the 19th Annual
Mercado de Paz Esperanza Peace Market
922 San Pedro Ave
San Antonio, Tejas, 78212
esperanza@esperanzacenter.org
210.228.0201
with over 100 vendors selling AMAZING work
with fantastic food cooking upstairs
with music that made it hard to stand still
with all the mobs of shoppers and rain that never really fell
with the fantastic staff and volunteers of esperanza
with ALL the ohhhs and ahhhhhs over the new pieces
and all the new friends....
the weekend was really wonderful
here are a few snap shots
very happy new client
The
Esperanza Center’s annual Mercado de Paz/Peace Market is the Friday
and
Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend of each year. The day after Thanksgiving
is
known as the busiest shopping day of the year, when throngs of holiday
shoppers
overrun a retail landscape dotted with corporate clones.
As an alternative
to crowded
malls filled with crazed consumers and mass-produced goods, the
Esperanza’s Peace Market features unique, handmade gifts and artesania
centered around themes of peace, social justice, cultural diversity, and ecological
concerns.
Shoppers can wield their economic power by spending their time and
money
supporting individuals and groups that are fighting for a better world.
A
diverse array of gifts are offered each year from artists like: Oscar Alvarado,
mosaic-tile artist and found-object furniture designer; Veronica Castillo,
internationally-renowned ceramic artist from Izucar de Matamoros, Mexico;
Martha Prentiss,
silversmith and owner of Prentiss Jewelry; Barrio Beat/Alma
de la Raza, a company
that seeks to carry on Chicana/o culture through community-based
business
enterprise, and to reflect and include voices of the pueblo in its
operations;
and Colores del Pueblo (formerly Pueblo to People), a Houston-based
nonprofit
organization that buys merchandise from over 200 grassroots craft
and agricultural
co-ops throughout Latin America—paying much better prices
than for-profit
corporations—and then resells directly to consumers in
the U.S., thereby
eliminating unfair profit and providing artists in developing
countries
a larger market for their work.