La calle de la Amargura

I was trying to find a coffee shop in San Ángel, a neighborhood in Mexico City, and just as I started to feel a little lost, I realized I was walking down la Calle de la Amargura—Bitterness Street. It made me smile because “Caminar por la calle de la amargura”—to walk down the Street of Bitterness—is a common phrase in Mexico (and I believe in Spain as well), which means going through a rough patch or a time of suffering. Still, I’ve always liked the word “amargura” and when I looked up, still without finding the elusive café, I spotted a Porrúa bookstore.

In Mexico, Porrúa bookstores are quite popular, but I had never been inside that particular one. So I decided to go in, and to my surprise, the thing that caught my attention the most wasn’t the books this time.

It turns out part of the building houses an art gallery, and since I was the only person there, a kind woman offered to give me a short tour of the space. What a delight it was to discover works by Carmen Parra, Feliciano Béjar, Carlos Mérida and other Mexican artists.

To me, most of the pieces seemed to be by Carmen Parra—there were horses everywhere. There was also a magiscopio by Feliciano Béjar, but it was placed on a pedestal, so I couldn’t satisfy my curiosity and look through it.

What excited me the most, though, were the drawings and watercolors by Carlos Mérida. They were displaying a collection of twenty figures wearing beautifully detailed traditional Mexican costumes.

The kind gallery assistant tried to explain all of Carmen Parra’s works that were for sale, but I couldn’t stop staring at this image of a virgin painted on talavera pottery, which she had skipped in her explanation without realizing it.

Once I had finished looking at all the artwork, I wanted to explore the bookstore itself, but several areas were closed off, so I’d come looking for a coffee shop and ended up finding art, beauty and silence. I guess I was lucky that day.