Buenos Aires: Feria de Mataderos

Buenos Aires' Market in Mataderos: Folk Dancing and Horse Shows

© Monica Guy

Dec 13, 2007

If you’re after an entertaining alternative to the more central Sunday markets of Buenos Aires, which are rapidly becoming tourist traps with the inevitable overpricing and pick-pocketing that title brings, you’d be well advised to jump in a taxi and head to Mataderos.

Feria de Mataderos: A Traditional Market...

This popular arts and crafts market, located in the southwest of Buenos Aires between Lisandro de la Torre and Av. De los Corrales, has all that you want from a good ol’ traditional market, and much more besides.

Proudly describing itself as a ‘place where city and country meet’, you’ll find not only enough good quality hand-made jewellery, leather and wood carving to fill Christmas stockings for a lifetime, but also a large central stage on which local musicians perform traditional folk songs and, unusually for Buenos Aires, a group of cattle traders showing off in full gaucho gear and racing horses down a side street.

What you won’t find so much of, again unusually for Buenos Aires, are pale faces and foreign accents. So if your idea of the perfect Sunday is a bargain-hunt or two, a cold beer and a sausage in a bun, a spell of cheesy live music and leg kicking folk dance and the odd display of manly gaucho muscle, you can’t go far wrong by coming here.

...Or A Mataderos (Slaughterhouse)?

‘Mataderos’ means slaughterhouse, and porteños used to come here to drink the blood of freshly slaughtered animals in the belief that it would cure their coughs and colds and broken legs.

But don’t worry. Although the air is thick with the smell of asado and chorripan roasting gently on parrillas and the ubiquitous empanadas, the slaughterhouses are gone and you’ll no longer be able to see what you’re eating killed and skinned in front of your eyes.

In fact, the market’s setting in a cosy square shaded by ancient tipa trees, with the stage backing onto a monumental statue, is one of the most attractive things about it. The milling crowds clear a space on the cobbles for dancers performing the gato, chacarera, and other folk dances.

Horse Shows by Argentina's Gauchos

Just across the street outside the still-operative cattle market Mercado Nacional de la Hacienda you’ll see the cattle traders showing off. One game, the Corrida de la Sortija, involves spearing a small ring hanging loosely from a pole while at full gallop.

At other times they’ll be competing in a tug of war or sack race, which you’re not recommended to join in with unless you’re truly confident those gym-cultivated muscles can match up to the ones of men who spend their days wrestling cattle to the ground.

Films, Music and Dancing in the Feria de Mataderos

In one corner of the square is a small home-made cinema playing amateur films on an ancient projector. In another corner a group of friends will be sitting outside a refreshment tent improvising on guitars and bongos.

Buenos Aires’ lesser known market manages to be extraordinarily cheap, always cheerful, and bloody (ha!) good fun.

Feria de Mataderos: Getting There

From Buenos Aires, either jump in a taxi or take a bus (92 from Retiro, approx 1 hour, also 36 and 126) every Sunday from 11am in autumn, winter and spring, or every Saturday from 6pm in summer.

You can find out more by calling 4374 9664 or visiting the market's website, but as always in Argentina it’s best just to turn up and join the party.

Although you may wish to eat before you arrive and stay on your guard, as the final boast of the organisers’ English language information leaflet states baldly that: ‘Youngsters, grandparents and grandchildren are no longer mere spectators; they are part of the feast.’ Mataderos – slaughterhouse – yes well, by all accounts worth the risk, but on your own head be it.