Haz Sandwich

As I walked into the Plaza Hidalgo, one of the main plazas in the Coyoacán neighborhood this afternoon, I discovered several guys in the green Mexican soccer jerseys kicking around a soccer ball. There was a camera or two around, so my first thought was that they were going to film a commercial for the Mundial (World Cup) that is quickly approaching.

With Mexico playing in the opening game against host country South Africa on June 11, World Cup fever is alive in Mexico. A few weeks ago as I was wondering through the historic district, I came across the filming of a World Cup commercial with lots of people dressed as fans from Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and so on.

Today I decided to sit only a few feet from the action. As a spectator, there did not appear to be any direction to the action, and the guys continued to mess around with the soccer ball, showing off their ball handling skills. All of sudden a heavy beat boomed from the gazebo, and a young man and woman began a choreographed dance not five feet from where I was sitting. They were clearly invested in these dance moves. Several more apparent bystanders join them, and within 30 seconds the plaza was filled with dancers, swinging their arms and swaying their hips to the beat. It quickly dawned on me that I was in the center of a flash mob.

The photographer in red definitely has several pictures of me. He is standing where I was sitting before this all began.

I moved to a bench further back. A girl quickly jumped on my previous seat and continued the dance without missing a beat. A photographer that I had seen earlier was moving around the crowd taking pictures. He snapped several of me laughing at this experience. I laughed even more when an older woman who was walking through plaza decided to get in on the dancing action. She blended in pretty well until the end.

The last move of the dancers was to take off their shirt and swing it around their heads while doing some rebel yells of excitement. Before you get scandalized, all involved had a shirt that said “Haz Sandwich” underneath their top shirts. And as quickly as they appeared, they all scattered their separate ways.

“Haz Sandwich.” It did not click for me until on my walk from Coyoacán to San Angel, a neighboring area, I saw an advertisement at a bus stop for a popular bread brand, Bimbo.