It was Sunday and the hapless Brazilian football team had long made its inglorious exit from the 2014 Football World Cup. But remnants of the country’s colours still hung limply from some of the stalls along the Butchers’ Aisle in Bourda Market. The show of support for the five-time winner of the biggest prize in international football had to do with much more than good neighbourliness. As Stabroek Business learnt, Brazilian miners may well be the single largest market for the butchers in Bourda Market. So that even if the sentiments of some of the butchers might lie elsewhere, no one was risking offending the Brazilians.
On Sunday the butchers were still commiserating with the Brazilians, but there was more on their minds. Falling gold prices had witnessed a sharp dip in meat purchases by the Brazilians.
Not that the butchers were unduly melancholy. They are a hardy breed, accustomed to the changes in a sector that has its peaks and its troughs.
Some of the 36 stalls comprising Butchers’ Aisle are family businesses,