The Market in Buguias Central

When the Agno Valley Road was finally pushed south to Buguias, local trade temporarily revived. Thursdays and Sundays were des-

ignated market and produce-shipping days; vegetable traders would then drive their large trucks to the center of town, where they would be greeted by growers descending from the surrounding farmlands with their harvests. After selling their vegetables, farmers would shop in the periodic market and in the half-dozen or so permanent stores that had recently opened. But the shops of Buguias offered fewer goods at higher prices than their rivals in the northern towns, and the market was a local affair, unable to attract the professional peripatetic vendors.

When marketing innovations in the 1970s permitted farmers to ship their vegetables on any day of the week, the Buguias market withered to virtual extinction. Most farmers continued to devote Sundays and sometimes Thursdays to socializing in the center of town, but by the mid-1980s only a single used-clothing trader offered any substantial goods in the marketplace.