The Oldest, Open-Air Market in the Country Is an Immigrant Lifeline

Haymarket is vital to the city of Boston

A woman shops at Haymarket. Photo by Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

“How much?” The man, in his 60s, from China, points to the mounded scallions on the right of the stand.

“Three for one dollar,” says Ana Contreras, 36, who arrived in Boston from Mexico nine years ago and has been working in Haymarket ever since. Contreras owns the stall with her friend Jessica Hernández, from El Salvador. The customer gives the slightest of nods. Ana extends a red plastic scoop duct-taped to a wooden handle to take his dollar bill, carefully unpeeled from a small roll. She passes him the green onions, which he drops into a wrinkly plastic bag, and then takes a deep slurp of her Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee, her fourth of the day.

Haymarket is the oldest year-round, open-air produce market in the United States, occupying the same piece of ground since the 1830s. But what makes it so special — and so vital to the city of Boston — is that it is a “salvage market,” as Peter Renda, 60, a longtime Haymarket stall owner, calls it.

While in the past, Haymarket had a reputation for, shall we say, a certain gruffness, in the 21st century, a wave of female immigrant vendors has brought a…