Market place in Mexico with sombreros, circa 1940

About this postcard

A vendor in a white shirt and apron stands behind market tables piled with tomatoes, onions, greens, and roots. Dozens of sombreros hang in a dense cluster overhead, and pottery and baskets fill the background. The printed caption calls the scene simply "Market Place in Mexico." The heading promises that visitors in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas can cross into "romantic, alluring Old Mexico" in four to thirty minutes from any town in the Valley and see stores, markets, and bazaars with tropical fruits, vegetables, and "Mexican and Indian curios." Such markets were everyday places to buy food, straw hats, and earthenware, and they became regular stops for tourists crossing the border in the mid-twentieth century.