Jardín Sócrates

The slope by the Basílica de la Soledad was once occupied by the open Plazuela de la Soledad. City officials turned it into a public garden: they built broad stairways and placed a fountain with a bronze bowl in the middle. Later, builders laid green stone and connected utilities here for commerce. On the city map, the garden is named after Socrates, although residents more often call this place Nieves de la Soledad.

Eight kiosks in the garden sell Oaxacan nieve—a dessert made from a dairy or fruit mixture that is frozen without a machine. A steel container is placed in a wooden barrel with ice and salt and turned by hand. The vendors stress that if a mechanism cools the mixture, it becomes ice cream instead. Both the recipe and the method matter here.

Amalia Carmen Velasco Armengol, one of the local vendors, carries on her family’s work. In nineteen thirty-two, her mother, Consuelo Armengol Hernández, and relatives went out to the Zócalo (Plaza de la Constitución) with two or three containers. They had no kiosk: they placed the garrafas directly on the ground, and Consuelo carried five glass dessert dishes in each hand. Sales supported the family, so three years later they set up the first permanent stalls by the cathedral. Later, municipal officials moved five vendors to Alameda de León.

In nineteen seventy-nine, Pope John Paul II came to Oaxaca. The kiosks were removed from the Alameda, initially for the duration of the visit. The vendors returned, but the mayor at the time, Jesús Martínez Álvarez, sought to clear the garden of commerce. He offered them several new sites: Mercado Benito Juárez Maza, Jardín Labastida, or the space in front of the Basílica de la Soledad. The eight kiosks ended up here.

Two years later, city builders laid new green-stone paving, connected utilities, and equipped spaces for commerce. The temporary relocation acquired permanent infrastructure. Amalia passed the family methods on to her children, and the number of nieve businesses operating here remained the same—eight.

The stone fountain in the middle of the kiosks appeared a century before this renovation. In eighteen eighty-one, city officials turned the former Plazuela de la Soledad—a square beside the church of Soledad—into a public garden. They built broad stairways on the steep slope and placed a fountain with a bronze bowl in the center.

The name “Socrates” is connected with the same reshaping of urban space. At the end of the nineteenth century, officials were replacing religious names for gardens with secular ones: Homer, Plato, Virgil, Nezahualcóyotl, and Socrates appeared alongside one another on the map of Oaxaca—Socrates being the Athenian philosopher chosen as one of the models of civic knowledge. There is no local story of Socrates having been here.

The official name has remained on the map, but residents more often call the place Nieves de la Soledad—nieve by the Basílica de la Soledad. The bronze bowl from eighteen eighty-one remains in the center, with the eight kiosks relocated here in nineteen seventy-nine standing around it.