The Vendors of San Juan del Sur

With the eye of a curator and the easy touch of a surgeon, Lola could tell you if an avocado is good to eat today or if you’d enjoy more of its velvety flavor by waiting a day. Pedro is the master of meat and he also is the voice behind Radio Pollo. Silvia always wanted to be a nurse, but the jobs in that field didn’t pay well so she changed careers. Emelda knows what people like and she tries to provide it for them. What have all these people got in common? They are some of the familiar faces that literally help put food on our tables.

They are vendors in San Juan del Sur.

Silvia Sanchez Martinez always dreamt of being a nurse and helping people who were feeling poorly and unable to help themselves. But reality squashed that dream. After all, she had two children, Ariela Matilda and Galilea, to raise. The jobs in nursing at the time didn’t pay well.

Silvia’s father was too ill to work when she was growing up, so Silvia had a role model in her mother, another breadwinner, who ran a pulperia. This gave Silvia the idea of starting her own business. Between her current location, in a big turquoise building about a block from the market, and a business she ran in the market, Silvia’s been serving people in San Juan del Sur for more than 17 years. She started out in the business with her sister, Gloria Sanchez Martinez, but then they decided to open separate businesses. Her sister’s pulperia can be accessed from the market. Gloria and Silvia still work together in a sense, as Gloria goes to Managua twice a week to make purchases for both sisters’ stores. In addition, food distributors deliver to their stores.

While Silvia hasn’t expanded her business physically because she lacks the necessary space, she has seen a large increase of customers over the past few years. The types of customers have changed, too, with the influx of foreigners and tourists. This has caused her to change her product offerings.

“My products have changed based on what my customers want,” she says. “We now sell more wine, pasta and canned goods.” Pasta is the big frontrunner in terms of new product popularity. Many of her Nicaraguan customers didn’t eat pasta in the past, but now they, too, have added it to their shopping lists.

Forty-six-year-old Silvia says her decision to run a business turned out to be a good one that allowed her to reach her goals, which were to provide for her children. Ariela, now 22, completed her studies in business administration at the University of Central America while 18-year-old Galilea is studying dentistry. Once they are settled into their chosen professions and able to take care of themselves, Silvia says she will work less hours. She currently works from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.

“Without working these hours, I wouldn’t be able to afford their education,” she says, adding that all the work sometimes makes her tired.

A customer comes in and starts talking about the fishing in San Juan del Sur these days. And speaking of fish, he says, Silvia makes the best white tuna dinner in the world. Silvia smiles shyly.

Silvia hasn’t given up on her dream of nursing. While she completed her nursing studies at UPOLI in Managua and a training program at Baptista Hospital in Managua, she doesn’t know that she will pursue it as a career now. Rather, she may volunteer. She believes that nursing has become more businesslike than it was in the past, when nurses interacted with patients compassionately.

For the moment, though, Sylvia is quite content supporting her children as they reach for their dreams.

Maria Dolares Romero Pereira, better known by many of the customers who seeks out her expertise as Lola, has worked in the market for 13 years. Standing behind the pyramid of tomatoes and burgeoning baskets of produce such as cabbage, carrots, mangos, potatoes and onions, she says she really likes her job, particularly serving her friendly customers and taking time to chat with her friends and market colleagues.

Lola, 38, is married to husband Jose Antonio Chmorro and has two children, Cesar, 12, and Gloria Elena, 7. She lives in Rivas and takes the bus to the market with her produce.

She buys some of her produce from Managua, including cabbage, potatoes and onions. Her aunt makes the trip several times a week to make these purchases. Other produce, such as watermelon, mango, banana, papaya and other fruit are purchased directly from the farmers in Rivas by Lola. She works from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. When asked if she ever takes vacations, she smiles and says, “Sundays.”

Lola grew up in Rivas and started her business with a small stall in the market. Her space and her client base has grown over the years, but she says her prices haven’t increased that much. And she proudly points out that she charges foreigners and Nicaraguan the same price for her products.

Lola says she provides fresh staples for many of the local restaurants in town, including O Sole Mio, El Colibri, and El Timon, to name a few.

She is the only one in her family to run a business like this. It doesn’t look like that will change, either.

“My children don’t like this business,” she says. “I tell them to come here with me so they could practice their English, but they don’t want to.”

Emelda Calderon Mendoza knows firsthand the difficulty of running a store. As operator and owner of Variedades Calderon’s, located in a large corner building across from the market, she recalls the days when she had a paucity of products to sell.

When Daniel Ortega was president the first time, she says, products were rationed and there wasn’t much available for her to purchase to sell. That changed as the times and the government changed, she says. Increasing tourism and foreign investment have also made a mostly positive impact on San Juan del Sur and her business. Emelda currently works at the store from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.

As the number of clients increased and business became more lucrative, Emelda doubled the size of her store twice. She currently owns this prime piece of property and she and her brother, Norbeto, live in the same building. Norbeto, who is currently unemployed, often helps out at the store, as does her daughter, Carina Lucia, 27. Carina Lucia has just completed her studies for industrial engineering but has been unable to find a job. Emelda hopes the positive changes in Nicaragua will lead to more opportunities for young, educated people like her daughter. Emelda’s son, William, is currently studying to be an architect. Emelda says she had no training for this business, which she started 18 years ago. She says she learned it little by little.

Aside from doling out products that change with customer requests, Calderone’s often serves as a makeshift tourism and information center because many people coming to San Juan del Sur for the first time don’t know about many of the goods and services offered.

From her vantage point at the corner store, Emelda need not look far to recall the changes in the San Juan del Sur downtown area. The old ice house diagonally across the street has been basically rebuilt from the ground up and now houses offices and apartments. The market vendors once had stalls on the street in front of the market. They’ve all moved inside the market now. There are many more hotels and there’s a lot of sprucing up of residences and businesses. She thinks the change ais good, overall. After all, she says, nothing stays the same.

Pedro Isidro Lopez Navarro

“We’re coming at you from the market of beautiful San Juan del Sur, here on Radio Pollo,” announces a grinning Pedro Isidro Lopez Navarro from his stall in the market. It’s obvious he gets a kick out of playing the emcee in his world of commerce at the center of town.

Pedro boasts that he is a puro San Juaneno, having lived his entire 53 years here. He’s been selling meat at the market for six years. Prior to that, he worked in the seafood industry in Nicaragua for 18 years. He changed businesses because several years ago there was a massive bloom of red tide that ruined fishing. In addition, there was overfishing. There simply wasn’t enough business for him.

Pedro likes his business and it shows as he meets and greets his regular customers, smiling and sharing jokes and conversation. He says he likes to work in businesses that sell people things they like to eat because it fulfills people’s most basic needs.

Pedro studied commercial accounting and warehouse management at Nicaragua’s chamber of industry.
When the seafood business plummeted, he recalls, he thought that he didn’t want to have a boss and San Juan didn’t have a carniceria, or butcher. It worked.

In the past several years, Pedro has modernized the equipment in his store and put in freezers. He proudly says that his facility is clean and hygienic. Business has been good. In the beginning he was selling between 15 and 20 pounds of meat a day. Now he sells between 200 and 300 pounds a day. His clients are restaurants, individuals and smaller cafes. In addition, he provides customers with special orders such as turkey and free range birds and catering.

His wares fill many refrigerators, but the radio shows are usually what gets him the laughs.

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