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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | October 2007 
Mexico City War Against Street Vendors May End in Police Sweep
 Patrick Harrington - Bloomberg
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 |  | I'm a street vendor because I have to be. The street doesn't belong to us but it does belong to hunger and necessity. |  | |
Mexico City police and as many as 20,000 street vendors who sell everything from chocolate to baby socks are poised for a showdown today over a mayoral order that the peddlers vacate a tourist-filled downtown square.
Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and local retailers say the vendors clog streets, scare tourists and discourage tax-paying merchants from opening shops in the city's central square, called the Zocalo, near the national palace. Ebrard has set a deadline of today for them to move and has threatened to send in the police. At the same time, the city is negotiating to relocate the peddlers.
The vendors, who spread their wares on sidewalk blankets and makeshift stalls near buildings adorned with Diego Rivera murals, say they're not leaving.
The crackdown marks the latest attempt to remove or control the sellers, whose roots predate the fall of Mexico City to Spanish conquerors in 1521. The clash is also emblematic of Mexico's challenge to transform informal merchants, who may represent as much as 50 percent of total retail activity, into tax-paying businesspeople.
"It won't work," says Juana Parada Flores as she lays out on the sidewalk an assortment of chocolate, peanuts and candy made from tamarind fruit. "They can move us temporarily, but they will never stop us from selling or from coming back."
The main Aztec markets, which were just blocks from where vendors now sell pirated software and music, drew as many as 60,000 people a day, says Michael E. Smith, a professor of anthropology at Arizona State University.
The Spanish encouraged the markets at first, because they ensured the flow of food and goods into the city, he said. But soon they began to try to remove the wandering, unorganized vendors.
Ready to Fight
As many as 10,000 street vendors blocked parts of Mexico City's main avenue yesterday as they marched to the city center in protest. Sellers riding on tractor-trailer trucks held signs reading "I'm a street vendor because I have to be" and "The street doesn't belong to us but it does belong to hunger and necessity."
The leader of the march, Alejandra Barrios, shouted an appeal to Ebrard. "You are a sensible man and we ask that you help us to maintain our place of work."
Meanwhile, a loudspeaker truck blared, "Marcelo, we are ready for a fight."
Messages left for Ebrard at his office weren't returned.
On a side street clogged with stalls brimming with undergarments and t-shirts, Hugo Cesar Aguilar, 22, pulls a metal pipe out from near his feet.
"We'll see what happens," he says. "If there is an agreement we will go quietly, if not there could be blows."
Parallel Economy
Business leaders in Mexico are skeptical that Ebrard's crackdown will last. Mayors before him have removed street vendors from tourist areas temporarily but have lacked the police manpower to keep them from coming back.
"We are aware that this is a recurring theme in the Mexican economy and that it will continue to be a recurring theme," said Arturo Mendicuti, vice president of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism for Mexico City.
The government must continue to fight the vendors, he said, because they foster a culture of stolen and pirated goods.
"We have two economies that exist in the same country without any coordination," he said. "We are living a double reality."
Eduardo Solorzano, chief executive officer of Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB, said in an Oct. 2 interview that his company is taking market share from the informal sellers.
"This helps us, as long as it's consistent," he said of the crackdown.
Bull Fighting
When police trucks approached a stoplight earlier this week on Pino Suarez street, young men began to whistle. In seconds, Parada, the candy seller, packed up her inventory, stacked it in an alley and covered it with a sheet.
She repeated the process every 10 minutes as the police passed by. It's a dance the vendors describe with the Spanish word for bullfighting, "torear," a reference to the constant taunting and dodging of police.
Parada says she once worked in a garment factory for six months. She makes more, and can watch her six children, by selling snacks on the sidewalk, she says.
"If they relocate us to a place where we can't sell, we will just return to play hide and seek."
To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Harrington in Mexico City at Pharrington8@bloomberg.net |
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