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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2007 
Mexico City Tries to Corral Street Vendors
 Jeremy Schwartz - Cox News Service
| | Mayor Marcelo Ebrard (center) rode his bicycle to work last month as part of an effort to reduce traffic in Mexico City. (Gregory Bull/Associated Press) |
Mexico City - Aztec warriors spotted an eagle holding a serpent in its mouth and, struck by the omen, founded the canal city of Tenochtitlan, precursor to the Mexican capital.
Seven hundred years later, the momentous location is hidden at the edge of huge sea of street vendors. Tarps crowd sidewalks, techno music blares, and customers squeeze through narrow openings in the chaos.
Street sellers obscure a great swath of the city's colonial history and finest baroque architecture - centuries-old churches, armories, and museums.
But that may be about to change.
Five months into his term as mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard is embarking on an ambitious plan to rid downtown of its legion of street vendors. The plan would tidy up the streets, and what some consider the most visible symptom of Mexico's dysfunctional economy.
"This is a huge monster, an iceberg," said Victor Cisneros, president of a group of downtown merchants. "The street vendors are just the tip. The rest is below the surface - the corruption, the bootlegging . . . the politics."
As many as 60,000 street vendors crowd Mexico City's historic downtown, known as the Centro Histórico. They sell everything from $10 jeans, pet turtles, and photocopy machines to pirated DVDs and illegally imported Chinese knick knacks.
Throughout the capital an estimated 500,000 street vendors account for 40 percent of the economic activity, according to the city's Chamber of Commerce.
Specialists say the vendors, and the millions of immigrants working in the United States, provide a safety valve for an economy that has not produced enough well-paying jobs.
But the street selling plays another, less altruistic role in Mexican society.
Well-organized street vendors represent captive votes for city politicians; they can be counted on to fill rallies and provide reliable campaign donations.
According to Reforma, a daily newspaper in the capital, a handful of major leaders have divided up the historic downtown into virtual fiefdoms, charging about $5 per day for street and sidewalk space. With tens of thousands of vendors, that translates into large profits - and competition.
Ebrard's decision to move the vendors could set off political repercussions, observers warn. His Revolutionary Democratic Party has historically been an unofficial supporter of street vendors since coming into power in 1997, trading votes for official indifference as vendors took over entire city blocks. Before that, vendors pledged their allegiance to the Institutional Revolutionary Party when it controlled the capital.
"And if the PAN [the conservative National Action Party of President Felipe Calderón] comes to power, then we'll all be PANistas," explained Malena Acuña, who controls an estimated 500 vendors.
Mexico City is touting its current operation as a "rescue." It is part of a $40 million plan to renovate aging streets. Business groups are pushing for the government to build a megamarket to house the street sellers, a proposal that vendors largely reject.
"We are willing to come to agreements, but what is not negotiable is that there is law on the books that prohibits commerce in the public way in the Centro Histórico," Ebrard has said. "This is not subject to the whims of" the vendor leaders. |
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