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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2005 
City Park Reopens Without Vendors
 Wire services
| | Visitors poured into Chapultepec Park on Sunday in Mexico City after an eight-month cleaning up campaign (Photo: Miguel Espinosa/El Universal) |
The battle to control millions of street vendors underwent a new test on Sunday as Mexico City's main park was reopened to the public without the hundreds of food and trinket stands that once crowded winding, leafy walkways.
Vendors were temporarily evicted as the city government closed downtown Chapultepec for the last eight months during a clean-up and pruning campaign.
Officials made it clear the closure was also intended to clean up the vendors' bad old ways, as well as those of some park visitors.
No vendors at all were visible in the park Sunday, as police posted at entrance gates kept them out. The relative few that will eventually be allowed back in will be confined to stainless steel pushcarts or rows of brick stalls built by park authorities in specified areas.
"It was an impossible situation, the park had been turned into an open-air market," said Rodrigo De Leσn, a volunteer helping tell visitors about the new park rules. "You'd walk into the park, and people would be shouting at you to buy things."
The stalls had taken up much of the park's pathways, selling everything from fried pork rinds to souvenir photos.
Because of that and a shortage of trash cans, a problem that persists the park's flora had been trampled and its lake choked with rubbish. Authorities removed about 5,000 cubic yards of muck and 3,000 tons of plastic containers from the lake.
It remains to be seen how effective the new rules will be at discouraging the city's street vendors, many of them selling contraband and pirated goods while crowding the sidewalks even in front of the Supreme Court building. |
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