, in the best known as San Juan Market There are frequent assaults, theft of auto parts. The morning take advantage of traffic to dock trucks with merchandise. Security? In the market it does not exist. Everyone takes care of their business
Says Carlos, seller of beef.
According to tenants and buyers, in June 2023 a man was shot dead; Last year a child hit him and at the same time a man who assaulted was stabbed. Months later, in October, a shooting was recorded in one of the establishments. A person died and two were injured. Last March, they killed a merchant and two weeks ago a motorcyclist stoned a car because he blocked the circulation.
Most butchers operate unhealthy and completely disorder. When touring the long and narrow sludge corridors and little enlightened in the market, a smell is imposed by the waste and viscera of the newly cut cattle that hang in the stalls in view of the customers. Dry blood stench is combined with the bloody liquid that drains on the ground mixed with the garbage.
The neighbors complain about the sludge floors, the accumulation of waste in alleys, of the slippery pavement for the vegetable, skin and animal fat that makes it difficult to walk and expose them to accidents or falls.
In the best case, sellers deposit meat waste in plastic boats for later management, but others simply throw them to the floor. Thousands of flies are attracted to that sink of decomposition and garbage.
▲ The supply center located between the East Peripheral, the Ignacio Zaragoza road and Texcoco Avenue is known for its wide variety and quality of meats, as well as products and tools for taquerías and butchers. For tenants, reorganization is impossible.Photo Jair Cabrera Torres
Jorge Giovanni, who sells fruits and vegetables, defends the market. Assures that Sometimes
They make cleaning days. In Holy Week we wash streets, we scratch fat, we uncover drains. San Juan is very discriminated against by garbage, but accumulates during the activity, which is from 3 in the morning at 6 in the afternoon. I have clean, sweep, my garbage apart. Of course, in the rainy season the coladeras are covered with the garbage, so many people have the idea that the market is very dirty, but no. There are rumors that they want to remove the market, but it is an economic source of generations of families
.
Reject relocation: it would be starting from scratch
For tenants, the rearrangement of the San Juan Pantitlán meat market is impossible, at least in the short term. In addition, they oppose a possible relocation, because it would be starting from scratch, they would lose their clients who arrive from several entities in the country.
It would not be the same; Moreover, maybe we would not sell. In 1986, when the construction of line A of the Metro began, they relocated 200 tenants to a few streets from here, but they broke
Omar recalled, another butcher.
Mario Cuéllar, a researcher graduated from the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), points out that in the 70s merchants invaded and installed the first permanent businesses, which to date seem to be in black work.
As the years passed, they spread over the surrounding colonies, to the extent that even branches of some recognized meat companies have displaced small shops.
To the expansion of the warehouses for the sale of meat, Chinese wineries, a private hospital on the side of the butchers and meters ahead of the IMSS clinic.
It doesn’t sleep here. From 2 in the morning people are already working. At that time the cattle and pigs of different traces of the country arrive. They immediately stand out and in the end to collect and clean. In the afternoon the meat is received from the next day
Rogelio points out, who has been working there for more than 30 years.
Gabriel belongs to the third generation in his family that is dedicated to selling pork here, but regrets the increase in extortion and crime that led them to install alarm systems and tarps with notices where they warn that neighbors and tenants are united against crime and insecurity.
Pepe Toño is 60 years old, 45 of them working in the San Juan Pantitlán market. Many shops do not close. The administration is divided because the market is in the middle of Texcoco Avenue between Mexico City and the State of Mexico. The two mayors would agree with the municipality for a real reorganization, but I see it difficult
.
In 2019, the Metropolitan Commission of Mexico City wanted to talk with merchants to relocate them, but it was not achieved. At that time, the capital authorities said that the property was the cause of the anarchy that has prevailed in the area for years and raised the need to reorder the established trade.
In October 2024, the head of government of Mexico City, Clara Brugada, met with inhabitants of the Pantitlán neighborhood, Iztacalco Mayor’s Office, where she acknowledged that that of San Juan is a historical metropolitan problem that can be solved. He even instructed his team so that that day they toured the market, but the butchers interviewed said that to date they have not been notified about a possible rearrangement.
