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 Business News | August 2007 
Mexico City's Princess and the Paupers
 Marla Dickerson - LATimes
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| | Alejandra Barrios Richard, right, embraces a woman who sells clothing on Tacuba Street in Mexico City. Barrios leads a 5,000-strong association of sidewalk hawkers, many of whom occupy valuable real estate and are part of a thriving parallel economy. (Susana Gonzalez/LATimes) |
Mexico City Fight your way through parts of downtown Mexico City and you'll understand why Mayor Marcelo Ebrard wants to clean up this town. Street vendors selling tacos, bootleg CDs and cut-rate clothing have converted the symbolic heart of Mexico into a gigantic swap meet.
His administration plans to relocate thousands of these bootstrap merchants, who block traffic, impede pedestrians, strew trash and evade taxes. But standing in his way is a 63-year-old ex-con and great-grandmother who has her own agenda.
That would be Alejandra Barrios Richard, leader of the largest association of sidewalk hawkers in the capital's historic center. Her 5,000-strong army occupies some of the most valuable real estate in Mexico, hard-won territory that the scrappy Barrios won't relinquish easily.
Over the last 30 years, she has risen from humble fruit seller to one of the most powerful street bosses in the city, using a formidable combination of personal charm, savvy negotiating skills and bare-knuckle brawling.
Her members have staged marches and sit-ins to protest police crackdowns on their operations. They have clashed with other vendor groups over turf; in 2003, Barrios was charged with the shooting death of the husband of a rival leader as part of one such dispute. She spent more than two years in a notorious Mexico City lockup before being released for lack of evidence.
The episode only added to her legend. Mariachis serenaded her from outside the prison walls on her birthday. Children prayed for her liberation. Barrios steadfastly proclaimed her innocence, emerging from the slammer to jubilant followers who greeted her like a conquering hero.
"When she walks these streets, people address her as 'Seρora Alejandra,' " said Antonia Medina Espinoza, who sells gorditas and flautas in the city center. "They show respect."
Such loyalty infuriates business groups that say street hawkers are at the core of an underground economy that is swallowing entire industries in Mexico. It's estimated that, in the capital alone, as many as 500,000 ply their trade, providing a sales force for pirated music and movies, knockoff designer clothes and other fake goods.
The vendors undercut legitimate merchants and shortchange the government because they don't pay taxes, critics say. They degrade urban life by hijacking public spaces while enriching leaders such as Barrios, whose multimillion-dollar organization includes lawyers, accountants, even a publicist.
But Barrios has delivered for her followers, who pay "dues" to her to secure a piece of precious pavement. Her organization has built housing for vendors and offered them no-interest financing in a country where most would find it impossible to get a conventional mortgage. The group operates a low-cost preschool for members' children and provides occasional bonuses such as food baskets.
Above all, Barrios has carved out a space for poor people to earn a living in an economy that has proved incapable of creating enough jobs for its citizens.
"The government gives them nothing," Barrios said. "They have confidence in me. I defend them."
A Mexico City native and fourth-generation vendor, Barrios got her start as a child, peddling plastic tablecloths in her family's stall. She moved on to frying pans, fresh fruit and some shadier stuff known as fayuca - stolen goods or contraband merchandise smuggled into the country to avoid import duties.
Barrios' husband, Javier Sanchez Becera, said the couple got busted in 1982 with a truck full of smuggled stereo equipment and videocassettes brought from the United States. He said they both served nine months in prison in Monterrey, time Barrios used to earn her secundaria certificate, the equivalent of a ninth-grade diploma in the United States.
Jail is a familiar stop for Mexico's street vendors, many of whom have had run-ins with the law. Barrios said constant harassment and extortion by police led her to band together with a few dozen merchants in 1984 to defend themselves.
Barrios quickly emerged as leader of the Legitimate Civic and Commercial Assn., a transition that didn't surprise her husband, who has known her since they both were kids. He said the 5-foot-2-inch Barrios once made him stop the car so she could confront a man who was beating his wife on the street.
"She is brave," he said, shaking his head, laughing at the memory. "Tenacious."
But her political instincts and negotiating skills are what enabled her to prosper. A longtime member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party that ruled Mexico for 71 years until 2000, Barrios forged alliances with party officials that were beneficial for both sides, said Alfonso Hernandez, director of the Center for Tepito Studies and an expert on the capital's itinerant vendors.
He said the typical arrangement is that vendor leaders deliver votes and cash in exchange for public spaces for their members to operate without being hassled by authorities. With three dozen organizations and an estimated 12,000 hawkers operating in the historic center - a 1.25-square-mile area that encompasses the famed central square known as the Zocalo - competition is fierce.
Hernandez said Barrios, a handsome, charismatic woman, can more than hold her own.
"She knows how to give and how to get," he said.
Still, Barrios blames shifting political winds at City Hall for landing her in jail on the homicide rap. She said a rival vendor leader aligned with the Party of the Democratic Revolution, which now controls the city government, fingered Barrios for the shooting in an effort to move in on Barrios' territory.
"There are people who envy me," she said.
Small wonder. Barrios' members occupy some of the most heavily trafficked spaces in the city center. She said they paid 50 pesos a week - about $4.65 - to the organization for the privilege. Some vendors say they pay that much a day. Whatever the figure, Barrios denies speculation that she has become rich on the backs of the poor.
Although her eight children are involved in the business and have assumed many day-to-day responsibilities, Barrios says she still works six days a week and still lives in La Lagunilla, the rough neighborhood she grew up in near the city center.
She is particularly proud of the housing and education benefits that she has provided for members, a social safety net that some have likened to a parallel government. To date, the organization has built 199 apartments, with 38 more planned. Some vendors are paying installments as low as $46 a month to purchase their units, Sanchez said.
Guadalupe Rodriguez Flores, a 61-year-old widow, said the program was the only way she could have financed her small apartment. She said the $185 a month she pays is still a struggle on the little she earns selling headphones.
Things could soon get tougher. If the city government has its way, Rodriguez and thousands of other vendors in the historic center will be relocated by mid-October as part of a beautification effort. The plan is to get them off the streets and sidewalks and onto vacant properties in the district.
Such plans have been tried before, and failed when vendors gravitated back to their old spaces after sales plummeted in their new digs.
Barrios said she was open to dialogue with the mayor but wouldn't make any promises unless her merchants were guaranteed spots as good as the ones that they have now.
"If [the government] tries to give us sites that don't suit us I'm going to reject them," Barrios said. "I'm here fighting so that the people have work."
marla.dickerson@latimes.com |
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