There is a house in Monterrey that is not what it seems. It’s an ordinary house, at least by the standards of the elite Del Valle neighborhood. Its architectural style is known among upwardly mobile Mexicans as “conservative American” or “neo-McAllen”—a reference to the South Texas city. The house has a brick facade, a carport, and a peaked concrete roof covered with Spanish tile, and if nobody told you its secret, you’d think a white-collar family lived there.The house is a gray-market emporium, a grocery version of a speakeasy—a store specializing in foods imported from the United States. Two rooms of the house are stacked floor to ceiling with packaged grocery items, and a third room contains frozen food. All the familiar brand names are…
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