Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City 9780804765114

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Informal Politics

Informal Politics Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City

John C. Cross

Stanford University Press Stanford, California 1998

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©1998 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America CIP data appear at the end of the book

Acknowledgments

A great many people helped make research on this book possible. Literally hundreds of people opened up their hearts and minds, hoping that others would understand the problems and frustrations they face in their everyday lives. It is not possible to list them all. However, I would like to at least mention those whose collaboration, insight, support and help were most important to making this research possible. First of all, I would like to thank David Lopez of the University of California, Los Angeles, for his support, understanding, and succinct critiques throughout the research process. In Mexico, institutional support was provided through ]annette Gongora and Jose Angel Pescador at the Universidad Pedag6gica de Mexico, through Cuauhtemoc Perez at the Universidad Aut6noma de Mexico, Xochimilco, and through Francisco Marmolejo at the Universidad de las Americas. Research assistance was provided during the main research phase by Carlos Melgar Auscensio and Monica Rosas. Later assistance was provided by Clara Camacho, Julio Portales, Sergio Ugalde, Luis Ernesto Lopez, Tania Martinez, Jose Luis Ferreyra, Sandra Rojas, Alfredo Alcantara, and Maria Esther Pifia. People who opened up their offices, associations, and homes to me were many, but those to whom I owe the most were Lie. Salvador Alcantara, Lie. Fernando Mirando Arrellano, Fernando Sanchez, Alejandra Barrios, Antonio Zapote, Magdalena Molina, Lie. Hector Rodriguez de Ia Vega, Alfonso Hernandez Hernandez,

vi

Acknowledgments

and Mauro Perez. I would like to make a special remembrance of the help of Celia Torres Cruz and Guillermina Rico, who passed away after my research was over. This research was supported by funds from a variety of sources. A Small Grant from the Program on Mexico at UCLA funded initial field work. The main research phase was conducted under a Fulbright-Hayes fellowship and a fellowship from the Organization of American States. Equipment and transportation expenses were provided by a Small Grant from the National Science Foundation. Follow-up research was provided by the American University in Cairo, where the book was finalized and prepared for publication, and the Ford Foundation. I would also like to thank the editorial team at Stanford University Press-John Feneron, Carol King, and Muriel Bell-for seeing some promise in this work and helping to bring it to fruition. Finally I would like to thank my family: Becky, John, and Alex, whose perseverance, love, and understanding during the many long days and nights of research and writing made everything possible. To these and many others I am indebted for permitting me to carry out the research contained in the following pages. The errors or failures of this book, however, are the sole responsibility of the author. J.C.C.

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction I.

Organizing the Poor: Informal Economic Actors and the State

IX

I

17

2. State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

40

3· The Mexican State: Cliques and Competition

61

4· The Commercial Role of Street Vending: Problems and Practices

84

5· Street Vendors and the State: Co-optation, Competition, and Resistance

120

6. The Legacy of Uruchurtu: Repression and Renewal

160

7· The Historical Center: Repression and Resistance

188

8. Conclusion: The Political Economy of Informality

228

Bibliography

253

Index

267

Figures and Tables

FIGURES

Employment in retailing by store size, I975-88 Estimated number of vendor stalls by category 3. New market and concentration vendors by sexenio,

88 I03

I954-88 4· Market stall construction phase of presidential term 5· Months overdue in mortgage payments 6. Average monthly sales before and after plaza project by

I65 I7I 2I7

gender and type of vendor 7· Problems identified by vendors (three choices) in new plazas 8. Problems mentioned by main area of concern 9· Loyalty to the PRI before and after plaza project: four criteria

2I7

I.

2.

220 220 22 I

TABLES I. 2.

Benefits and costs of formal and informal sectors State integration, visibility, and organization of informal economic actors

33

Abbreviations

Asamblea de Representantes del Distrito Federal: Assembly of Representatives of the Federal District Camara Nacional de Comercio: Local Chamber of CANACO Commerce Confederaci6n de Comerciantes y Organizaciones CCOP Populares: Confederation of Merchants and Popular Organizations Centro de Estudios Tepiteiios: CETEPI Confederaci6n Nacional de Campesinos: National CNC Confederation of Peasants (PRI) Confederaci6n Nacional de Organizaciones PopuCNOP lares: National Confederation of Popular Organizations (PRI) Coordinaci6n General de Abasto y Distribuci6n del COABASTO Distrito Federal: General Coordination of Supply and Distribution in the Federal District (DDF agency) CONCANACO Confederaci6n de Camaras Nacionales de Comercia: National Chamber of Commerce Central Revolucionario de Obreros Mexicanos: CROM Mexican Worker's Revolutionary Central (PRI) Confederaci6n de Trabajadores de Mexico: MexiCTM can Worker's Confederation (PRI)

ARDF

x Abbreviations DDF

EZLN

FOP FOP ILO INEGI

lSI MPI

PAN PPS PRD

PREALC

PRI

SECOFI

UNE

Departamento de Distrito Federal: Government of the Federal District (Cabinet level department of the federal government) Ejercito Zapatista para Ia Liberaci6n Nacional: Zapatista Army for National Liberation (Guerrilla group based in the south that showed itself in 1994) Federaci6n de Organizaciones Populares: Federation of Popular Organizations (PRI) Federaci6n de Organizaciones Populares: Federation of Popular Organizations (PRI) International Labor Office Instituto Nacional de Estadfstica, Geografia e Informatica: National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Information (Federal Government agency) Import Substitution Industrialization Movimiento Proletariado Internacional: International Proletarian Movement (Left-wing urban movement affiliated with radical labor unions and supportive of leftist rebel groups such as the EZLN) Partido de Acci6n Nacional: National Action Party (Right-wing party) Partido Popular Socialista: Popular Socialist Party (Left-wing party) Partido Revolucionario Democratico: Democratic Revolutionary Party (Left-wing party) Programa Regional de Empleo para America Latina y el Caribe: Regional Labor Program for Latin America and the Caribbean Partido Revolucionario Institucional: Institutional Revolutionary Party (Centrist governing/official party) Secretaria de Comercio y Finanzas: Secretariat of Commerce and Finances (Federal Government Department) New name of the CNOP adopted in 1990 (PRI)

Informal Politics

Introduction

I

FIRsT BEcAME interested in the informal economy while living in Mexico City from 1983 to 1984. Members of my wife's family were involved in street vending and craft work, and I had many acquaintances who also were involved in one way or another. At this time, in the economic crisis of the early 198o's, it was patently clear that the "formal" economy was far from efficient. Wages were low, work conditions were poor, and key goods were at times hard to come by. On the other hand, despite their difficulties and complaints, my friends who supplemented their income or worked full-time as petty shop keepers, street vendors, taxi drivers, and artisans or pursued one of the myriad of other informal activities that thrive in the Mexican economy seemed to be a part of something that not only helped keep the city and country going, but was also something more: It was their own. They were not only "surviving" in the face of the crisis; they had the pride that their survival was due to their own efforts, and not just due to hand-outs from the government or dependence upon an employer. While I little dreamed of continuing my studies further, I decided to use the informal economy as the subject for a master's thesis in political sociology because I was intrigued by the question whether individuals in this sector might represent new types of economic and political interest structures. But I found that the literature on informality largely overlooked these questions, given its primary focus on the economic aspects of informality. The term as

2

Introduction

originally coined by Keith Hart (1970; 1973) was used to describe the activity of petty entrepreneurs in Ghana who increased their earnings by investing their savings in multiple temporary businesses, although he also applied the term to much of the Ghanaian interurban transport and residential construction. Hart argued that these activities had been ignored as potential sources of development because they often existed outside the dominant image of "modern" development associated with large businesses working closely with state officials. But Hart's analysis also included much more: the same vitality that I had seen in Mexico City and the sense that these people were not only surviving individually-they were providing essential services for the country as a whole. However, from here the literature divided sharply into two camps. On the one hand were the policy-oriented ILO and PREALC studies (e.g., Sethuraman 1981; PREALC 1978), which saw the concept as a cheap way of creating employment through micro-business growth and self-employment opportunities if only structural inequalities that favored large business could be legislated away. On the other hand, the neo-Marxist literature rejoined with the same criticism it had leveled at marginality theory, arguing that the "entrepreneurs" in the informal sector were really "disguised workers" who were being exploited in a variety of ways by formal businesses and ultimately international capital (Alonso 1980; Birbeck 1978; Gerry 1978; Lopez-Garza 1985; Partes and Walton 1981). In general their argument was that conditions in this sector could not improve since it was locked into an exploitative relation with the "formal sector." However, I felt that both sides missed two vital issues. Both ignored Hart's enthusiastic discovery of human ingenuity in what he called the informal economy, preferring to refer to the activity as "refuge" occupations. Thus, people working in the informal economy were seen as passive economic subjects rather than economic actors-as those who had "lost out" in the struggle for "formal" jobs rather than as people attempting to win the struggle for a de-

Introduction

3

cent living. At the same time, while the concept of informality was defined loosely as activity not registered or at least unregulated by the state, very few articles (with some exceptions, such as Bromley 1978b; Whiteford 1974) dealt with specific issues of state regulation, even if partially. It seemed to me that this was a crucial failure, since it was often their ability to avoid regulations and the payment of taxes and fees that made people in the informal economy profitable, and this seemed to pose a political and moral dilemma: They were surviving largely because they were breaking the rules. Not only that, but it suggested a whole realm of political conflict as well as economic manipulation not only between the state and the informal economy, but between the informal economy and the formal economy. Hernando DeSoto's book, The Other Path (1989), in which he uses the informal economy to argue that the regulatory system itself is at fault, was a lightning rod in the field largely because, despite its faults, it was the first systematic attempt to discuss the role of state regulation in shaping the informal economy. He recognized that by defining the legal basis of "formality" the state de facto defined what activities would be "informal." Second, he argued that the state actually promoted informality by establishing "semiformal" administrative rules for many informal actors, such as the informal transport, commercial, and "real estate" sectors (informal taxis, street vendors, and land-invaders). Subsequently, the argument was extended by other authors, such as Castells and Partes (1989) and Fernandez-Kelly and Garcia (1989), who argued that economic informality was created in complex relationships among government regulation, semiregulation, and economic actors. Still, the recognition of the state's role did not lead to more than suggestions of the interests and political position of informal economic actors themselves. After all, if the state enforces taxes and regulations on certain economic actors (formal) but not on others (informal), the latter is in a sense being subsidized by the

4

Introduction

former, which should provoke some pressures for uniform enforcement. Furthermore, rationalization of the state's activities itself should lead to pressures for uniform enforcement. On the other hand, of course, informality may also benefit the government by reducing public pressure for jobs and economic benefits, and it may also benefit the formal economy-or at least segments of it-by providing cheaper inputs (including labor) and more efficient distribution outlets in the way that Marxists have argued. Finally, one must remember that the very "informality" of informal action leads to many questions of propriety which in themselves undermine the formal economic structure. If land can be invaded and defended, the right to property is threatened. If streets can be invaded by street vendors, the ability to control traffic flow, regulate commercial zoning, and administer urban services such as fire protection is compromised. Regulating incidental consequences of informal real estate, commerce and industry, such as urban planning (keeping parks and reserve areas available), public health inspections, and environmental contamination is almost impossible. Thus, informality often involves a shifting of costs between economic actors or from themselves to society as a whole in ways that either infringe upon or skirt the law because it is relatively more difficult for regulatory agencies to force them to pay their full costs. Often, given the bias in the legal system for the owners of formal rights in any form, informal economic activity implies the infringement of these formal "rights," undercutting the benefits of possession, and thus in some cases could redistribute access to resources from the wealthy to poorer economic actors. Thus, it is clear that a complex number of issues and potential interest groups are involved with the informal sector. Furthermore, if we assume that informal economic actors benefit from their informality, this assumption suggests they have the capacity to defend these benefits, either individually (through evasion or bribery) or collectively (through organized resistance). Yet, while political action by street vendors, land-invaders, and informal taxi operators has been mentioned in the literature, and much new work has

Introduction

5

been added in recent years, a full analysis of the political dynamics of informality was lacking. The object of this book is to help to fill this area. Consequently, it has to deal with a number of questions that have been only partially considered in the literature. Above all, it has to explain how it is possible for groups who are generally considered to be politically marginal, such as street vendors, to influence state actions in the face of possible opposition from sectors of the formal economy and the state itself. One question, of course, is whether such activism is really necessary. Generally the literature argues that informal economic activity is allowed by the state for its own reasons-such as promoting social stability through the generation of "employment," or "co-opting" such groups by tying their informal benefits to support for the governing regime, or lowering workers' demands and costs for the formal, capitalist, sector. While these interests on the part of the state are certainly a factor, as are the pressures of groups within the formal sector itself, I argue that they cannot suffice to explain the growth of informality in the modern world. Indeed, as I noted above, the key issue here is that the state and formal economic actors may have internally contradictory interests. The question thus becomes: What role, if any, do informal economic actors themselves play in the resolution of these contradictory interests? This book is thus part of a broader argument that it is necessary to take into account the individual and collective strategies of even the most "powerless" groups of political actors in the analysis of political economy. In this regard, the book adds to the literature on social movements and micro-politics as well as the literature on the informal economy. It also attempts to use an example of a place and time in which informal resistance is possible-an example that may be replicated in other places and at other times to create the conditions under which the "powerless" can manipulate their access to opportunities for self-empowerment. In that regard, I hope it may provide guidance to people working within or on behalf of such groups.

6

Introduction

De Soto presented informal economic actiVIty as the "other path" of development and as a form of economic resistance to the state. In the first sense, he simply complemented the earlier work of the ILO. In the second sense, he recognized the latent conflict between informality and the state, but did not fully consider its political ramifications. This work, on the other hand, attempts to discover under what conditions "marginal" political actors can resist and challenge the state. Paradoxically, it argues that the structure of co-optative strategies on the part of the state is particularly important in this case. Such strategies are here argued to form the power base of street vendors, and possibly other informal economic actors as well. The concluding chapter broadens the analysis to suggest future avenues for research into political behavior and its relation to the state in other developing nations. Resistance does not have to mean direct opposition, but also subtle forms of evasion and manipulation that are the clue to the growth of the informal economy in the modern world. Research for this book began in 1989 and included two years of intensive field work between 1990 and 1993 with follow-up studies in the summers of 1994 and 199 5. As a result, the research was carried out in the context of over 6o years of one-party rule in Mexico during a period in which that rule was being subjected to increasing pressure both internally and externally. It was also a period in which neo-liberalism decisively gained the upper hand in the Mexican political system, only to be confronted with the reality of Mexico. Subsequently, opposition parties have won many significant electoral victories in Mexico, including the Mayoralty of Mexico City itself (the first time the position had been elected rather than appointed by the president), and a dominant position in the Federal House of Representatives. While the significance of these changes is still unclear, and more research is necessary to see to what extent it has affected the dynamics between the informal economy and the state, the underlying dynamics of street vendor politics have most likely been little affected by these changes. On the one hand, they open up more avenues for street vendors to exercise their pressure. On the other, they may create a greater dan-

Introduction

7

ger that street vendors will become embroiled in inter-party conflict. In either case, they will simply accentuate dynamics that were already embedded within the Mexican political system. In any case, the historical nature of this research will undoubtedly provide an invaluable baseline for future studies of this phenomenon, as well as a unique glimpse of political dynamics as viewed from the social base itself.

Why Street Vending? To carry out a complex political analysis of this nature, it was necessary for practical reasons to reduce the various types of activities included within the informal economy to one, and to focus on a single geographic area. Only in this way would it be possible to look at the issue from every possible angle, using various methodological tools. Obviously, this approach limits the study in a number of regards. Political behavior will be different for other types of informal economic activities that are less public or that are more individualistic in nature and, as is shown through the text, the political nature of informality is idluenced by the particular political and regulatory regime under which it operates. While some generalizable conclusions are possible, it is nevertheless essential that further research be carried out that takes a comparative approach to these issues, by comparing either different activities or different political/regulatory systems. Street vending was chosen as the object of study for several reasons. First, its visibility and its location in the public arena make it a lightning rod in terms of pressures against informal economic activity. Its presence provokes, in this case, the immediate paradox between the economic reality of the country and the "Modern Mexico" that state and cultural leaders would like to project. Beyond that, it causes (or is accused of causing) problems with urban transit, urban planning, urban infrastructure, complaints from neighbors and commercial business, public health threats, and a myriad of other potential problems that make it a focal point for pressures for its removal. In addition, vendors themselves compete

8

Introduction

over market zones, making them a prime source of complaints against the presence of other street markets. Thus, street vendors are in a constant state of potential or actual conflict over space in a way that puts them at the forefront of the debate over informality in modern urban settings. Second, street vending in Mexico City was severely repressed in the 19 so's and 196o's, providing a comparative framework between repressive and more permissive periods. During field work, the city again moved to ban street vending in the city center as part of an ambitious project of urban renewal and an attempt to formalize commercial activity in the area. The ban allowed me access to officials, leaders, and vendors as it was planned, carried out, and resisted. Furthermore, this later period of repression provides a further form of comparison with the first, in as much as it represents a distinctively neo-liberal reaction to informal economic activity and appears to have been at least partially spurred by pressures associated with the NAFTA agreement among Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Above all, street vending is a phenomenon that is well known and well documented by the media and by government agencies, but which has not been analyzed in the way that this study proposes. Thus, a wealth of material is available that has not been fully utilized. Finally, the author's prior acquaintance with people involved in this activity provided access to the individuals whose interests are central to this study-the vendors themselves-and eased access to leaders and ·officials.

A Note on Methodology and Sources The study uses primarily two methods of comparison: a historical comparison and a case comparison. For the first, newspaper articles and archival documents from a city-wide agency charged with regulating street vending provided the main sources of information. The analysis is weakened, however, because much of the archival information regarding street vending in the early part of

Introduction

9

the period appeared to have been destroyed or misplaced. What occurred during this period had to be largely pieced together out of present records, a limited amount of material in the Mexican national archives, newspaper accounts, and interviews with vendors and officials active at that time. For the case comparison and the analysis of the recent period of conflict in the historical center, field research involving observation and open interviewing techniques was much more important since the cases compared are mostly of conflicts that emerged during the field work. Validity was generally emphasized over reliability. No attempt was made, for example, to apply a standard questionnaire to a representative sample of vendors because such an attempt would have required substantial resources unavailable at the time, but more important, because the nature of the question concerned political processes that could be better investigated by dealing directly with those groups of vendors and officials most involved.' Data collected in other studies and by the city government have been cited for illustrative rather than analytical purposes because of the problems involved in those studies. In particular, it is suspected that government data contains a substantial bias created by the possibility that many vendors are reticent to give accurate information to officials. In addition, I spent substantial time in the initial stages of the research doing participant observation as an inexperienced and rather useless assistant selling fish in a neighborhood market. I was invited also to observe a number of patrols and sweep operations by inspectors charged with controlling street vendors. These experiences provided vital ethnomethodological insights into the everyday nature and problems of street vending and enforcement that helped to orient and explain the comparative analyses. The combination of methods (historical and comparative), sources (archival, interviews, field notes and surveys), and per1 I did carry out a survey in 1995 to test hypotheses about the effect of the 1993 market construction program on the economic and political situation of vendors, however. These results are reported in Chapter 7·

ro

Introduction

spectives (vendors, leaders, and officials) was designed to create greater validity and reliability, to allow cross-checking of findings and to allow cross-fertilization in the process of data analysisusing findings from one type of research to help inform my analysis of findings from another. This is commonly called "triangulation" by methodologists. But triangulation in terms of testing my research findings, while valuable in itself, was not my primary objective. Rather, I used this particular combination of methods primarily to draw together both the macro-sociological and microsociological aspects of street vending: to understand the phenomena as a combination of social, political, and economic factors on both the social and situational levels. I have emphasized the microlevel largely because this is where I found the greatest lack of past research into the specific political issues I was interested in, not because I am primarily a micro-sociologist. Indeed, a well-trained micro-sociologist would undoubtedly have done a better job in many respects. But I hope that such attempts to integrate these levels of analysis together will become a model for sociological research in future years.

Knowledge, Power, and Ethics of Participant Observation in Conflict Carrying out field research in situations of social conflict creates a number of unique ethical dilemmas-particularly when the researcher is dealing with individuals on opposing sides of the conflict. In a polarized political environment, an individual who moves back and forth between the opposing sides is often privy to information about one group that could prove decidedly helpful to another. By the same token, it may seem treasonable to those involved that one is spending so much time with the "opposition." Luckily, my integrity was never openly questioned, although it is clear that some individuals-particularly officials and leaders of some of the larger associations-were often careful about the information they provided.

Introduction

I I

It is widely agreed that participant observation of any sort has a number of effects on the behavior of subjects, although it is unclear exactly how this affects the social processes under investigation. The advantage of the participant observer is time: Ideally over time people become used to his or her presence and begin to act more "naturally." Such was clearly the case during this study. Still, a problem in initial approaches to a site was the tendency for vendors to assume that I was either an official or a reporter. On a number of occasions, when I followed street inspectors on operations to remove vendors, I was taken for a high-level official, since I did not participate directly in the "dirty work" of ordering the vendors to take down their stalls, and I was taking notes on what was going on. On these occasions, I would be approached by vendors asking if I was filing a report and wishing to express their own position to me. On other occasions, I was virtually forced to accept free food in the vague hope that I would "echarle una mana con las autoridades"-help out with the authorities. The belief that I was a reporter also helped to explain my presence with many vendors, since they were often eager to see their point of view expressed in the newspapers. While these "roles" provided one possible way to get vendors to open up to me, I felt compelled to dispel them immediately for several reasons. Obviously, it would have been unethical to allow them to continue with this illusion, and it would have been impractical also. Not only would the "lie" be discovered by the lack of any subsequent publications, the fact is that officials and reporters do not "hang out" with their subjects, and they do not ask the broad types of questions that I wanted to ask: The fictitious roles would have limited my ability to perform my work credibly. The biggest problem, however, was that such roles would place me in the position of being manipulated by subjects attempting to cast aspersions on their enemies and the best possible light on themselves. Even then, hope dies very slowly. One leader of a small group of vendors competing with a larger association over a street in the downtown area once greeted me on a follow-up visit by asking

12

Introduction

when my "book" was going to be published: "We need it to help us out." When I told her the process might take years, she soon lost interest in me. In other cases, I was told confidentially about bribery or other illegal activities carried out by various groups or officials that the informant was opposed to. In fact, getting information on both sides of most issues, I was often told many of the same things about my initial informant later on. Information such as this could not generally be verified, however, without risking damage to my relations with the various groups and in any case was largely irrelevant to my goal: I was interested in broad socialpolitical processes, not raking up muck about individual cases of corruption. Still, the process of charges and counter-charges in itself demonstrated the importance of information manipulation around this issue as well as patterns of alliances and conflicts between and within agencies and street vendor organizations. But most of the time, the initial expectation that I might be able to help their cause in one way or another was supplanted by friendship rather than disappointment. One advantage of having a participant observer hanging around is that you have someone to talk to who rarely (if ever) disagrees with you and who appears to be interested in almost anything you have to say: in other words, a perfect confidant. On the other hand, being privy to personal information or official or group plans did create the temptation to provide such information to people I considered particularly "deserving" of it. I never knowingly provided any information about one informant to another that was not public knowledge, however. For researchers who see themselves as advocates, this in itself may seem to be immoral, since I often held information that could have helped vendors or officials achieve their goals more rapidly. I did not do so for two reasons: First, obviously enough, to do so would have prevented me from seeing how they worked out their problems by themselves. In fact, the more I observed the process of conflict in action, the more I realized that vendors were quite capable of dealing with their own problems successfully. Second, I simply did

Introduction

13

not feel comfortable, as a foreigner and guest researcher in Mexico, making decisions about which groups or officials were "good" or "bad" and providing support to one side or the other.

Organization of the Chapters One complexity involved in dealing with an issue that crosses traditional academic boundaries is the need to work within the different literatures and theoretical orientations of each. In this case, we are faced with not only a broad and diverse literature on the informal economy, in which the very nature of informality is subject to question, but also a variety of issues from political sociology: the nature of the state, state-society relations, and social movement theory. In order to do justice to each field, it was necessary to divide this discussion into two chapters. As a result, Chapter I deals with the interest structure of street vendors as informal economic actors, while Chapter 2 deals with street vendors as political actors. It is argued they are able to affect the implementation of state policy, although not necessarily the making of state policy, because of two factors: First, street vendors are organized according to a rigid, authoritarian organizational model, which resolves many of the "free-rider" problems of social movements and which is promoted, paradoxically, by the very co-optative strategies of the state itself. This allows street vendor organizations to become ideal providers of the political and monetary support that state agents require, giving vendors leverage over those officials. Second, vendors are successful because of the weak integration of the state. That is, state agents in this case have low incentives to follow state policies consistently, and high incentives to cultivate relations with groups in civil society that can provide political and monetary support because of the dynamics of competition and individual opportunity structures within the Mexican state itself. Thus, I argue that an adequate understanding of the power of an interest group requires an understanding of the internal "integration" of the state as well as the specific relationship be-

14

Introduction

tween the state and the social group in question-specifically, how the state itself has "shaped" the organizational structure of the group. Chapter 3 outlines the specific characteristics of the state in Mexico. Specifically, it argues that recognizing the lack of separation between bureaucratic and political career paths and alliances and the role of "camarillas" or cliques is essential to understanding political processes because, for the individual bureaucrat, loyalty and service toward the clique (meaning the provision of political, and at times, monetary support) is usually more important than loyalty and service toward the abstract notion of the "state" or political party. Chapter 4 provides a general discussion of the nature and role of street vending in Mexico City in terms of its relation to other commercial forms, its internal diversity, and the problems and benefits that it poses for vendors, buyers, and others. Chapter 5 carries out a comparison between specific street vendor organizations as they engage in struggle with the state and other organizations. The argument here shows how state policies have strengthened street vendor organizations by promoting the rise of authoritarian forms of leadership within them. Furthermore, by comparing organizations affiliated with the official party with others affiliated with opposition parties, it argues that party affiliation, while an important variable, is less important today than the level of organizational resources and patrons that street vendors can muster. Chapters 6 and 7 outline and analyze the historical comparison between the strong repression of street vending in the 19 so's and 196o's, the later period of lax enforcement, and the present attempt to renew a limited form of repression by the neo-liberal Salinas regime. Chapter 6 shows that the initial period of repression helped to mold the present-day organization of street vendors into authoritarian associations affiliated with the ruling party, which then undergirded the subsequent re-emergence of street vending and their resistance to administrative control. Chapter 7, in analyzing the more recent period of limited repression, outlines the

Introduction

r5

complex interaction of state objectives and interest groups associated with this renewed shift in policy as well as the ability of powerful street vendor organizations to blunt and undermine the effectiveness of this new policy. It also argues that this shift was at least partially associated with the signing of the NAFTA agreement and the neo-liberal orientation of President Salinas de Gortari, who was in power during this period (1988-94). Chapter 8 lays out the conclusions of the book. Above all, it argues that "resistance" must be expanded to include the full range of tactics by "marginal" population groups, many of which are demonstrated by street vendors in Mexico City. These include the passive resistance of accepting state models of behavior and supporting specific state actors with access to political influence while resisting specific state policies that are seen as detrimental to their interests. Furthermore, it discusses the limits and generalizability of this case with reference to studies of informal economic activity in other areas of the world.

CHAPTER ONE

Organizing the Poor Informal Economic Actors and the State

C

ITY OFFICIALS CLAIM it is illegal to sell goods or services in the streets of Mexico City, a city that prides itself on being the oldest continuously inhabited capital in North America and the modern capital of one of the most important nations in Latin America. Yet hundreds of thousands of street vendors and peddlers have turned vast areas of the city into outdoor markets. With the possible exception of the president, whose official excursions through the city are preceded by the removal of vendors on his route, no resident or visitor to the largest city in the world can avoid bumping into vendors on a daily basis. Newspapers are filled with scandals concerning the vendors and with tirades against them by politicians, businessmen, and members of the cultural elite. Nevertheless, while city officials have made careers out of plans to rid the city of vendors or to limit their presence in certain areas, vendors have resisted efforts to remove them or even to limit their growth. Indeed, most vendors operate under tacit and irregular agreements with city officials, notwithstanding the official claims of illegality. This book deals with the nature of political conflict in what has come to be known as the "informal economy," as the state attempts to eliminate or to gain control over economic activity that has emerged in contravention to the state-supported "modern" economy. The major question to be answered is whether the inability of the state to gain control in Mexico City streets is due

r8

Organizing the Poor

solely to lack of interest on the part of the state or also to the ability of street vendors themselves to thwart state objectives. If the latter is true, it may point to a need to rethink the way political power and political processes in developing societies are theorized. While it is often seen in terms of traditional "survivals," street vending has not always been as prevalent in Mexico City as it is today. On Christmas eve 1958, a columnist for one of Mexico City's largest newspapers, Excelsior, wrote nostalgically about the beauty of past Christmas seasons when holiday markets had been set up in the city's Alameda. In those days, he remembered fondly, stalls had lined the broad walkways of the old park, and members of all social classes had rubbed shoulders, buying the rustic toys and local candy treats of surrounding rural areas. "Oh, what times those were of the unforgettable stalls of the Alameda!" exclaimed the author (Excelsior uf24/58:35A). In contrast, today there are almost 2oo,ooo permanently employed street vendors in Mexico's Federal District, the seat of the federal government also known as Mexico City, and far more during the Christmas season. They have successfully defied city orders to leave areas they have turned into huge bazaars, despite the use of riot police against them. Far from being viewed nostalgically, they have been called a "plague," blamed with blocking traffic, creating "eyesores" in areas that the city is trying to upgrade for tourism, and providing outlets for the black marketeering of goods subject to price controls, import quotas, or tariffs. They are the bane of the commercial bourgeoisie, who claim that they represent "disloyal competition" because they do not pay taxes, rent, or fringe benefits to their employees, and which has commissioned numerous studies to "prove" the amount of losses it and the government treasury incur because of them. At the same time, they create a tenacious counterbalance to the modern image that city officials wish to project of an urban center fast approaching the first world as "ultramodern office buildings; North American style commercial centers; boutiques; gigantic underground parking lots; crystal towers of more than 50 stories; wide green areas; luxurious condominium apartments and resi-

Organizing the Poor

19

dential areas, with all urban services, including golf courses, swimming pools and tennis courts, arise in different points in the city and surrounding municipalities" (Monge 1993a:ro). With more than $8 59 million new pesos (U.S. $2 7 5 million) invested in the Historical Center of the city alone in 1991 and 1992 (p. r 3) and billions more in the rest of the city, government officials hope to remodel the capital along "modern" lines. Modernity, they argue, is inconsistent with the continued presence of thousands of street vendors hawking everything from vegetables and tamales to expensive video systems. What caused this massive resurgence of street vending in an urban milieu where it had been thought for a decade to be a thing of the past? One frequent response is that the economic crisis that became obvious in Mexico in 1982, but which had already manifested itself in a constant decline in the minimum wage beginning in 1970 (Bortz 1986; Barkin 1990), spurred the unemployed to seek "refuge occupations" selling on the streets. Certainly, this answer would fit the dominant assumption within the informal economy and development literature that street vending is a refuge occupation that, like other informal economic activities, "becomes the adjustment variable for open unemployment" (Carbonetto Tortonessi r984:ro). However, this answer would not entirely explain the facts. While street vending grew rapidly during the decade following the economic crisis of 1982, its resurgence began long before the crisis became apparent. Nor were economic conditions better in the 195o's, which also started with an economic recession. A closer look at conditions in Mexico City in 19 58 shows a darker view than that portrayed by the above columnist. While he reflected nostalgically on the street markets of bygone years, he neglected to mention the ambulatory vendors of his own time who were harassed, beaten, fined, extorted, and jailed while their merchandise was confiscated. Pressures on the urban environment were also reflected in the slum conditions in the city center, where empty lots were turned into cardboard tenements and building courtyards were used as added rental space. Nevertheless, the

20

Organizing the Poor

amount of street vending was minuscule in 1958 compared to that of the present day, perhaps amounting to a few thousand vendors. Instead of asking why there are so many more street vendors today, a more appropriate question might be: Given the extent of poverty in Mexico City in the 195o's, why were there fewer then? One difference between r 9 58 and today is that the Mayor of the city in r 9 58, Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, appeared willing to expend an inordinate amount of resources against them. One of Uruchurtu's first acts of office was to ban street vending in the city center, a decree broadened to the entire city after a few weeks. The actual process of removing street vendors took years to accomplish, but Uruchurtu also strengthened the police units attached to the Department of Markets to increase repression against illegal street vendors, and carried out a massive construction program increasing the number of covered markets from 50 to r 50. The number of vendors in covered markets soared from fewer than ro,ooo to more than 65,000 (Pyle 1968}. When Uruchurtu left office, however, these policies were not continued. Indeed, newspaper reports several days after Uruchurtu's resignation already noted an increase in the number of illegal street vendors in the city. Administrative policy toward street vending became highly ambiguous, allowing more and more vendors to operate with or without official "tolerance" because of lax and erratic enforcement. By 1990, city authorities opened up the possibility of clarifying the legal status of street vending and set up a commission to write a new set of regulations for street vendors. The plans included the incorporation of street vendors into the small business tax system, a move that many vendors saw as tantamount to guaranteeing them a right to sell their wares in the public thoroughfares. A year later, however, the political balance shifted against street vending. The experience of the r 9 so's became a model for city officials again, and plans to remove vendors from the city center and even the entire city became once again the centerpiece of the day. The growth of street vending in Mexico City and the Mexican state's reaction to it parallel the growth of the so-called informal

Organizing the Poor

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economy on a world-wide basis, particularly in-but not limited to-the developing world. This economic sector, which includes street vending, is generally understood to include any economic activity that takes place outside the regulatory norms of the state, such as the evasion of tax codes, licensing procedures, labor regulations, and zoning ordinances, but which does not involve the provision of clearly illegal goods or services (such as drugs or prostitution). Typically carried out by micro-businesses overlooked by government agencies because of their small size, these economic activities have been hailed by some as the dawning of a new form of entrepreneurship and decried by others as a new form of exploitation as more and more work takes place outside the formal sector without the labor guarantees and collective bargaining protection workers have struggled to achieve. But only recently have scholars begun to focus on the political factors that surround informality. Why does the state tend to overlook such informality in some cases while attacking or repressing it in others? Are these differences due only to differences in the state's interest structures? Or are they due to differences in the ability of informal economic actors to evade or confront regulatory norms? In this case, has the Mexican state changed its policies toward street vendors to suit internal state needs, such as the need to spur employment? Or have street vendors themselves influenced the policy process-influence that has been for some reason far more successful in recent history than during the fifties and today? In political sociology, these positions fit into two broad theoretical models. Polity-Centered/Elite theory sees state or elite interests and motives as central in determining policies with respect to disadvantaged groups in society. Resource Mobilization theory argues that disadvantaged groups may be able to influence state actions if they can amass organizational and other resources that allow them to "capture" the state or specific state agencies. I further expand Resource Mobilization theory by arguing that the degree of state integration-the degree to which local officials that implement policies are structurally dependent upon the higherlevel officials that make such policy-allows small, dedicated

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Organizing the Poor

groups such as street vendors to influence the outcome of state policies by using their local power to frustrate their implementation. To restate the initial question in terms of these alternative hypotheses, we can ask: Has the lack of state enforcement of the policies against street vending been the product of internal interests, either within the state as a whole or within some of its agencies, that define complete enforcement as detrimental to broader state interests? Or have street vendors been able to pressure local state agents to allow them to sell on the streets despite an active interest within the state to stop them? A complete answer to this question, I argue, entails the possibility that both positions are correct, and that what we need is a better understanding of the interaction of state policies with grass-roots social movements and how they influence each other.

Street Vendors and Informality in Comparative Review Street vending, like other sectors of the informal economy in the developing world, has been the subject of intensive debates between interest groups both in civil society and within the state itself (Bromley 1978b; McGee 1973 ). Partly this is due to the perception that street vending is an unproductive activity that, according to some modernization theorists, drains national resources or otherwise gets in the way of development (Bairoch 1973; Geertz 1963; Jones 1968). Other arguments against street vending are noted above. However, important reasons for not taking decisive action also exist, on both political and economic planes. For example, McGee notes that Hong Kong officials were reticent to take decisive action against street vending in that colony because they feared a political backlash that could be opportunistically used by the Chinese government to attack the colonial authorities. The fact that alternative livelihoods would have to be found for street vendors is

Organizing the Poor

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also mentioned frequently by vendors and their allies as a reason for not taking actions against them. 1 During a period of intense economic restructuring, the presence of a large informal economy may allow the state a "cushion" against social dislocation caused when workers are forced out of industry and peasants off the land. In academia too, street vendors have been studied from a number of different perspectives. Until the 1970's, the dominant academic perspective viewed street vending as marginal or even contrary to the progressive elements of modern society. For example, Geertz (1963) has argued that key elements of what he called the "bazaar economy" mitigate against the development of a western style "firm-centered" economy. For example, the sliding price scale (haggling) that he saw as typical of bazaar settings focuses competition onto the relationship between the vendor and the buyer over the value of the goods involved, rather than between vendors themselves. This, he argued, leads traders to act speculatively and opportunistically, since "the aim is always to get as much as possible out of the deal immediately at hand. The (bazaar) trader is perpetually looking for a chance to make a smaller or larger killing, not attempting to build up a clientele or a steadily growing business" (p. 3 5 ). Thus, even though it employs huge numbers of individuals, "it has the disadvantage that it turns even the established businessman away from an interest in reducing costs and developing markets and toward petty speculation and short-run opportunism" (pp. 28-29). 2 1 Worker's rights is a key issue in Mexico where the constitution, written in the shadows of the chaotic Mexican Revolution of I9IO-I7, includes a clause guaranteeing the right to work and to engage in commercial activity. The clause has been used by vendors to justify their occupation before the Mexican Supreme Court. 2 While this observation may have been true in Geertz' study, haggling is not typically expected in Mexican street markets, although vendors may provide a small discount to encourage repeat business. Because heavy competition between vendors tends to push down the offering price, there is little room for negotiation, and most street vendors were highly sensitive to the need to build up a clientele. Only in tourist markets where the clientele is by nature transitory is haggling expected.

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Organizing the Poor

Even when it was not seen as a block to economic development, street vending was often seen as a refuge occupation for "marginal" populations that were barred from more lucrative employment. For example, Arizpe (1977) argued that Mazahua indian women who migrate to Mexico City resort to selling sweets and fruits on the street because they are highly exploited or discriminated against in other jobs. The assumption that street vending and other "nonregular" jobs were marginal to the developing "modern" sector of the economy began to be questioned in the 1970's. The concept of marginality was attacked from both sides: by those who felt that these activities were capable (with expert help) of growth in their own right and by neo-Marxists who felt that the concept of marginality hid superexploitation of these populations by the dominant capitalist system. Coining the term "informal economy," Hart (1970; 1973) argued that these activities, including street vending, represent entrepreneurial activities even though the individuals involved would not be classified as entrepreneurs by western definitions of the term. In contrast to Geertz, who claimed that the "bazaar economy" was antithetical to the development of entrepreneurship, Hart argued that "attempts to promote entrepreneurial activity have suffered from preconceived notions of what a 'businessman' is. We have seen that 'part-time entrepreneurs' may be just as important for national development as persons more easily identifiable as 'businessmen.' Planners who look primarily for entrepreneurial persons overlook those who are currently performing the entrepreneurial function" (1970:II5; original emphasis). The "informal economy" rapidly gained credence in the development literature, largely replacing the previous discussion of "marginality." But there was little agreement and much debate about the meaning of the term, and whether "informality" represented a potential solution to development or a symptom of economic stagnation. Rakowski (1994) identifies four major perspectives within this debate: The ILO-PREALC (structuralist) approach; the neo-Marxist/world systems approach; the De Soto le-

Organizing the Poor

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5

galist approach; and the micro-enterprise development approach. Applying the concept as a possible palliative for the lack of employment growth in the "modern" economic sector, the ILOPREALC approach focuses on informal economic activities as a potential source of employment growth in developing nations (Sethuraman 198r; PREALC 1978, r987a and b, 1988; Tokman 1978a and b). Viewing "informality" as a counterpoint to "modernity," it emphasises the negative aspects of informal businesses (small size, low-capital intensivity, low skill, low productivity, etc.) that should be addressed by specific programs designed to overcome them. Informality as a whole is seen as the result of structuralist economic factors: a dual-labor market in which access to the high-wage formal sector was blocked for substantial segments of the population, who thus turned to survival strategies in the informal sector. Primarily policy oriented, the objective is to promote state policies that would allow for growth of firms in this sector by eliminating "barriers" that disadvantaged them until macro-economic factors increased the demand for high-wage workers in the formal/modern sector. This view was criticized by the second approach, rooted in neoMarxist world-systems theory. Also structuralist in orientation, it argued that the informal economy represented on one hand a "reserve army of labor" and on the other a set of "disguised employees" of capitalist enterprises. Such enterprises could "superexploit" the nominally independent informal workers by subcontracting work to informal sweatshops (Lopez-Garza 198 5), using the cheap labor of dependent artisans or vendors (Alonso 1980; Birbeck 1978; Moser 1978}, or because their own employees benefit from low-cost informal services and goods, lowering their wage demands (Portes and Walton r98r}. Like the ILO-PREALC approach, it took a dual-labor market view and agreed that such occupations were "refuge" categories, thus leaving their occupants with little alternative but to be "superexploited." The third approach was put forward by De Soto (r989}, who focused on a legal definition of informality-defining it as economic activity that uses illegal means (the evasion of regulations)

26

Organizing the Poor

to produce or distribute legal products-to challenge many of the assumptions of the first two approaches. Arguing that the informal economy in Peru consisted of entrepreneurial responses to overregulation of business activities, he blamed the growth of the sector on high "costs of formality" such as expensive labor regulations and time-consuming bureaucratic requirements for formal businesses. De Soto concluded that informality simply consisted of entrepreneurial activity that avoided these costs by remaining hidden, or through "extra-legal" arrangements with city officials (in the case of street vendors, collective taxi operators, and land invaders) that allowed them to ply their trade, but without legalizing the activity itself. The small size and low-capital utilization-and thus the low productivity-of informal businesses was thus seen as a result of their irregular status. Since firms that grew in size were likely to become visible to regulators, informal entrepreneurs rationally decided to remain small, paying instead "costs of informality": lack of legal protection and guarantees, the loss of growth potential and size efficiencies, and "costs of evasion," such as the need to bribe officials or to stay relatively hidden. Believing that over-regulation simply favored large, heavily capitalized firms that could more easily afford to pay the costs of formality, DeSoto recommended the elimination of "unnecessary" regulations, thus allowing informal firms to expand to their optimal size. Nevertheless, while his approach is the most optimistic of the three perspectives so far described, De Soto neglected to consider the interests of employees within the informal sector or the possibility that many nominally independent informal "entrepreneurs" were in reality disguised employees of formal firms, such as home-workers in the garment industry, whose independence simply disguised their lack of labor guarantees. More recent in origin, the "micro-enterprise development approach" is practical rather than theoretical and focuses on the provision of training, small loans, and other technical assistance to "micro-enterprises" under the assumption that they are simply small firms constrained by the lack of access to these benefits.

Organizing the Poor

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Largely carried out by development agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), this view is based heavily on a combination of the ILO-PREALC and De Soto approaches, taking from the latter its optimistic assessment of the entrepreneurial nature of informal economic actors and from the former its belief in the need to provide assistance to individuals and groups within the sector to enable them to overcome the "barriers" to growth. Paradoxically, it also overlooks the constraints implied by each approach. For example, the ILO-PREALC assumption that many informal economic activities are survival strategies would imply that individual firm growth may be minimal even where training and credit are provided. On the other hand, the provision of microloans and training within the context of over-regulation would not provide sufficient conditions for individual entrepreneurs to make the transition to formality that would allow true growth in De Soto's model. Still, as Rakowski suggests, this approach allows NGOs to shift their self-definition from one of providing "charity" to one of "empowering" the poor to earn their own income, and thus serve their own internal needs in approaching donors for funds in the neo-liberal policy environment dominant for the last decade. Over time, there has been some rapprochement between these approaches. Castells and Portes (1989), for example, recognized that "informal economies of growth" were possible with governmental support and under appropriate conditions-a huge change from Portes and Walton's earlier work (1981), in which every transaction within the informal economy was seen as an example of superexploitation and a source of international accumulation of capital in the advanced capitalist economies. Still, neo-Marxists have remained wary of the optimistic assessments of the ILO-PREALC, De Soto, and micro-enterprise perspectives. Bromley suggested sarcastically that the ILO-PREALC approach fulfilled a policy purpose for those who wanted to "offer the possibility of 'helping the poor without any threat to the rich"' (1978a: 103 6), and in a later article credited the micro-enterprise approach for a plethora of international aid schemes using the

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Organizing the Poor

terminology of informality to justify small business enhancement (Bromley 1990). Others have noted that significant differences between various types of "informal" economic activity render the term ineffective or even deceptive. For example, Peattie (1987) argues that the concept's "fuzzy" definition hides many different types of activity, some of which, such as sweatshops and home-work relationships, may be highly exploitive, while others, such as independent artisans or vendors, may be entrepreneurial. A single policy toward the informal economy may therefore be inappropriate for some of these activities. For example, De Soto's argument that regulatory norms should be radically reduced may indeed spur the growth of entrepreneurs in the sector, but at the risk of increasing highly exploitative employer-employee relations within both the informal and formal sectors as workers are stripped of protective legislation. At the same time, the provision of credit to micro-entrepreneurs in the hope that they will grow and employ others may also increase the extent to which "those nearly at the bottom exploit those in an even more unfavorable position" (Pradhan 1989). Significant differences may arise in the same city between street vendors in different areas, selling different items, or subject to different regulatory statutes, as well as between vendors of different genders and ethnicities. Bromley (1978b) notes a difference between ice-cream and newspaper vendors who typically distribute the products of only one supplier and work on commission, and thus are better categorized as disguised employees of their suppliers, and other vendors who are able to pick from a number of suppliers. The latter may be far more independent, are less limited in their earnings (but also take greater risks) and could be considered truly entrepreneurial. Peattie (I 97 5) notes a sharp distinction between street vendors in working-class neighborhoods in Cali, Columbia, and those of the city center. The latter are partially regulated and must purchase permits and obtain police and health clearances, but were credited by officials with earning well above the minimum wage. Access was easier in the neighborhoods where vending was unregulated but earnings were substantially lower.

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McGee (1973) also notes that the debate over whether street vendors are "self-employed" or "disguised workers" ignores the fact that both types may exist side-by-side depending on their relations with suppliers. The assumption that informal economic activities universally represent "refuge" occupations has also been substantially questioned. PREALC's studies consistently find that the income of the self-employed in the informal sector compares favorably with that of formal sector workers, although income of informal employees is lower (Tokman 1989). McGee notes that street vending continued to grow in Hong Kong despite a labor shortage in the 196o's that prompted industrialists to push for a ban on vending to make more labor available. That vendors would turn down formal jobs was seen by colonial officials and industrialists as a sign of their laziness, but McGee found that vendors chose to sell simply because they could often earn far more as street vendors than they could as unskilled laborers.

Informal Sector Interest Structures To understand Informal Economic Actors as political actors, it is necessary to determine what their economic interests are and how these interests implicate one or another attitude toward the state. In general, the belief that informal economic activity is simply a "refuge" category for people desperate to work tends to assume that such people would have a politics of desperation that would lead them either to revolt or to be easily co-opted by political elites, and these two viewpoints alternated within the early marginality/informal economy literature (Sanyal 1991). But by looking at the legal (or illegal) status of informality one can determine far more specific interests. Thus the question of interests comes back to definition. Recognizing the diversity of situations within the informal economy, I would like to propose the following definition: Informal economic activity comprises those economic strategies that contravene laws regulating how business should be conducted, but not laws speci-

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Organizing the Poor

fying what business may be conducted. In other words, selling cocaine would be illegal even if taxes were paid on sales and income, and worker's rights were respected. But, while the furniture produced by a carpenter is not illegal in itself, by failing to report her tax obligations or to pay social benefits for employees, the carpenter is still operating in violation of the law. To distinguish these situations, the first is described as "illegality" while the second is defined as "informality," although in actual fact there may be some overlap between these categories. People producing or selling illegal goods generally operate informally, since there is little point in paying taxes and applying for the appropriate permits for a cocaine lab (although there may be exceptions to this general rule). On the other hand, the presence of a large informal economy may make some illegalities easier: street vendors, for example, often sell "pirated" cassette tapes or contraband goods that are illegal, but which make police action difficult at this level, particularly when the vendors are in any case operating without permits and thus tend to evade any type of authority. While this definition is legalistic, and is thus very similar to that stated by De Soto, I would like to point out that it is also very similar to that taken by the ILO-PREALC. The difference between these perspectives is not in their definition of informality as an activity: It is in their assumption about the causes of informality. The ILO-PREALC perspective views informality as a burden for the individual, who is informal primarily because he or she lacks the necessary capital or human capital to become formal. In other words, formality is assumed to be "better" than informality because it is legal and thus provides minimal protection (for employees) and freedom from harassment for the self-employed. Thus informality is "caused" by the inability of individuals to be formal. On the other hand, DeSoto argues that informality is "liberating" in one sense because it frees the individual from excessive burdens of state over-regulation, although he agrees that informality also carries a cost. Informality is a choice that individuals make in order to maximize their life chances. Thus, the cause of informality

Organizing the Poor

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is not the lack of resources but the incentive structure of formality and informality itself. Since my focus is on the political nature of informality and is less concerned with such economic causal issues, it is not important here which of these two approaches is correct. Each perspective accepts the basic assumptions of the other, although in a different causal order. But it is the ability of DeSoto's theory to take into account economic incentive structures that ultimately makes it more useful from a political economy perspective to determine the political objectives and interests that informal economic actors may have. Despite the variety of activities and statuses that exist within the informal economy, DeSoto's focus on the "costs of formality" helps us to understand how entrepreneurial activity may be structurally different between the formal and informal economies. While this focus ignores the plight of employees or "disguised workers" within the sector, it is highly relevant for informal economic actors who are genuinely self-employed, as I will argue (in Chapter 4) is the condition of most street vendors in Mexico City. In any case, while employees also have conflictive interests vis-avis their employers, they share the same interests of the employers vis-a-vis the state, since state policies that could shut down informal employers would also destroy their jobs. The central thesis of De Soto's argument is that entrepreneurs operate informally to escape high "costs of formalization" that tend to increase labor and access costs, such as work-safety regulations, social benefits, and permit procedures. PREALC estimates that 70 percent of all regulation-imposed costs in Latin America are labor related (1987b). But, once they are operating informally, workers become constrained by a set of "costs of informality." One way to help us think of this is to envision formality and informality as two different sets of benefit and cost packages from which individuals choose based upon the "mix" of capital and labor resources available to them. On the one hand, formal enterprises benefit from a legal system that protects their capital in-

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Organizing the Poor

vestment by limiting their risks as long as they stay within regulatory guidelines. To supplement these benefits, the state frequently provides subsidies to formal firms that are usually tied to capital investment. Subsidies frequently favor large firms as a way of promoting investment and thus spurring development, job creation, and expansion of the tax base. On the negative side, they pay the costs of abiding by regulatory norms that are primarily laborrelated, such as taxes, minimum wages, social benefits, safety, and environmental protection. On the other hand, entrepreneurs in the informal sector also obtain a form of indirect subsidy of their activity-an informal one that they appropriate extralegally because they do not pay the costs of formalization. Indeed, one way to view the informal economy as a whole is as a set of economic actors who are able to compete with larger businesses precisely because of this system of "informal subsidies" that parallels in a certain sense the formal subsidies available for much larger companies. This view helps us to understand the apparent duality of the formal/informal economic systems, and why there is often such a large gap between them. Fully "formal" companies tend to be large and capital-intensive not just to obtain sufficient economies of scale to justify the "costs of formality," but also because larger, capital-intensive firms can pay these costs more efficiently and can also attain the leverage necessary to attract and benefit from formal subsidies, which generally reward capital-investment (Lim 1992). On the other hand informal enterprises, as De Soto points out, have to remain small in order to escape regulatory controls and thus benefit from "informal subsidies." 3 Indeed, De Soto refers to this need to avoid regulation as the principal cause of the "costs of informality." As long as they are informal, such businesses are inhibited from growth, first because growth would at3 This view does not deny the presence of numerous and varied forms of connection between the formal and informal sector, as large companies can benefit from formal subsidies while at the same time "outsourcing" to informal workshops or using informal distribution channels to lower costs and, thereby, also benefit from informal subsidies.

Organizing the Poor

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TABLE I

Benefits and Costs of Formal and Informal Sectors Formal

Informal BENEFITS

Investment incentives (Generally focused on capital levels) Legal protection (Protects capital investment)

Savings on labor costs (insurance, pension, minimumwage, etc.) Savings on zoning costs (rent or purchase of commercial or industrial space) Savings on tax costs Savings on other costs (health, safety, environmental, etc.) COSTS

Higher labor costs Cost of zoning Taxes Health, safety, environmental regulations

Lack of formal incentives Danger of "discovery" (Lower efficiency of capital b/c small) Lack of legal protection (Higher investment risk/danger of harassment, etc.)

tract regulatory attention and second, because they forfeit the legal protection of formality and thus have higher capital risk. Both factors, it should be noted, raise the risks and lower the benefits of capital investment. Table I helps explain this duality. As this table shows, the incentive structure for "informality" is the inverse of the incentive structure for "formality." While formality rewards capital investment but increases the cost of labor, informality escapes the regulatory burden placed on labor costs but increases the risks associated with capital investment. Thus, entrepreneurs with substantial capital to invest will choose formality, while individuals who have relatively little capital but available labor (their own or that of family members, etc.) will choose informality. 4 4 The table also points to an important feature entirely ignored by De Soto: Some of the "savings" obtained by informal businesses may externalize costs in socially undesirable ways. Lack of health controls may allow food vendors to spread disease, while lack of environmental controls may lead to

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Organizing the Poor

But once a path is taken, it creates a particular set of "interests" on the part of the firm or individual. Formal firms have an economic incentive to reduce the costs of formality by reducing their exposure to regulatory costs and increasing their exposure to formal benefits. Politically, they have an incentive to pressure the state to reduce regulatory costs that they are least able to manipulate economically while increasing subsidies that relatively advantage them. Since formal firms are relatively advantaged by their capital intensivity and relatively disadvantaged in terms of labor costs, they will therefore attempt to increase this advantage by seeking further capital subsidies while decreasing their dependence on expensive labor. On the other hand, the costs that they are least able to control economically are sales and profit taxes, since these increase directly with their sales and profitability. These, then, become the focus of their direct political behavior vis-a-vis the state. On the other hand, informal firms have an incentive to minimize the costs of informality through reducing the costs of evasion and harassment. But for the individual firm, these goals are contradictory. Evasion requires informal firms to avoid detection by staying small and "hidden," which creates the "cost" of preventing them from attracting clients and increasing capital and labor levels to an optimum. In other words, evasion costs are indirect opportunity costs. But harassment refers to the direct costs of being visible-once they are detected, informal businesses may be extorted, shut down, have capital confiscated, or individual owners or employees fined or imprisoned. Thus, to minimize evasion costs increases the risk of harassment costs, and vice-versa. As long as informal firms stay in this position-operating according to individual economic logic-they are trapped in a vicious circle. But there are several potential middle strategies that firms can take. Otherwise formal firms may "cheat" by escaping some aspects of control, through either hiding noncompliance or bribing very high levels of pollution, for example, if informal mechanics pour used oil into drains, and garbage collectors burn unrecyclable trash.

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officials. On the other hand, informal firms may begin to formalize in some respects while remaining informal in others. For example, a business owner may obtain a permit for her business, but remain outside the tax system, fail to follow labor regulations, and otherwise operate informally. The potential for this type of semiformality, which is still individualistic in nature, will depend to a large extent on the degree of coordination between government agencies enforcing the different regulations as well as, again, the overall visibility of the firm. Size in this regard holds a double danger: Not only does it make the firm more visible to regulatory officials and therefore easier to sanction, it also increases the number of third parties (such as employees, neighbors, clients, or suppliers) who may use existing regulatory norms to reinforce their own claims upon the firm. But, as De Soto notes, semiformality can also mean that the government actively negotiates the implementation of regulatory norms without, however, changing the actual regulations. In Peru, De Soto pointed to land invasions, street vending, and "collective taxi" services as examples of this type of negotiation. In each case an administrative system was established that provided partial regulation even though the activities themselves were never legalized. What is clear in each of these cases-and not necessarily so in other types of activities within the informal economy-is that they involve organized groups. While De Soto implicitly recognizes this, he never explains or analyzes it. Most important, by operating collectively, informal economic actors acquire new interest structures that allow them to manipulate the zero-sum trade-off between evasion and harassment costs. What these activities share is a series of factors that orient them toward organization, although more strongly in some cases than in others. First, organization is necessary for internal regulation in the absence of legal norms. Land invaders must divide land into lots and establish a system for respecting the rights of each invader. Street vendors must at least tacitly recognize the "right" of others to specific locations as well as cooperate in building up

36

Organizing the Poor

their market zone. Organization is essential for collective-taxi drivers who have an urgent need to make sure that their "routes" are serviced regularly and without excessive competition between drivers. Second, organization often arises as a collective response to attacks on their interests by officials or other groups, given their high visibility in each case. Land invaders must be prepared for attempts to evict them. Street vendors may react collectively to attempts to remove them. Collective taxis have an urgent need to respond to state harassment, which would make the regular provision of service to their clients impossible. Third, organization is required to carry out the process of negotiation. Land invaders must persuade the state either to arrange for legal tenancy or at least to accept their "de-facto" occupation before they can risk investing in permanent buildings. Street vendors also benefit from stable market patterns that allow them to build up a clientele, and thus also prefer to obtain either legal or "de-facto" access to public space. Collective taxi operators also benefit from a permit structure that allows them to build up a customer base of commuters who can count on their transportation service. Indeed, organization usually evolves through these three levels, unless it is blocked by political factors such as complete repression or unwillingness to negotiate on the part of the state. By the same token, organization is also possible in other activities, such as garbage collection or even micro-industries, although it may follow other determinants. What organization allows at the second level is the potential collectively to resist and avoid regulatory control, but it is at the third stage that organization permits the ability to negotiate the process of regulation. By doing so, informal economic actors are therefore able to redetermine their cost structures-the costs of harassment can be minimized through political activism rather than simply through individual evasion strategies.

Organizing the Poor

37

This achievement is accompanied, however, by a new type of cost: Negotiation is a two-way business, and the state's open "tolerance" of regulatory evasion is usually predicated on control in certain areas. Again to return to De Soto, he notes that state regulators focused on controlling the fares charged by collective taxis while allowing the operators to benefit from other informal subsidies, such as the evasion of tax and safety regulations. But another area that De Soto skips over is political control: Often the price of informal subsidies in these circumstances is political loyalty to the current ruling party. This necessity is clear in many cases in Latin America, where organizations of informal economic actors are often allied specifically with one political party or another. These political activism costs, however, represent a type of cost that differs from the costs of evasion and harassment. While evasion and harassment make capital relatively more risky and less effective, political activism costs are primarily labor costs. Participation in a rally or making political contributions may represent a direct drop in income, but one that can be seen as a form of "rent" for the ability to operate visibly without fear of harassment. Clearly, as De Soto points out with regard to regulatory costs, if these or political costs become too high, informal economic actors will be compelled to retreat back into the informal economy altogether, back to the dilemma between the costs of evasion and of harassment. But where the opportunity exists, the ability to substitute political costs for harassment costs allows for a far greater ability to manipulate the cost and benefit structure of informal entrepreneurs. Above all, in a relatively stable business environment in which the informal operator is at least partially and temporarily free from harassment, capital investment becomes relatively beneficial. Thus, it allows land invaders (as noted above) to build permanent structures, street vendors to broaden their inventory, and collective taxi owners to invest in larger vehicles. But the need to protect this higher level of investment in itself creates even further interests in

38

Organizing the Poor

protecting and expanding their "semiformal" status, since to revert to complete evasion would imply in many cases a loss of their past investment.'

Conclusion In this chapter I have argued that the rapid growth of street vending in Mexico City is due to more than just economic factors. It is clear that both changes in policy at the state level and changes in the level and form of organization of vendors contributed to this growth. The main question then becomes: How and why did these changes occur? This question is all the more important because it reflects the growth of the informal economy on a worldwide level. While the literature on the informal economy remains "fuzzy" in terms of the practical and theoretical significance of informality, I have argued that the difference between formality and informality is not just one of size or capital-intensivity, but one of structural interests. While formal firms are relatively advantaged by the formal regulatory system, informal firms benefit from evading regulatory control in one form or another. But this places them in a minimalist dilemma-they cannot grow without attracting attention and raising their costs. Furthermore, certain types of informal economic activity, such as land-invaders, mini-van operators, and street vendors, are particularly prone to "discovery" because ( r) they must be in public 5 Street vendors have less risk in this regard than do land invaders and collective taxi operators, for whom investment is fixed in a building or a vehicle. The stability of collective taxi relations with the state is marked in Mexico City by the evolution of collective taxis over the last three decades: from sedans that could be easily converted and resold as family cars; to vans that would be more difficult, but not impossible, to convert; to large minibuses that would lose a substantial proportion of their value if the state decided to do away with collective taxi routes in the future. I would argue that collective taxi operators are willing to make this investment because they have become so vital to the transportation system of Mexico City's metropolitan area that the state cannot do away with them.

Organizing the Poor

39

space and visible in order to carry out their trade; (2) they require the cooperation of many individuals in order to form a successful "invasion," "route," or "market"; and (3) they are likely to be the source of complaints from third parties. In these cases, informal economic actors are much more likely to organize collectively in their attempt to manipulate the enforcement system and thus reduce the costs of informality (particularly the cost of harassment) while approximating some of the benefits of formality (such as comparative stability). In the process, they create a partial solution to the minimalist dilemma that they face as individuals. Thus, organization creates its own economic interest structure. The question remains: How is it possible for such politically "marginal" groups to organize effectively enough to challenge the state? And what are the features of the state that make it particularly vulnerable to such manipulation? Furthermore, why have these conditions varied over time and between different states? The following chapter will consider the question of "marginal" political activism from the standpoint of social movement theory and suggest ways in which the system of co-optation within the context of low state integration may facilitate these forms of collective action.

CHAPTER TWO

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

T

R E LA T 1 oN BETwEEN the state, regulatory agencies, and street vending (or informal activity in general) has not been extensively analyzed in the literature on economic informality, which has been largely dominated by economic issues. Where the state has been discussed, its role has generally been limited to supplying possible "solutions" to the problems of the informal economy. For example, Geertz (1963) saw a role for an enlightened, western-educated state in managing the transition from the "bazaar economy" to a western-style "firm-centered economy." The ILO saw a role for the state in removing "market imperfections" and "resource constraints" that held back development in the informal economy (Sethuraman 1981) and has sponsored a series of studies and projects with the objective of encouraging policy changes to spur growth in the micro-business sector. NeoMarxists argue that the state sanctioned the growth of the "informal sector" to benefit national and multinational capital at the expense of the workers in the informal sector. DeSoto (1989) saw the state, on the other hand, as a cause of informality because of its inept over-regulation of the economy. In sum, each of these perspectives follows what Quadagno (1992) calls "polity-centered" theories of state action in which theoretical predominance is given to the policymaking process to which informal economic actors merely respond. For example, while De Soto mentions intensive political behavior within each of HE

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

41

the three informal activities that he studies, he never actually studies this behavior. Tokman also notes in passing, "Those in the informal sector, considered both as prospective voters and as a group increasingly able to exert pressure, constitute a political force that cannot be disregarded" (1989:1068). Still, the central focus in these analyses is on the policy decision-making process, and the specific role of informal economic actors as political actors is largely disregarded. 1 Yet, in analyses of the role of the state in street vending and other "informal" economic activity, this role has often been found to be far more complex than these perspectives would predict. Whiteford (197 4), for example, found in Columbia that, "rather than helping them, the poor feel that many government regulations discriminate against them," such as expensive health and police certificates to get a formal job. At the same time, uncoordinated attempts by state agencies to enforce laws ostensibly protecting workers may backfire because they enforce some legal provisions while ignoring others. 2 McGee (1973) noted that seven different agencies in Hong Kong were responsible for different aspects of the regulation of street vending in that colony during the sixties. Compounding the confusion, only some of the agencies were controlled by the local municipal authority, while others were controlled by different branches of the colonial authority structure. As a result, he argues, "There are often conflicts among these various departments with respect to both hawker policy and its implementation" (p. 24). The lack of coordination and resources among state agencies is credited by Fernandez-Kelly and Garcia (1989) with not only a!1 Writing in the context of Sub-saharan Africa, Roitman also criticises perspectives that "continue to define African societies as a function of the state" and thus "fail to account for the plurality of markets and power bases existing in the African context" (I994:672-73). 2 Whiteford cites the case of one young girl who could no longer afford to work in a candy factory after her employer was required to provide health insurance for her, but not to pay a legal wage. Since part of the premium by law came out of her salary, she found her income-only one-third of the minimum wage for a 56-hour work week-eaten up by the payments.

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State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

lowing "informality" to exist, but also with causing its expansion. They argue that, instead of the previously dominant perception that "deviation from or conformity to federal and state legislation basically determines the formal or informal status of industrial establishments and their labor force" (p. 250), the criteria for informality were far more porous and tended to shift over time. In particular, they identified three major factors that influenced the nature and size of informality at a given time and place: 1. The type of legislation and legislative changes formulated over time at the federal and state level, including legislative response to constituencies in different positions of political and economic strength 2. The capabilities for enforcement in different locations 3. The actions and policies of agencies with varying, and often contradictory, mandates. (p. 251)

Each of these factors represents a different level at which regulatory "effects" on economic activity could be determined. While legislation may determine the nominal cost of operating a business legally or of violating those operating norms, actual costs will be determined in a complex relationship between legislated norms and sanctions and the capacity and willingness of local agencies to commit resources to the enforcement of those costs. These arguments question the logic of a single state actor in explaining the implementation of policy decisions taken by state leaders. Instead, they posit a theory of state agencies as actors within the state itself, often competing for political importance, policy mandates, and the resources that each allows. But they overlook two further factors that may affect the relationship between the state and the informal economy: the role of state officials in "turning a blind eye" to informality and the role of informal economic actors themselves in applying pressure on the state to reduce enforcement levels. The relationship between the state and informal economic activity is even more problematic when the nature of "semiformality" is considered. While informality was originally posited by Hart as a "clandestine" activity taking place outside the regulatory control

State Integration and "Infonnal" Social Movements

43

of the state, it has become clear that the state is not only aware of much of this activity, but frequently recognizes it and allows it to exist under a system of "extralegal" norms that "has emerged from a conflictive and contradictory process of negotiation with the state and of regulation by this same [state]" (Escobar Latapi 1990:27).

What needs to be explained, then, is this "conflictive and contradictory process of negotiation" between the state and informal economic actors and the role that each plays within it. Why is the state not strong enough, or willing enough, simply to enforce formal regulations on the books in their full force? What power can informal economic actors such as street vendors have that could force the state to enter into negotiations over the application of the law?

Corruption, Collusion, and State Integration At the same time, a growing body of literature has brought into question the relationship between state policies, whether of the state or of its various agencies, and the implementation of these policies by local state officials, who will be referred to as "state agents" in the following discussion. This literature takes into account the individual interests of state agents, which may not necessarily be identical to the interests of the state or state agencies. One scholar to notice this difference between policymaking and policy implementation, particularly in the developing world, noted: Students of politics in the new states of Asia and Africa ... have been struck by the relative weakness both of the interest structures that might organize demands and of the institutionalized channels through which such demands, once organized, might be communicated to the political decision makers. The open clash of organized interests, so common in the west, is often conspicuously absent during the formulation of policy and legislation in these nations. To conclude from this fact, however, that the public has little or no effect on the eventual "output" of government would be completely unwarranted. Between

44

State Integration and "Infonnal" Social Movements the passage of legislation and its actual implementation lies an entirely different political arena that, in spite of its informality and particularism, has great effect on the execution of policy. (Scott 1972:23)

In particular, he argued, while western authors focus on the policymaking process rather than the implementation of policy, "influence at the enforcement stage often takes the form of 'corruption' and has seldom been analyzed as the alternative means of interest articulation which in fact it is" {p. 24). While corruption is often taken to mean the exchange of monetary bribes for political favors, even a definition relying upon legal norms has much broader significance. A classical definition includes: "behavior which deviates from the formal duties of a public role (elective or appointive) because of private-regarding (personal, close family, private clique) wealth or status gains: or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private regarding influence" (Nye r967:4r6). In an analysis of determinants of corruption in state fiscal bureaucracies, Kiser and Toug (1992) argue that taking corruption into account challenges the basis of the debate regarding the nature of state autonomy that has raged in political sociology since it changes the focus from the autonomy of policy-makers to the autonomy of policy-implementers. While their analysis deals with corruption in the application of tax policies, it can also be extended to situations in which regulatory enforcement officials may relax the implementation of regulatory norms in exchange for benefits that can be extorted from or negotiated with those who wish to avoid paying regulatory costs, such as informal economic actors. In this context it provides a fundamental theoretical framework for the understanding of factors that determine the level of state integration: the degree to 'which the interests of state agents are integrated into the policy objectives of the state. Starting from a basic assumption about the nature of complex states, they argue: Rulers cannot rule alone; they must delegate authority to state officials. Even rulers with high autonomy (the ability to make decisions about state policies independently) may have little power (the ability to carry out the chosen policy) if they cannot control the actions of

State Integration and "Infonnal" Social Movements

45

their agents. Officials' corruption can make even the most autonomous ruler powerless. The ability of rulers to control state officials provides the key to understanding the conditions under which rulers will be able to translate their autonomy into power. (p. 301)

Once power has been delegated, a dichotomy of interests may emerge between the "principal," who delegates power, and the agents who carry it out. Taking it as axiomatic that agents will follow their own interests over that of the principal, they argue that, "The goal of the (ruler) is to create a situation in which the maximizing behavior of the agent conforms to the objectives of the (ruler) ... by developing mechanisms to monitor and sanction the agent's actions, at as low a cost as possible" (p. 302). Kiser and Toug identify three main determinants of corruption. First, they argue that agent recruitment and task structure affect the level of corruption by determining the level of control over agents that the state ruler enjoys. Where the state is able to recruit agents on its own terms-such as some definition of merit-it will be able to demand greater loyalty from its agents. The opposite case would exist where state agents must be recruited from a given social class or by other power figures or, by extension, are able to select other agents themselves on a personal basis. In addition, state rulers who can prevent agents from becoming tied to local power groups can thus fragment the autonomous power that any given agent might enjoy. The opposite case would obviously exist when state agents are allowed to create collusionary alliances with local power groups. Second, they argue that corruption increases when information is shared asymmetrically between agents and monitoring bodies within the state. When local officials have better knowledge about activities they are supposed to regulate than supervisory bodies that are supposed to monitor them, they will have a freer hand to bend regulations to suit their own interests. The alternative is for state rulers to invest heavily in mechanisms that would give them a clearer picture of the local conditions and thus know whether local officials are carrying out their mandate. Third, they point to positive and negative sanctions that state

46 State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

rulers can use to reward or punish agents. In terms of positive sanctions, they identify salary as the principal form in which state rulers can reward loyal officials, while removal from office is seen as the main, although not the most severe, form of negative sanction. No matter how beneficial or severe these sanctions are, however, "High salary levels can keep corruption low by making officials dependent upon rulers, but only if monitoring is good enough that rulers can detect and dismiss corrupt officials" (p. 305). Furthermore, salaries and the threat of dismissal must be compared in the context of realistic alternative sources of income that the agent enjoys. A high-paid official who can earn twice as much in another profession will be less loyal than a low-paid official with no alternative form of employment. At the same time, they argue, the power of taxpayers determines the form corruption takes. Taxpayers can follow four basic strategies depending upon the level of knowledge state officials have about them and the level of power state rulers wield over their agents. Where measurement of tax liability is low, taxpayers will simply hide their assets to avoid taxation. If measurement is high but control of officials is low, two options are possible: If taxpayers are powerful, they can create a system of collusion with officials, but when they are weak, officials will overtax, keeping the surplus for themselves and thus increasing the cost for taxpayers. Finally, if both measurement and control are high and the tax burden heavy, taxpayers may have no other alternative than to stage a tax revolt, which of course is the most costly alternative for all concerned. By viewing regulation as a form of indirect tax that the state imposes on businesses, 3 we can see how this model would apply to 3 That is, regulations are designed to create a direct social benefit by controlling the negative effects of business activity. Thus, regulatory cost can be seen as a type of tax in the sense that, first, it imposes a cost on the business and, second, that cost defrays costs the state would otherwise have to pay directly out of tax funds. For example, by imposing environmental controls on businesses, the state both controls the negative effects of pollution on society and defrays its own expenses in cleaning up pollution. By the same token, by

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

47

state integration vis-a-vis the informal economy. When an informal economic activity is "invisible," those within it will simply evade regulatory costs. If it is visible to local state agents, but these are poorly controlled by the state, state agents will use extortion if the informal economic actors are weak, but might collude with them if they are strong and can offer incentives for officials to do so. Finally, if there is no way to evade regulatory costs because the informal economy is too visible and state agents are too well controlled, the informal economy will shrink, which in the absence of alternative occupations, may lead to political radicalization. While Kiser and Toug emphasize internal state processes-the conflict between ruler interests and those of their agents-they treat the relations between the agents and groups in civil society as a constant. This means that the model ignores the demand for corruption from civil society, which in itself must logically affect the rational decision of state agents to corrupt state policies. If it is assumed, as it is in the above analysis, that state agents balance the benefits and risks of advancing their personal interests over those of the state, it makes sense that as the demand for corruption increases in civil society, state agents are able to extract a higher price for their corruption and therefore offset the risk that such corruption implies. For example, as the cost of regulations rises, demand will increase for state agents to overlook enforcement of these measures and the "price" of corruption will increase. If that price is seen by state agents as more lucrative than the mix of benefits and risks provided by state monitoring processes, officials will tend to accede to such demands for corruption. Thus, a modified model should take into account the balance between the risk of corruption-essentially the factors that Kiser and Toug enumerate-and the benefits of corruption. As positive and negative sanctions can be more forcefully and accurately applied, the risks of corruption will grow. On the other hand, to the extent that powerless individuals in civil society can be abused, or getting employers to pay for social benefits such as health insurance, the state defrays costs it otherwise might have to pay for a public health system.

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State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

powerful groups in civil society can offer substantial rewards to state agents for corrupting state policies, the benefits of corruption will grow. 4 This discussion allows us to state the basis of state integration more clearly. That is, state integration reflects the degree of integration among the interests of the state as a whole, state agencies, and state agents as individuals. When these three sets of interests are fully integrated-when individual state agents can meet their interests only by carrying out the interests of their agency and agencies can meet their interests only by carrying out the interests of the state, state integration would be at its highest level. However, as many authors have noted, state agencies often have com4 Besides the issue of corruption, implementation problems may also occur because of practical bureaucratic difficulties in the enforcement of policies themselves, particularly if policy guidelines are confusing or contradictory or resources for enforcement are limited. Even in the developed world researchers have noted severe pressures on state agents who implement policy decisions that arise from the contradictory requirements of policy demands and the lack of resources to carry them out, as well as the potential contradiction in some cases between "professional" ideologies and those envisioned by managers. There is a broad literature on the nuances of official work at the local or micro level that suggests the connection between "official policy" and "official practice" is problematic not merely because of nefarious or greedy officials, but because they need to spend available resources in ways that maximize their own security and promotion opportunities. For example, Lipsky (1980) argues that the need to husband resources available to local "street-level bureaucrats" produces a whole realm of local practices that substantially modify the way official policies are interpreted and carried out. By imposing artificial costs on clients, such as queuing, waiting, filling out myriad forms, answering nasty questions, and more subtle forms of intimidation, client willingness to continue insisting on the provision of services is diminished. Resources can then be funneled toward clients who show more promise of making the official look good. (Bittner 1967a and b; Emerson 1983 and 1988; Higgins 1985; Hunt 1985; Meehan 1986 and 1987; Richman 1983; Sudnow 1965 ). Thus, even when the state agent has no direct intention of "corrupting" policies for the benefit of outside parties, the very mechanisms by which the bureaucratic structure assigns sanctions (rewarding officials who handle many cases, even if they are easier, and punishing those who handle fewer, even when more difficult) tends to create conditions under which state agents may in fact seriously adulterate the intent of policies in order to "succeed" bureaucratically.

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

49

peting interests. More important to my argument, however, is the possibility raised by Kiser and Toug that the individual interests of state agents may be better met under certain circumstances by using their power to enforce or not enforce state policies to their personal advantage, either to increase their wealth or to build up their own power base within the state or outside it. According to the above discussion, three basic elements will determine the level of state integration. For clarity, I will state these in terms of conditions. That is, it is hypothesized that state actors will tend to alter the implementation of state policies substantially when the following conditions are met: I. State agents believe that their personal interests can be met more efficiently by modifying the implementation of state policy. That is, the benefits of corruption seem greater than the risks. 2. State policies are confusing and/or contradictory, perhaps because of an unresolved conflict within the policymaking apparatus of the state regarding the policy itself. 3· State agents enjoy substantial autonomy in implementing state policy because specialized knowledge required to determine how policy decisions are to be implemented is not shared by policymaking bodies, and thus the auditing of policy implementation is difficult or impossible.

"Strong state integration" thus occurs when state agents are best able to realize their personal goals by remaining loyal to state policy objectives, because of either high benefits of loyalty or high costs of disloyalty. "Weak state integration" occurs when state agents can best meet their personal goals by adulterating state policy in the process of implementation. The following discussion will expand on the different aspects of each condition and apply them to the specific case in explaining the general failure of state attempts to limit street vending in Mexico City. The first condition refers to the relative benefits that an individual state agent can perceive by remaining loyal to the intent of policymaking bodies or by corrupting the intent of those bodies by substantially modifying the implementation of state policy. The

so

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

"benefits of corruption" must be weighed by the state agent against the benefits of loyalty to the state and the risks that such corruption implies. Benefits are taken to mean social goods that over time are best calculated to guarantee the survival of the individual. This includes but may not be limited to income, security, and the potential for improvement of life chances. In bureaucratic terms: salary, tenure, and promotion. While corruption is normally assumed to involve illegal monetary exchanges (bribes), corruption of state policies may also include favoritism that involves political or social exchanges benefiting the individual state agent. For instance, a state bureaucrat may advance the interests of family members, friends, or colleagues in exchange for social or political support in other settings or within the state itself. For example, in 196o's Thailand, Scott (1972) noted that patron-client cliques within the state apparatus formed as individuals distributed positions below them to people who were expected to support the patron in internal political struggles within the civil and military administration. "The personal bond between patron and client may spring from a variety of sources such as family ties, the personal links between military or bureaucratic superiors and their subordinates, the affection of students for their teacher, childhood friendships or school ties, or perhaps more utilitarian motives of mutual profit or gain. Regardless of the origin of the bond, the patron is expected to protect his clients and share his good fortune with them. The client must in turn support his patron in every way possible" (p. 6o). As patrons become more powerful, they are able to place their clients in positions where they can form their own patron-client relations with subordinates, and thus create a vertical pyramid of relationships that may stretch from the top of the state structure to its bottom. A similar form of clique hierarchy operates within the Mexican state, often prompting state agents to exchange regulatory favoritism for groups outside the state, and particularly street vendors, in exchange for political support on behalf of the agent personally, or on behalf of patrons within the clique hierarchy.

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

5I

The second condition simply notes that in the face of confusing or contradictory policy guidelines, local state agents are relatively free to implement policy according to their own interests, very often in collusion with groups in civil society. The legally and morally ambiguous nature of street vending in Mexico City has allowed local officials and street vendor organizations to form alliances that have been largely successful in stymieing attempts to limit the phenomenon. However, when powerful state rulers emerge who interpret policy in a strong and unequivocal manner, it is more likely that officials will feel compelled to carry out that policy. The third condition simply echoes Kiser and Toug's emphasis on the ability of state rulers to monitor the rigor of local officials in carrying out state policy. As they note, this largely depends on the accuracy of information that state rulers or their monitoring agents have about the phenomenon under regulation. In Mexico City, high-level officials during the 19 so's and today have placed great emphasis on conducting "censuses" of street vendors in different areas of the city in order to have an accurate idea of the size and nature of the problem. Unfortunately, the very mobility of vendors means that data collection must be continuous, and thus costly, in order for such information to be useful over time. This problem was compounded in the 1970's because the responsibility for enforcing street vendor policy was divided among I 6 different administrative sectors called "delegations" (some of which were later subdivided), while no central office existed to coordinate or collect information from these subgovernmental offices.

Street Vendors as Political Actors In the previous section it was argued that low-state integration may lead to a situation in which state agents adulterate the implementation of policy to suit personal interests no longer integrated with those of the state. However, this may happen through either extortion or collusion, in which state agents work with interest groups in civil society. If it is to be argued that street ven-

52

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

dors have been able to pressure city officials to allow access to the street, what must be explained is the nature of their ability to create and manipulate collusionary relations with state agents. Street vendors have rarely been analyzed as political actors. While their economic marginality has been questioned by the notion of informality, their political marginality has not-even though informality requires by definition the evasion of legal requirements. As noted above, De Soto discusses the creation of an "extralegal" system for regulating street vendors in Peru, and even notes that street vendor leaders have been elected to the Lima city council in reaction to attempts to remove them from downtown areas, but he fails to analyze the role of vendors or other groups in establishing and maintaining this "extralegal" system and of mobilizing political power. McGee also notes the existence of street vendor organizations in Hong Kong, but offers no discussion of their degree of influence on colonial and city officials. Sanyal (I 99 I) presents one model by which to understand political mobilization within the informal economy, focusing on "axes of commonality," such as trade, gender, and proximity, that might form the basis of informal economic social movements. But he also argues that "axes of discord," such as competition, would undermine this ability. In particular, he argues that street vendors, because of their individualistic and competitive strategies, would be particularly difficult to organize effectively. Nevertheless, in Mexico City the existence of powerful street vendor organizations cannot be ignored. Newspapers call the various leaders of street vendors a "mafia" that has taken over control of the streets in collusion with corrupt city officials. Still, there has been little rigorous analysis of the relationship of these organizations with city officials. Two principal perspectives in social movement theory are relevant to this situation. On the one hand, elite theory holds that social movements arise primarily at the instigation of elite groups who often control them for their own purposes. Co-optation of social movement leaders is held to be the main strategy used by elites for these purposes. This view contrasts with resource mobili-

State Integration and "Informal" Social Movements

53

zation theory, which identifies the source of social movements within the organizational potential of civil society itself. Specifically, resource mobilization theory provides an explanation for how social movements emerge by "analyzing mobilization processes and ... emphasizing the role of existing organizations and networks in laying the groundwork for social movement formation" (Klandermans 1991:24). Social movements are seen as the result of the rational behavior of individuals within the context of the structure of organizational resources present in society. Klandermans identifies three key explanatory elements of social movements according to this theory as: (I) the relative costs and the level of organization among benefits of participation; (2) individuals in society; and (3) expectations of success. None of these elements is a simple variable in itself. For example, while an individual may stand to gain by the success of a social movement-that is, she would share in the "collective benefits" that the movement aspires to create-she may benefit whether or not she actually participates in the movement itself. In many cases, noninvolvement may seem to be the best option from a rational-choice perspective: Costs of involvement are eliminated but the benefits are available if the movement is successful. As Oberschall (1993) notes: Noncontributing beneficiaries of a collective good cannot be kept from its enjoyment and are referred to as "free riders." If all potential beneficiaries remain free riders, no collective action will ever be undertaken. How to overcome free rider tendencies and get people to join and contribute to a common cause is a principal obstacle to the formation of a social movement. People ride free because participation entails opportunity costs. That is, the one-hundred dollars one contributes to an organization could have been spent on an evening out, and the afternoon one spends at a rally or stuffing handbills into mailboxes could have been spent at the ball park. Though each in a group may have an interest in obtaining the collective goods, each also has an interest in letting others bear the costs. (p. 20)

However, the level of perceived need for the collective good by different individuals is rarely equal, and for some their need may

54

State Integration and "lnfonnal" Social Movements

be so overwhelming that they are willing to pay the costs even though its attainment may be unlikely (Oberschall 1980). Or the opportunities for success may be so great that they diminish the perceived level of costs of participation. Finally, "selective incentives" may exist that are available only to those who participate in the social movement, such as ideological and "solidarity" incentives. Oberschall notes that, "Survey research on participants in many and diverse social movements has shown that moral and ideological appeals and solidarity incentives do overcome free rider tendencies" ( r 9 9 3: 2I). Obershall's assumption is that the social movement's objective will be freely available to all. But what if social movement actors want to gain access to a good that will become available only to movement members themselves? In this case, free rider problems would be eliminated: essentially, by making the movement goal corporatist (meaning that individuals will receive the good only if they are incorporated into the group), participation in movement activities can be enforced by the group as a whole or by group leaders by denying or restricting access to nonparticipants. While New Social Movement theory, which began in Europe, appeared to challenge Resource Mobilization Theory, recent scholars admit the two theories are complementary rather than contradictory (Diani 1992; Klandermans 1991). New Social Movement theory tends to focus on the difference between so-called "new" social movements by students and marginal groups and the traditional focus of social movement theory: workers' and farmers' movements. Those "who have been marginalized by societal developments" and those "who, because of more general shifts in values and needs, have become particularly sensitive to problems resulting from modernization-particularly among the middle class and the young"-are most likely to form the basis of these new movements (Klandermans 1991), which also differ from old social movements in that they are more likely to be removed from the immediate workplace and less likely to be economically based. In Latin America, discussion of New Social Movements has focused on ecclesiastically based community movements, neighbor-

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hood associations, feminism, human rights, ecological associations, and particularly the rise of independent labor unions and self-help groups among the poor and unemployed that resist cooptation and control by the state (Evers 1985; Slater 1985; Mainwaring and Viola 1984). To some extent, the new perspective has overlapped with democratization and the spread of liberal ideas copied from Europe and the United States and has therefore led to some redefinition of the nature of such movements (Leclau 1985:27). Social movements can no longer be easily classified as "worker," "bourgeois," or "peasant" because they are no longer defined as uniquely economically based. Neither are they necessarily limited to groups that seek radical change in the social structure of society. In a critique of a paper by Brazilian author Ruth Cardoso (1983) in which she argues that new social movements have failed to challenge the state and the social structure of society, Vink (198 5) notes, "The underlying question in her paper is: Are the new urban social movements in confrontation with the State, and can they contribute to radical structural changes? But is this a right and fair question? Is Cardoso not asking too much of the subjects of these movements?" (p. 95). Direct confrontation with the state or the dominant economic system, in other words, is no longer seen as a defining factor in social movement theory. However, to the extent that the goals of a social movement frequently cannot be met without changes in state policies and practices, the question of the conditions under which social movements can affect state policies becomes paramount. Both resource mobilization theory and elite theory focus here on the "political opportunity structure" of the state. In a literature review, Tarrow (1988:429) relates this to "the degree of openness or closure of the structure (Eisinger 1973); the stability or instability of political alignments (Piven and Cloward 1977); the presence or absence of allies and support groups (Gamson 1975; Jenkins and Perrow 1977); divisions within the elite or its tolerance for protest (Jenkins and Perrow 1977); and the policymaking capacity of the

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government (Kirschelt 1986)." The debate among these perspectives, however, is on the relative importance of polity-centered factors (internal state interests or conflicts) and society-centered factors (interest group mobilization and pressure). For elite theorists, the conditions for political change exist primarily within the state itself. Piven and Cloward (1977) argue that conflicts within elite groups over control of the state allow social movements to emerge when disfavored elite groups appeal for support within the general population, thus giving legitimacy to participation and appearing to increase the possibility that the movement will be successful. Similarly, what Quadagno (1992) calls "polity-centered theory" emphasizes the effect of transformation within the state itself as an autonomous realm, and thus largely denies the potential that social movements can in themselves have a substantial effect on state policies. As she notes: "The potential for social change, however, lies within the state because state transformation is shaped by the balance of power internal to the state (Hooks 1990; Skocpol and Finegold 1982). In emphasizing the autonomy of the state from outside influences, polity-centered theorists imply that the policy agenda is defined by state officials, and politics is defined as a struggle over institutions and rules of process" (p. 618). Since social movements arise as a reaction to state policies, it is the state institutions themselves that promote social movements, and indeed, "To promote their goals, state actors may selectively spur challenges" from social movements (Amenta and Zylon 1991:263). Analysis of social movements and the state in Latin America and other areas of the developing world have focused almost exclusively on elite or polity-centered arguments because of the perceived weakness of civil society in the region. While state organizations are weakened because of their dependence upon external factors beyond their control (Hamilton 1982), by the same token they are led to greater control over society. Touraine (1987) notes:

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If in an industrialized nation ... social movements are the principal actors of social and political change, in nations defined more by their process of historical change and their development than by the participation in a social type, the State is the principal social actor because the specific role of the state is to maintain the continuity of the national society through its economic and social fields and before other states, friends or enemies. The State does not act only in its own sphere, it does not worry only about the national sovereignty and development; it intervenes, in the case of dependent societies, in civil society in such a way that there is not in reality a clear separation of the State and civil society. (p. 131; my translation)

This fusion of state and civil society, he argues, can lead to either "an integration of a corporatist style of sectoral interests within the state apparatus and the subordination of the social sectors to a political logic" or a segmentation of the state between different interest groups in society. Mexico is generally recognized as following the first path, with the incorporation of "popular" sectors such as workers, peasants, and other social groups through the ruling political party-the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-which has been inseparable from state power since the 193o's. But does this co-optation necessarily mean that co-opted groups lose all negotiation power with the state? Or could it be that the need of the state to co-opt such groups may itself give them negotiation power? Such an argument would have to state the conditions under which such negotiation could take place and under which social movements could get better "deals" with the state in exchange for their participation in co-optation mechanisms. By incorporating the variable of state integration, furthermore, it is possible to see how negotiation and even resistance may be possible at the level of policy implementation, even if co-optation requires political loyalty at higher levels. Indeed, the corporatist and authoritarian requirements of co-optation may even promote the ability of organizations to create collusionary linkages with state agents primarily responsible for, or who can exert pressure over, policy-implementation. In other words, the fact that subaltern groups have been co-opted by the state does not necessarily detract

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from their ability to manipulate collusionary alliances with state officials, precisely because, under conditions of low state integration, these acts occur at different levels within the state. Analysis has to be applied differently at each level. Street vendor associations that appear to be controlled by the state may, in this case, still be able to use their power effectively and independently despite, and to some degree precisely because of their co-opted status.

Conclusion In this chapter I have laid out a theoretical framework that can be used in the analysis of the politics of informality. Most important, I have presented an explanation of how politically and economically underprivileged groups can effectively influence the state apparatus through resource mobilization. However, it is necessary here to show how these arguments will relate to the Mexican case that will be discussed in the following chapters. To summarize, I have made the following arguments: I. That the "costs of informality" are defined by the implementation of regulatory norms and sanctions rather than the regulatory policy itself. 2. That implementation will be affected by the degree of state integration (i.e., the degree to which state officials are able to manipulate the implementation of policy), which is determined by:

a. The degree to which state agents can obtain their personal interests by colluding with outside interests as opposed to following internal directives. b. The degree to which internal directives are contradictory or confusing. c. The degree to which state agents enjoy autonomous implementation powers because of lack of information and monitoring facilities available to superiors. 3. The ability of informal economic actors to offer incentives to state agents that increase the effective demand for corruption or to pressure officials in other ways. This is predicated on:

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a. The ability of informal economic actors to organize effectively to represent their interests in reducing the costs of harassment. b. The ability of such organizations to overcome free rider problems by attaching benefits to movement participation. 4· The ability and desire of other interest groups (e.g., formal economic actors) to apply political pressure to enforce or relax implementation.

Mexico City provides a very strong case for this argument. As I will show in the next chapter, state integration is relatively low because of the system of tenure and promotion within the Mexican political system. Furthermore, in Chapters 6 and 7 I will show that situational factors temporarily raised the level of state integration during the periods of increased repression of street vending in the I9 so's and I96o's and in the 1990's. In Chapter 5 I will show that the organizational structure of the street vendors is provided by the very co-optative mechanisms of the Mexican state itself and is such that free rider problems can be eliminated by tying benefits to organizational membership. In terms of the political power of street vendors, it will be argued that organizational power is a crucial resource that nonelite groups can use to pressure the state even when direct votes are not at issue. Marches, strikes, protests, and other forms of public action designed to embarrass the state may be successful even when carried out by dedicated nonelite interest groups that do not possess a voting majority. On the other hand, campaign support or public support at rallies, etc., also can be an effective power mechanism of these same groups. This perspective becomes increasingly plausible when it is combined with the "state integration" or "agent corruption" argument presented above. It is not necessary to argue that a group or organization has sufficient power resources to force "the state" to pass laws in their favor. By obtaining the support of individual state agents in situations of low state integration, even relatively small groups can thwart the application of laws detrimental to

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their interests, although they are powerless to overturn the laws themselves. Furthermore, since struggle is largely over how and whether state policy is actually to be put into practice, this means that pressure is not generated against policymaking bodies-whether the ruling party or the government-but against policy implementors themselves. By separating these two levels out, we can see that resistance against policy implementation can be carried out even though the same resisters support policy makers. Chapter 6 will show how this model of organization and clientalism emerged as a result of direct state intervention during the repression of street vending in the 19 so's and 196o's. Chapter 7 will then discuss how a combination of changes in state interests associated with the neoliberal Salinas regime and NAFTA, as well as reactions to this by formal business associations, led to a renewed attempt at repression that has been resisted and at least partially undermined by the street vendor organizations.

CHAPTER THREE

The Mexican State Cliques and Competition

H

I s ToR I cALL Y, the Mexican State has been seen as a mild form of authoritarian state. Until the 1997 elections in which the governing party-the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-lost its absolute majority in the house of representatives (but not its control of the Senate or the Presidency), the PRI ruled Mexico as the unquestioned dominant party for over 6o years in a one-party state. 1 This meant that effectively the party and the state were intimately related in terms of their interests and personnel. Since the 1970's political reform had gradually allowed electoral victories for opposition parties, principally the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the rightist National Action Party (PAN). To date, the most significant opposition victory was won in 1997 when the PRD's candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, was elected mayor of Mexico City. This research was carried out during this period of transformation, at a time when the mayor of Mexico City was still appointed by the President and the PRI still had firm control of the city's po1The Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) was formed in 1929 to consolidate the power of ex-President Plutarco Elias Calles. It was reshaped as a corporatist party in 1938 under then President Lazaro Cardenas and renamed Partido Revolucionario Mexicana (PRM). It was given its present name, Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), in 1946 to denote the institutionalization of the ideals of the Mexican revolution.

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litical apparatus, but in which the power of opposition parties was becoming an increasingly important factor at the local level. Most of the discussion in this and subsequent chapters refers, then, to this stage in Mexican political history, but also reflects the historically dominant position of the PRI, as well as the portents of the political changes that were to come. The historical success of the PRI not only provoked many claims of fraud or vote manipulation on the part of opposition politicians, it also provoked a high level of interest in the Mexican regime on the part of scholars, whose main interest lay in the stability and distribution of power within the system. Specifically, neo-Marxist authors have argued that ultimately the regime is managed for the benefit of the capitalist classes. Elite theorists have tended to look at the power distribution within the regime, arguing that power is centralized in the hands of the president and subject to the competition of a set of "camarillas" or cliques within the state apparatus. In either case, the PRI itself is seen as little more than a political machine for guaranteeing the votes that legitimize the system as a whole. If that is the case, this work argues, the political machine has become a two-edged sword. In terms of the theoretical implications for the state, both types of theories tend to assume that the structure of the state and party in Mexico enables the state elite, at least until recently, easily to co-opt non-elite interest groups in society by incorporating them into the official party and limiting their demands and strategies. In many cases this is true. However, I will argue that street vendors have been able to obtain most of their demands as they stymie the intent of the local government to control them because of their unique location within the Mexican political structure and the weakness of state integration. This chapter shows why state integration is weak in Mexico and how interest groups such as street vendors, despite their relative lack of economic and social power, are able to exert an inordinate effect on policy implementation. Whether this is true (or could under appropriate conditions be

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true) for other social groups or other nations is suggested but cannot be tested in this book. 2

Distribution of Power Within the National Political Regime The Mexican constitution that came into effect in 1917 specifies a separation of powers and a series of checks and balances roughly equivalent to the American political system. Legislative and budgeting power is controlled by a two-house congress, the president's power is limited to execution of laws passed by these houses, and a supreme court judges the constitutionality of all laws. In actuality, while the PRI controlled both the presidency and the congress, the president's power over the legislative and judicial branches was virtually unquestioned. Gonzalez Casanova (1965) justified this contradiction in terms of the underdevelopment of Mexico itself, arguing that strong presidential power was necessary to guarantee stability in the face of political factionalism and economic instability. Smith (1979) argues that the role of the congress is limited to serving as a source of gratification in a huge patronage and cooptation network: "Seats in the congress supply substantial income, prestige, perquisites, and the opportunity to engage in other lucrative endeavors." When internal or opposition dissidents have been incorporated into its lower chamber, they can be effectively removed from their own political base and made to rely on the system for further advancement. Furthermore, Story (1986) argues that by allowing opposition parties to win seats in the lower house, the political system acquires the appearance of a legitimate democracy with little risk of real power loss. The Senate-until re2Nevertheless, previous research on land invaders and the author's observation of the informal transportation system in Mexico City suggest that very similar forms of political networking, conflict, and activism are involved in these informal activities.

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cently the exclusive domain of the PRI-serves, Smith argues, to incorporate all the different political factions of the PRI as well as a reward for senior statesmen and a consolation prize at times for unsuccessful presidential hopefuls. According to several scholars, the constitutional prohibition on the reelection of elected officials-limiting federal deputies to two nonconsecutive terms and the president and senators to a single term-has functioned to strengthen presidential control over the legislative branch of the government. Richmond (1965) argues: "As it works out in Mexico, while the provisions against reelection check the perpetual domination of elected positions by a small minority of leaders, by the same token the necessity to recruit new candidates facilitates the president's ultimate control of the selection of leaders on all levels of government ... for good or ill no network of power centers has built up around the long tenure of any office holders as a direct consequence of no re-election" (p. 6r). Furthermore, no re-election, far from allowing the election of amateur politicians with little contact with the political system, as many in the United States imagine would be the result of term limits, instead has promoted a different type of professional political career in which individuals follow a career path not in a single position nor even solely as elected officials, but rather circulate among elected positions, positions in the PRI itself (or other political parties), and positions in the administrative apparatus of the state. As Richmond notes in highly visual language: "The structure of the political elite in Mexico is like a floating oligarchy rather than an encrusted reef of leaders, each embedded in his particular niche. In Mexico, circulation of the elite, not circulation of elites, occurs. As the political tide changes, that is, when a new president (enters office), or as soon thereafter as their term of office expires, the leaders tend to interchange their places." According to this argument, this fact allows the president, who not only controls access to elected and party positions through his control of the PRI, but also controls access to administrative positions, effectively to con-

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trol the immediate political future of all members of the state apparatus, guaranteeing their loyalty to him.

Competition for Power Within the State Other scholars have argued that presidential power is only one form of power within the Mexican political structure. While agreeing that the president has a high degree of power, they note that few presidents are able to operate arbitrarily even within the state structure. To understand this argument it is necessary to know a little more in depth the history and role of the PRI within the government system. Officially, the PRI is divided into three "sectors": a labor sector made up of several labor unions that comprise almost all the organized labor in Mexico; a "campesino" sector that includes almost all the rural peasants in the nation; and a "popular" sector that includes middle-class state employees, land invaders, street vendors, market vendors, and almost everyone else. Very few individuals are members of the PRI directly, however. Individuals are incorporated into the PRI by their membership in unions or associations affiliated with the specific sector of the PRI related to their status. Since membership is enforced at the local level by requiring individuals to join PRI affiliated groups in order to gain access to jobs or other opportunities, analysts have usually argued that the vast majority of the PRI's membership is involuntary. For example, workers are often required to join labor unions affiliated with the PRI in order to obtain employment, and are therefore considered members of the "worker sector" of the party, regardless of their personal political orientation. The labor and campesino sectors of the PRI were formed during the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas from 1934 to 1940. During this period, often seen as the height of the post-revolutionary period, the PRI adopted its modern form as a "representative" of the lower classes of Mexico. Carrying out the revolutionary goal of land reform r 5 years after the revolution, Cardenas granted land to peasants through "ejidos," in which peasant members of the

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ejido were expected to work the land collectively or independently with land or its profits distributed equitably, at least in theory, by democratically elected committees. At the same time, Cardenas reversed the generalized repression toward the workers' movement and encouraged unionization aimed at improving their bargaining position with big business. As a result, two of the sectors of the PRI were formed-in effect, the worker and campesino movements were incorporated within the PRI and, therefore, the state itself. The "popular" sector was formed later, partly as a counterweight to the worker and campesino sectors (Smith 1979). Made up of all other groups, it includes everyone from the small landed class to state employees to neighborhood groups (including land invaders) and market and street vendors. However, while Smith notes that each sector picks about 20 percent of the congress, few scholars argue that the sectors control real power within the PRI. Rather, they are largely seen as mechanisms through which the state controls the population, not the other way around. Smith (1979) and Camp (1980, 1990) both argue that camarillas (or cliques) are a much more important aspect of Mexican political life. Instead of competition between the sectors or simple subservience to the president, Smith argues, "the political process entails an unceasing battle between factional camarillas, groups bound by loyalty to an individual leader (or galla, cock), who is expected to award patronage in return for their support" (1979=50).

Camarillas are groups of individuals bound together through friendship and trust, who support each other in the process of advancing through the state bureaucracy. Typically, there is a key individual who is the leader or "mentor" of the others in the group. Camp argues: As a politician moves horizontally or vertically in his career, his team moves with him. Thus, in the Mexican system, when one hires an individual, he hires his team as well. . . . .Mentors use the teams as a training ground for the formation and development of their own camarillas. That is, the most talented and ambitious members of his

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team are placed in other positions which the mentor locates. They, in turn, surround themselves with their own teams, and so the original team expands into multiple camarillas consisting of numerous teams and minicamarillas. The growth of the Mexican political camarilla, therefore, relies almost exclusively on an individualized patronage system of posts in the federal bureaucracy. (1990) While Smith argues that there appears to be a cultural basis for the camarilla-given its prominence not only in government but also in private industry-it also seems at first sight to be a direct result of the lack of job security within the federal government in Mexico. "No re-election" in the legislative and executive branches of government has its counterpart in the absence of civil service job guarantees in all but a few of the administrative branches of the government. Not only is access to government positions a problem for aspiring politicians or bureaucrats, but staying in the government is also a daunting problem that requires the support of powerful friends who are able to offer new jobs and positions when old jobs are eliminated or taken away. This is true not only for cabinet positions. To this degree Mexico would be no different from many western governments. However, even the lowest positions in the administrative hierarchy are often included within this camarilla system. In many cases, even clerical aides may be included within the "teams" that are transferred with their bosses from one position to another. The naming of the head of one office or agency to head another often has the result, therefore, that the first agency is gutted of experienced personnel, while in the second massive layoffs are announced to make room for the "team" of the new director. Indeed, the need to find positions for the many followers of diverse camarillas may itself make any civil service system inoperative-since it is constantly necessary to replace old personnel with trusted camarilla members whenever a new director takes office. In the same sense, the camarilla system is possibly one of the strongest forces behind the "no re-election" stance renewed by the PRI in the middle of each sexenio to prevent any sitting president

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from getting ideas about staying around for a second six-year term. By forcing a major change in electoral positions every three years (with the congressional elections) and in administrative positions every six years with the presidential succession (although minor changes occur far more frequently as cabinet portfolios are reshuffled and agencies reorganized), "no re-election" allows each camarilla a new opportunity to improve its position within the bureaucracy. More important, as Smith notes, camarillas are rarely entirely eliminated from the political scene, and studies of various presidential cabinets note the presence of members of various camarillas on each cabinet. Camp argues that by looking at the camarilla allegiance of the members of each cabinet the relative power of the president can be ascertained, depending upon the number of members of his own camarilla. For example, he notes that the cabinet of President Salinas, in office from 1988 to 1994, during the period of this research, had his own camarilla members only in the economic positions. The "political" positions were occupied by individuals who were outside his own camarilla but had powerful camarillas of their own, such as Carlos Hank Gonzalez, Jorge de la Vega Dominguez, and Manuel Bartlett (Secretary of Education at the time of Camp's article, but removed in 1992 to become the candidate for Governor of Puebla-possibly a polite way of getting rid of him as he dropped in power because of corruption charges). The camarillas show a complex side of Mexican politics that is ignored in arguments for "presidentialism." Indeed, it shows the limits to the power of the president himself, who is now seen as a negotiator between different power blocks within the state rather than as a temporary dictator. It also explains why the limit on presidential terms has been maintained-since it is difficult to believe that an all-powerful president would be content to retire from politics after only six years in office. In terms of everyday practice, as Richmond notes, members of the camarillas themselves may follow their leaders or be placed by them into party or state positions or into elected positions where

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they would represent their "faction" in legislative debates. Despite the fact that, as Smith and Camp both note, electoral positions are becoming less and less important and even counter-productive for those hoping to occupy the highest position in the national political structure-no president since 1970 has held an elected position before the presidency (Ward 1990)-such movement is still normal for members of their respective camarillas. And the positioning of key members of the various camarillas within the PRI still appears to be an important aspect of ensuring success of the camarillas themselves.

Who Rules? State Elite or Ruling Class? Another important feature of the Mexican political system is the relationship between the political elite and the business class. Neo-Marxists such as Hamilton (1982) have argued that the Mexican regime is marked by a high degree of autonomy of the political apparatus from the capitalist class, although both elite theorists and class theorists still maintain that business interests are generally well represented within the Mexican political system. Historically, as Camp and Smith note, political and business leaders tend to be recruited from different populations and along very different lines. At the same time, the political base of the PRI and the use of state funds to finance political campaigns gives the state regime a highly autonomous basis for self-selection, weakening the major area in which capitalist classes obtain control over political processes. Large industrial and commercial interests still give large sums to the PRI in elections/ but this is offset by contributions and activism from the PRI's organizational members and government funds. In addition, the PRI can arrange mass support for PRI candidates in elections, and government employees are of3When 25 of the richest individuals in Mexico pledged to give $25 million dollars each for the PRI's 1994 presidential campaign, a popular outcry forced President Salinas to make such huge contributions illegal and fire the PRI's national president responsible for the scheme (although the President had also been present when the pledges were announced).

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ten required to spend working and nonworking hours in activities that support PRI candidates-particularly since their supervisors may be candidates or related to them in the camarilla structure. 4 Indeed, state officials make much of their independence from capitalists, frequently lashing out at industrialists and commercialists. While to some extent the Salinas and Zedillo administrations were more closely aligned with business interests, this does not necessarily represent a break with the past. Several authors have noted a pendulum effect as the PRI itself swings between more populist presidents who emphasize nationalistic and antibusiness slogans, and more business-friendly presidents. Thus, the neoliberal policies of Salinas and Zedillo may simply represent an attempt by the PRI to undercut the support for more right-of-center parties such as the PAN. Whoever is president, as Hamilton argues, the state still requires capitalist investment, and therefore may be described as "relatively autonomous" from capitalist interests (that is, autonomous in day-to-day practice, but restrained by capitalist interests in policy decisions). Autonomy has diminished sharply as structural constraints of the development model followed by Mexico in the post-war era have led to crisis and an all-out attempt by the Salinas and Zedillo regimes to win back the confidence of national and international capital. This crisis, however, has its·roots not in an attack on capital by the state, but in the attempt of the state to promote industrial growth through Import Substitution Industrialization (lSI), a development approach in which high tariff barriers and selected subsidies promote the development of internal industries to produce high-value goods for the internal market as an alternative to 4 In one agency I worked in, I found detailed information produced during the 1988 campaign on street vendor organizations by electoral district, particularly in the district in which the agency's head was running at the time. In addition, substantial time was spent planning several election tours of street markets by the PRI's presidential candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari, as well as fund-raisers that street vendor leaders and functionaries were expected to attend.

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importation. The approach failed because of the lack of capacity of the Mexican economy to provide "backward linkages" for this industry-that is, producing the necessary capital goods and secondary inputs-meaning that these expensive requirements of development still had to be imported. (Gentleman 1984; Sirvent 1984). Meanwhile, the higher cost and generally lower quality of the goods produced in this protected industry made them noncompetitive with similar goods on the world market and meant that Mexican consumers had to pay more for lower quality goods to benefit a new class of rich Mexican industrialists. Imports rose to supply the growing lSI demand for parts and capital goods, and exports dropped as Mexican products became increasingly less competitive. The crisis manifested itself in a steady decline in salaries beginning in 1976 (Bortz 1986; Ramirez 1986). Although this decline was checked temporarily by the oil boom of the late 1970's, the oil bonanza turned into an inflation nightmare with nowhere for the extra income to be invested internally. Nevertheless, despite the economic crisis, one of the objectives of the lSI program had been achieved: A national capitalist class was created in Mexico. Thus, despite the high level of autonomy of the political elite from the Mexican capitalist class, the state has operated in a manner highly consistent with the interests of this class-perhaps even at the cost of the broader economic interests of the country as a whole. Several scholars of Mexican politics argue this discrepancy is due to the fact that the business classes are better organized and have greater access to actual government policymaking processes. Workers and other groups incorporated into the PRI must go through the highly ritualized process of petition-making (Cleaves 1987), but business groups are not affiliated with the PRI corporately. As Story (1986:7) argues, business leaders see independence as an advantage because they can "realize their objectives through other channels while escaping the rigors of party discipline." Their independence from the PRI gives them greater flexibility in negotiating with the government and thus a greater chance of success in attaining their aims. While these processes have yet to be ade-

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quately studied, there is wide-spread agreement that whether state action is conducted in negotiation with the private sector directly or indirectly, the interests of this sector certainly appear to carry heavy weight within all state administrations in the post war era, even though some have made more attempts than others to disguise this fact.

Legitimating the System: The Role of the PRJ Expressing the general academic consensus on the role of the PRJ, Ward ( r 990) states, "the PRJ's function to the state is to provide political and social control." He goes on to argue that the PRI has no control over the selection of candidates-simply stepping in after candidates are "unveiled"- and that high officials owe little loyalty to the PRJ or its constituents for their political careers: "Generally speaking, the higher the post the less likely that the individual has been directly dependent in the past upon PRJ patronage for a job." The role of the PRJ is limited to "stage managing" elections, and he argues that the PRJ's constituents get little in return for their efforts. Eckstein (1990) agrees that, despite the "democratic opening" in Mexico beginning in 1977 (in which opposition parties were guaranteed a quarter of the seats in the house of deputies and later changes democratizing local government in Mexico City), official channels for petitioning for social services in Mexico City were usually ineffective. At the same time, the PRI on the local level continued to operate like a political machine, offering supplies, meals, and even a tank of gas for residents of new housing built after the r 9 8 5 earthquake. Like Ward, Eckstein argues that the PRJ is trying to act like an intermediary for government services because of the need to regain political support lost during the 198o's crisis: "Government functionaries stressed that solicitations be made via the Party not, of course, because Party support was really necessary but rather because they sought thereby to strengthen PRJ's local standing" (1990:226).

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Whether this is actually new or not is subject to significant doubt. In interviews with street vendor leaders, this pattern of dealing with the PRI has been noticed going back to the 195o's. Likewise, Story notes that the PRI has historically been so involved in securing health, education, and other social services from the government that, "In fact, from the viewpoint of the local resident the distinction between the official party and the local government may be quite blurred-a confusion that Party officials do not discourage" (1986:83). More significantly, De Ia Pefia (1992) argues that the growing weakness of the PRI is exactly due to the fact that this ability of the PRI to appear to serve the community is breaking down: In Mexico, functionaries become visible to the public as inaugurators of beneficial works: schools, hospitals, markets, multifamily apartment complexes ... Among the popular classes many have memories of benefits effectively given to themselves or some close family ... that did not derive from the impersonal operation of a system but of the personalized benevolence of a member of the PRI, frequently reinforced by the shared membership in a corporative organization of the official party. (p. 243)

He notes that this system of person.ilized repartition of goods fell apart in the countryside in r 96 5 as fertile land for redistribution was used up and as credit and price limits strangled producers. In the cities, he claims, the deterioration in the 197o's made such a system more and more unstable for the "popular" classes as it became evident that "There is no PRiist patronage capable of solving the scarcity of stable jobs and the skyrocketing inflation." At the same time, the capacity of the PRI to manipulate election results has dwindled under increased national and international scrutiny and the decline of the rural population where the stuffing and stealing of ballot boxes is easier to accomplish. During the Lopez Portillo and De Ia Madrid Hurtado presidential regimes (1976-82 and 1982-88, respectively), an attempt was made to shift the justification of PRI rule from its ability to satisfy social and individual needs to one based on negotiation and elec-

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toral reform. 5 However, this attempt failed because of problems both with the economy and with widespread corruption, especially in the first of these regimes. In the Salinas regime, De la Pefia notes that, despite Salinas' pledge to run the nation differently, "Nevertheless, the Salinas campaign was orchestrated like all the PRI campaigns, on the basis of transports [of supporters to rallies], handkissing [of special interests] and anticipated distribution of prizes" (p. 247). And despite his attack on the power of several major unions-specifically PEMEX/ the powerful oil union that stood in the way of restructuring the Mexican oil industry-these unions have remained within the corporate structure of the PRI, as have peasants and the members of the popular sector. To compare the power of the PRI with the state in Mexico is to overlook the fact that the Party and the administration are intimately related within the political system. State officials are members of the PRI and loyalty to the Party is considered at least as important as loyalty to the state, if not more so. Even as higher officials pretend to separate the PRI and the state in the climate of "democratization" in Mexico, middle and lower officials recognize the importance of attachment to the PRI and frequently orient policy decisions toward groups affiliated with it. The PRI is cer5 Previously, the rule of the PRJ was justified on behalf of the masses even if this meant bending electoral rules. Gomez Castro discussed the 1940 campaign to succeed Cardenas in which an opposition candidate, Almazan, had been financially supported by "reactionary" forces in order to defeat Cardenas' appointed successor, Avila Camacho. He noted: "Of course (Cardenas) didn't allow it, even when the Almazanistas labeled him as the inventor of the 'prodigious urn.' Prodigious or not, in the first place the people were not educated electorally to choose the men that suited them, and in the second place, not even by mistake would they play with the power in the hands of strangers, of Mexicans who see no further than their eyes, for their own benefit"

(1963:73). 6 Petroleos de Mexico is the government oil monopoly. President Salinas wanted to modernize the oil industry, largely at the expense of workers, and needed to subordinate the powerful union before attempting to do what President Miguel de la Madrid had failed to do in the previous sexenio. The union leader, La Quina, also had openly supported an alternative presidential candidate within the PRJ, and so Salinas' motive may also have entailed political vengeance (Baker 1992).

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tainly a political machine. In this respect it is vital to the current regime as a way of procuring votes and-what is often even more important given that votes can often be fabricated-orchestrating legitimating support such as mass attendance at rallies. But like the state, the PRJ cannot be understood as a single entity: It represents the political aspirations not of a "regime" but of a myriad of individuals who, as we saw above, use alliances with others within the state and the Party in the constant struggle for advancement and survival.

The Political-Administrative Process Neither the state nor the PRJ is a monolithic entity in Mexico. This can be best seen in the practical, everyday operation of the administrative apparatus. As one official noted, although "at the highest levels" of the presidency there may be a determination to carry out a specific policy, the medium levels of governments will argue that there is a need to "negotiate" and "concert action," while at the community level-in this case the "Delegations" of Mexico City-"Nobody lifts a finger." Certainly, this is a stereotype, but it focuses on a question that merits serious consideration by theories of the state: Once a decision has been made, how do authorities impose that decision upon their subordinates? For the purposes of this work the most important effect of "no re-election" is that, because of the frequent change of elected officials, upwardly-mobile officials are constantly looking for ways to improve their position in the state-party elective structure. One way of doing this is to form part of the camarilla of an upwardly mobile superior and hope that he or she makes no mistakes, as Camp and Smith describe. Another is to foster a power base of one's own by patronizing a social cause for a specific group in exchange for vocal support at rallies, thus demonstrating one's ability at organizing. On a macro level, this technique has the effect of helping to incorporate potentially rebellious groups into the Party/State structure. It has the effect also of making the individual more important within his or her camarilla, since he or she can use

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the support base to promote others. Large camarillas include many of these types of "intermediaries," and all important politicians are able to turn to allies who can produce thousands of vocal citizens at rallies or public functions? This type of clientelism has been a continuous feature of the PRI. It received a huge burst when the current corporatist structure of the PRI was established by Cirdenas in the 193o's. But what is clientelism, and how does it work? Above all, how can it benefit client groups, such as street vendors, when these are traditionally seen as relatively powerless within the clientelist relationship? Clientelism is generally defined as a situation in which groups of citizens with little access to political power become organized in order to secure some government service. Typically, a leader emerges who is able to make contact with government officials. The leader becomes a middleman (or, in many cases, a middlewoman) by securing resources for members of his or her organization or community in exchange for support for government officials or policies. Thus, clientelism is usually seen as a mechanism by which the state controls popular movements by releasing a small amount of resources but keeping organizations in line politically by threatening to withhold resources necessary for the leader to keep his position. In a discussion of research on the subject, Brachet-Marquez (1992) defines clientelism: Clientelism refers to the structuring of political power through networks of informal dyadic relations that link individuals of unequal power in relationships of exchange. In clientelistic structures of au7An informant related the story of a rally she had attended for a leading politician and member of several presidential cabinets. After waiting all day for the dignitary to arrive and shouting their support for him, the members of the crowd, who had been bussed in from neighboring towns and some innercity slum areas, were each given a "torta" (sandwich) and soft drink. Many started complaining that they had been out in the sun all day "and all we get is the same old torta and soft drink?" and a new chant, now quite derogatory toward the dignitary, was taken up.

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thority, power is vested in the top individual (the boss, sovereign, or head of clan) who personally decides how to distribute resources according to personal preferences. When applied to Mexico, this perspective represents the state as a top-down pyramid headed by the chief of the executive branch, who directly or indirectly dispenses favors to those below through complex patron-client relations that link the top of the social structure to the base. Civil society, in contrast, is perceived as a fragmented set of vertical relationships inhibiting the formation of horizontal interest groupings, whether based on party or social class. (p. 94)

Cornelius' (1975) study of the political behavior of residents of squatter settlements in Mexico City provides an example of how this form of clientelism operates within the informal economy. Cornelius found that residents of squatter areas who wanted to legalize their occupancy of land and obtain public services such as paving, water, electricity, and schools, would organize in groups, go to the local city offices and usually also to PRI offices, and stage rallies, often espousing strong support for the PRI and key officials at the offices. Many times, success would come in a roundabout way. In one neighborhood, success came when a sympathetic official known to one of the residents became the mayor of the city. Cornelius concluded that by encouraging this type of reciprocity between "marginal" groups and key officials in the PRI, "Such policies as the regularization of squatter settlements through expropriation of the invaded land are designed to prepare for the day when an incumbent government might have to fall back on mass support to withstand a major economic crisis or a challenge from some dissident elite" (1975:229 ). Like Cornelius, most scholars see clientelism as a form of social control that the PRI/state apparatus uses to co-opt social movements and to further its own interests. Brachet-Marquez (1992) notes, "The inclusionary nature of Mexico's Regime, rather than opening up the power structure to the masses, has been interpreted as co-opting popular leaders and thereby depriving the grass roots of the capacity to voice grievances" (p. 98). Eckstein ( r 977) argues that the state has largely been able to control popular movements, controlling their forms of organiza-

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tion and their demands by incorporating them into the PRI. Coppedge (1993) also argues that the PRJ has perfected mechanisms for controlling "popular" organizations by distributing resources to favored leaders of those organizations when their leadership is threatened by dissident groups, or promoting new leaders when established leaders become too independent. He adds: If an organization started to move into opposition, the PRI or the government would divide it, co-opt one half, and repress the other. In the colonia [neighborhood], for example, if a leader embarrassed the government, he might simply find that government officials were no longer responsive to his petitions for the community and at the same time find that one of his clients was becoming increasingly critical of him for not "delivering the goods." Soon, his movement would be split between his supporters and those who sided with the critical client, and eventually the former client would replace him as the new cacique. Naturally, the new leader was being encouraged in his boldness by the PRI all along, and after winning some benefits for the community to consolidate his position, he would turn out to be no more effective than his predecessor. (p. 26 5)

Some authors have argued that recently popular movements have attempted to reject clientelism in light of political reforms carried out by the government that have opened up elective offices to opposition parties, particularly a system of representational apportionment of seats in the federal and state houses of representatives and a growing willingness to recognize opposition victories in municipal and state executive positions. Foweraker ( r 990 ), for example, notes: The novelty of the contemporary movements may be seen in their links with, and insertion into, the political system .... The 193o's were a period of corporatist construction, with popular movements collaborating in and even encouraging the spread of clientelistic and patrimonial lines of control; in recent years, by contrast, the ncoliberal projects of the PRI government appear committed to dismantling the corporatist centerpiece of the terrain, and popular movements throughout the country are challenging the traditional forms of clientelistic control. (p. 8)

Rubin (1990), while agreeing that post-r968 movements appear

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to be less willing to enter into alliances with national and official organizations, argues that these recent changes are themselves partly the product of the fact that corporatist "institutions and organizations were established only partially and unevenly," and goes on to argue: A focus on the corporatist state maintaining political control through mass organizations is only one of several ways to identify the political in Mexican life. The character and course of recent popular movement activity-and of the changes in Mexican politics-are better understood in light of ongoing regional, national, and sectoral conflicts over forms of economic development, political rule, and social life, rather than as the direct outcome of the establishment of new forms of political organization, or the onset of democratic electoral competition. (p. 249)

Whether recent democratizing changes in Mexico are sincere or simply for the sake of appearance is a subject of much debate among analysts of Mexico in recent years. Coppedge (I 99 3) notes acidly that while President Salinas made some reforms, "Nevertheless, a new biased electoral law, continuing electoral fraud, and resistance to reform by the state and local PRI cadres have made it clear that the PRI will not surrender power at the national level to another group anytime soon" (p. 269). In any case, both Foweraker and Rubin still acknowledge that popular movements rarely adopt an antagonistic relationship with the state, largely because "the viability of such movements depends closely on their success in solving the immediate and practical problems of the group or community, which in Latin America usually requires negotiation of some sort with the state; and there is some consensus that popular movements must seek above all to acquire this capacidad de gesti6n-the ability to get their demands met" (Foweraker 1990:6). However, it is not clear how this is necessarily different from clientelism or whether it simply means that clientelism has gone beyond the rigid corporatist structure of the PRI. As Hellman (1994) points out, "Although the emergence of a new movement may challenge the old PRI-linked networks based

So

The Mexican State

on local caciques, it undermines the control of the caciques only by replacing the old networks with alternative channels that, generally speaking, are also clientelistic in their mode of operation" (p. 128).

One problem with this literature, however, is the tendency to ignore potential conflict within the state over the distribution of resources. Research suggests that the Mexican state hierarchy is actually composed of a number of competing cliques of officials that compete for the distribution of government positions, and therefore the ability to distribute resources to popular organizations. In this light, it might be asked, How does clientelism fit into this intrastate conflict? For example, while Coppedge argues that leaders who criticize the PRI may find resources being allocated to new leaders, is it possible for competing cliques within the state hierarchy to compete for control of powerful popular organizations or their constituencies by distributing resources to different potential leaders within those groups? Finally, if this is a possibility, could those groups actually increase their level of benefits by distributing their clientelist relations with different cliques and thus, in a sense, playing the cliques off each other? As I will show in later chapters, government officials do attempt to control local leaders in the manner Coppedge describes, but they are not always successful. As leaders become more powerful and are able to create multiple channels of influence, it becomes harder and harder for city officials to undercut their authority within their organizations by sponsoring alternative leaders. Furthermore, the very competition for space and members between the hundreds of leaders of street vendor organizations throughout the Federal District-competition that exists precisely because vendors are vertically rather than horizontally organized-means that leaders cannot reduce their own interests to the interests of their patrons. They have to produce tangible "goods" for their members-commercial space on the street-or be left without followers as their members "vote with their feet" to go to other areas to sell.

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Authority Structure of the City Located in Mexico's Federal District, Mexico City is part of one of the largest, and until recently, fastest growing metropolitan areas in the world. Since the Federal District is federal territory, local and national politics are substantially fused. As a result, "municipal" and "federal" agencies exist side-by-side, very often with overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities. The mayor of the city (also called the Regent or Governor) was, up to 1997, appointed by the President of Mexico, and the office is considered an important federal cabinet position. In 1973 a decentralization program shifted much of the actual administration of the city to I 6 "delegations" that function like precincts, taking care of issuing licenses, policing, emergency services, and most public works. Almost all city services go through the delegations, which are governed by a Political Delegate appointed by the mayor. However, the central city authority retains strict control over the budgets of the various delegations, which have no independent fiscal authority. While for much of the history of the city the mayor ruled with little local civilian review, the city obtained a limited measure of self-governance in in 1988 with an elected "Assembly of Representatives for the Federal District" (ARDF), and, later, the election of the mayor. The ARDF body is made up of 66 members elected every three years, but despite its size it has constitutionally no more than municipal regulatory authority. Legislative authority for the district remains in the hands of the Federal Congress. Since at the time of my research city officials were still federal appointees, the ARDF's power over them was symbolic, limited to annual reports given to the ARDF by the mayor and the various political delegates. Like the Federal level, where authority is divided into various secretariats, a number of secretariats share responsibility for city administration. Of these the two most important are Public Works and Governance, the latter including responsibility for police, licensing, and markets. However, the Secretariat of Governance,

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while responsible for policy at the city-wide level, has very little authority at the Delegation level. There, a miniature version of the city government structure splits administration into "subdelegations" including the Subdelegate of Governance, which is in charge of the various departments that actually carry out the above duties. Of these departments, the one concerned with street vending is the Market Office, at times divided again into Street, Markets, and Tianguis offices, but which will be simply referred to as the Market Office for the rest of this work. Next to this government structure is a parallel PRI structure. The PRI is divided into strictly Party offices and its member associations. Like land invaders, market associations, and other groups that are neither unionized workers nor peasants, street vendors are members of organizations in most cases affiliated with the PRI through the "Popular Sector"-previously called the CNOP (National Confederation of Popular Organizations) but later referred to as the UNE. This sector has offices in each delegation, to which specific organizations are affiliated, with central offices for the city and national headquarters. The PRI itself has offices on the city level, the delegational level, and in each of the city's 40 electoral districts. Each level of office has been used by various organizations to support their attempts to pressure the city administration. The role of camarillas and clientelism is particularly applicable for the administration of the city itself. Rapid turnover of offices is more the rule than the exception. Generally administrative, elective, and political officials are rotated at least every three years with the elections for local and national offices. Although in some cases officials may be retained in a specific office for longer periods, more frequently it is shorter. In one Market Office, the official in charge changed six times in one recent year.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that individual survival and advancement in the Mexican state depends upon membership within a powerful camarilla or clique. Thus, state integration is particularly

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weak in Mexico since the benefits of employment within the state-salary, tenure, and promotion-are controlled by one's relations with other state officials, rather than by the state agency or state as such. As a result, loyalty and service to the camarilla is the essential requirement of any upwardly mobile politician or bureaucrat, much more so than loyalty and service to the abstract form of the state or even the specific agency post the worker fills, which becomes only a mechanism by which to leverage a more promising position. Furthermore, loyalty and service to the camarillas is often best met by securing political support from groups in civil society that can be used to back up the claims of key camarilla leaders for top positions within the PRI-state structure. In this manner, as the following chapters will show, the camarilla system opens officials to pressure from organized groups outside the state. This opportunity is particularly important for street vendors because it gives them direct access to state officials, something they might not otherwise enjoy. In addition, as will be shown in Chapter 5, street vendors are for a number of reasons actually better positioned to take advantage of these clientalist relations than are other groups in Mexican society, such as workers or peasants. Furthermore, the camarilla system means that even the ability to establish clientalist relations with relatively low-level officials creates the potential that higher level officials also will become allies, since the street vendor group's "patron" would have higherlevel patrons within the state apparatus. Besides, if the vendors and the official are successful, even low-level officials will rise through the political system. For this reason many of the older leaders can legitimately boast of relations with senators and presidential candidates.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Commercial Role of Street Vending Problems and Practices

S

is a part of the traditional world that intrudes incongruously into the modern. Certainly, it fits our image of the premodern world that contrasts with our equally strong vision of modern retailing in strip malls, super department stores and nationwide discount emporiums. But the continued existence of street vending, and even its recent expansion in the "modern" world, implies that it has responded effectively to the demands of retailing in a world marked by widespread differentials in income and wealth. Certainly, what made street vending the preferred mode of commercialization in the premodern world is usually what makes it a viable enterprise today: It takes advantage of public space and forgoes the security of fixed-site construction, which reduces capital investment costs in the form of rent. On the other hand, for reasons to be discussed further below, street vending usually implies a greater investment of labor relative to inventory and often implies size limits, both factors leading to a tendency toward low inventory. Yet even here there are advantages in terms of flexible market response, particularly where capital is relatively more scarce than labor, that street vendors enjoy even in the modern world. As McGee ( r 97 3) noted, street vending differs between different nations and cities owing to historical, cultural, and regulatory TREE T vEND 1 N G

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differences between the areas under consideration. Legally, in many areas of the world street vending exists either in opposition to local regulations or on the margins of a regulatory system written primarily for fixed retail operations that are easier to regulate (and thus preferable to street vending from the standpoint of regulators). For this reason, the exact nature and variety of street vending tends to vary according to different localities. For our purposes, in Mexico City street vending means the sale of apparently legal goods and services in public terrain: streets, sidewalks, and public parks. The question of legality is problematic-far more so than De Soto's (1989) definition of "informal economic activity" as the pursuit of legal ends with illegal means would lead one to think. In this study, my inclusion of different street retail activities within the analysis was based largely on my interest in viewing the process of conflict over one aspect of regulation: access to space. For this reason, drug vending and prostitution, being illegal, were not included in this study as a form of street vending because they can not be regulated. However, the sale of "pirate" cassettes and contraband goods is included even though their sale violates a number of laws, not just regulations concerning selling in the street. Since enforcement rarely reaches the retail level, vendors selling these articles behave in the same way as those selling legal goods. On the other hand, different types of analytical tools would be needed to study the production and distribution chains that bring these products to the street, just as different analytical tools would be necessary to study illegal drug vendors, who have different forms of political behavior oriented almost exclusively toward the evasion of sanctions, rather than pressure to reduce or eliminate sanctions. On the other hand, several categories of people who work in the street were not included in the study because their legal situation is defined differently and thus would entail an unwanted added variable. Shoe shiners, certain "ambulatory musicians" (for example, mariachis and organ grinders) and newspaper vendors

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are regulated under a different law in the Mexico City and have a much less conflictive relationship with officials. 1 While this in itself suggests that they have their own systems of patronage, the lack of conflict for these categories of street vendors means it would be more difficult to show them in action. In Mexico, most vendors are not truly ambulatory in the sense that they are constantly mobile, yet this term is used by officials to describe them. While, according to the I 9 51 "Market Regulation" passed by the Federal Congress, street vending is permitted in administratively specified "market areas," this law has generally been ignored by officials who claim vendors violate a municipal code prohibiting individuals from blocking traffic or causing a public nuisance. 2 Still, approximately 2oo,ooo individuals are permanently dedicated to this activity throughout the city in a variety of forms. Some have permits, although the city has officially refused to grant any new permits since 1984 and all previously assigned permits are now technically void. Others are "tolerated" by city officials in exchange for some regulatory control. This means that officials have allowed members of a group of vendors to sell in a specific area, but without any formal permit that guarantees their tenancy, a practice that is technically illegal and frequently leads to claims of favoritism and conflicts between groups of vendors or with 1 The Market Regulation (Mexico 1951) specifically states that newspaper vendors perform a service in the "national interest." Furthermore, they represent the relationship between the state and the newspaper industry itself. Newspaper vendors, musicians, and shoe shiners are regulated under a separate law titled "Reglamento para los Trabajadores no Asalariados del Distrito Federal" published in the Diario Oficia/ on May 2, 1975. 2 See the "Reglamento de Ia Ley sobre Justicia en Materia de Faltas de Policia y Buen Gobierno del Distrito Federal" published in the Diario Oficia/ July 10, 1985. The relevant section is in Chapter I, Art. 3, Sec. VI, which states it is illegal to "Impede and block the use of the public right of way." Allowable punishment is 12-24 hours' arrest and a fine up to 14 times the daily minimum salary. One reason the market regulation is ignored is that the office responsible for regulating vending-originally the Market Office of the treasury department-was eliminated in the early 197o's.

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more established merchants. Others exist without any official recognition by evading market and street inspectors charged with enforcing the semiofficial system of permits and tolerances. Given the lack of a clear regulatory system for street vending, it has therefore become one of the "semiformal" activities described by De Soto in as much as its existence, even when officially "tolerated," takes place outside the regulatory system. Indeed, while the city charged a modest floor tax on vendors up to 1985, this tax had to be dropped when officials realized they could not tax an activity that was technically illegal.

Retailing in Mexico City: Past and Present Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico, retailing was carried out in open-air markets at the center of towns or cities. Tenochtitlan, the capital, had a series of neighborhood markets as well as a large number of "floating" vendors who sold from canoes in the canals of the island city, but still its central market astounded the "conquistadores" with its size and variety. Because of the importation of Spanish mercantile forms, the decimation of the native population through disease, and new rural residential patterns that disrupted the pre-Colombian agrarian system, colonial officials preferred to control merchants and the sale of basic crops more closely through the construction of public markets owned by the municipal authorities. Stalls were leased to merchants, providing an important source of funds for the local administration. Typically, as the towns and cities grew, demand surpassed the capacity of these markets and street markets appeared in other areas while the streets surrounding existing markets became occupied by vendors, leading to conflicts between the market vendors paying rent to the city and the street vendors. Periodically, new markets would be constructed or old markets enlarged and street vending repressed. Market areas still famous today-La Lagunilla, Jamaica, San Juan, La Merced, Tepito, and

The Commercial Role of Street Vending

88

200,000

!

0 1975 • 1980 •1985 0 1988

150,000

f I!!

0~ 100,000

.!E i :::J

z

50,000 0 1-5

6-50

51-250

250+

Store size (# employed)

FIG . 1. Employment in retailing by store size, 1975-88 (not including street vending; data from Mexico-INEGI 1976, 1981, 1986, 1989)

many others-became famous in the colonial era and continue today as wholesale districts. 3 As other sources eclipsed market rents as a source of municipal financing and wealthier merchants moved out of the public markets, market vendors pushed for lower rents. They became a symbolic way for the authorities to cement support among a section of the "popular" classes. This change, however, also undercut the incentive for officials to construct new markets. Street vending and small stores thus grew to take on the market gap between demand and supply. This situation was temporarily reversed in the 19 so's and 196o's because of a massive public market construction campaign (discussed in Chapter 6), after which street vending again grew to its present level. With the advent of "modern" retailing, the number of large retail stores-department stores and supermarkets-has grown, but has to date by no means eclipsed the importance of small stores, public markets, and street vendors to retailing in the city. Street vending itself exists at the low end of a continuum in the commercial structure of Mexico City. As Figure r shows, the importance of large stores has grown in 3 See Dieguez Armas (1994), Vazquez Torres (1991), and Yoma Medina and Martos Lopez (1990) for a history of "popular" commerce in Mexico

City.

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89

recent years. The number of commercial outlets employing more than so employees increased from S72 in I97S to 797 in 1988 with a 3 s percent increase in employees, but medium and small stores continue to form a large part of the market. For example, stores with six to so employees increased their total employment level by s6.6 percent during the same period, while stores employing less than six individuals-the vast majority neighborhood stores or stalls in public markets with an average of fewer than r.s workers-increased only 17.8 percent during the period, but still employed almost half the personnel in the sector. Street vendors are not included in Figure r because of the lack of reliable historical estimates, but it clearly shows that Mexico City's commercial sector is still highly focused on small retail units, with the smallest units being the street stalls themselves. Their survival in the face of the growth of department store and supermarket chains is largely due to their ability to cut costs by operating informally and therefore to service neighborhoods and market niches that large, formal enterprises cannot reach. But it is also due, to a large extent, to the fact that while some specialize in isolated market niches (such as neighborhood stores or isolated street stalls), many operate in retail concentrations where a large number of small retail outlets are together able to attract clients from a surrounding market zone-whether that is a neighborhood or the entire city.

Types of Vendors Little representative data are available to cover all the different forms of street vending in Mexico City. Most data refer to vendors in the city center-where administrative attention has focused in recent years. But this information shows that street vendors do not appear to be substantially different from the bulk of the Mexican population. According to data from a census taken by the Federal District in the Historical Center in February of 1990 (DDF 1990), men outnumber women ss percent to 4 s percent. Most vendors are in their productive ages-more than 9 s percent are between the

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The Commercial Role of Street Vending

ages of I 5 and 6o, and 5o percent are between 2 I and 3 5, showing that street vending is not a "refuge" of the young or old who are otherwise unemployable. Nor is it a haven for recent immigrants63 percent were born in the Federal District and another IO percent in the State of Mexico. Income data is more difficult to validate. As the study noted, "the people who dedicate themselves to this work show reluctance to provide information, whether it is due to fear of fiscal measures or to the lack of precision of the accounting procedures natural to the activity" (DDF I990:29). Most vendors declared incomes below two times the minimum salary, but these results are considered highly suspect. A small I99I study of vendors around one central metro station found that only IO percent reported income of less than the minimum salary at the time. On the other side of the scale, 3o percent reported incomes of more than seven times the minimum wage, or more than U.S. $I5o.oo a week. 4 Most street vendors operate like independent businesses (although some may be dependent upon specific suppliers, and sometimes stalls are manned by paid employees.) Nevertheless, virtually all tolerated street vending is organized into associations of vendors. Vendors are allowed to sell only as members of associations. These associations are typically led by a single individual responsible for representing his or her association in negotiations with city officials. For large associations, the leader is assisted by a group of "delegates" who represent the leader in different areas that the association controls. They deal with most minor problems that arise among vendors or with officials or neighbors. They also collect the association fees that go toward administrative expenses and cleaning costs. In the very largest associations, the leader uses supervisors who check the work of the delegates and take care of 4 The universe of this study was very small-only 1 20 individual stalls (Arenas Novoa and Vargas Granadas 1991:96), but it fits with my own interviews, in which vendors in the downtown area stated that even the poorest vendors earned at least twice the minimum wage. It also fits with a 1995 survey of relocated vendors in the same area, who on average reported that their monthly sales before the relocation had been more than U.S. $2,ooo a month (see Chapter 7).

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91

most substantial problems with city officials. In many cases, the various members of the leadership groups of the associations are family members or fictive kin of the leader, chosen to maintain loyalty. Street vending falls into a number of broad categories based largely upon government policies that have "tolerated" certain types of vending while repressing other forms. These types will be discussed separately according to the terms used to describe them by officials, and by which they will be named in later chapters.

Tolerated Vending "CO NCENTRATI 0 N S"

"Concentrations" are the most stable street vendors: groups of between so and 300 vendors in residential areas that basically provide the same services as a public market. Officially, the policy toward these groups is to move them off the streets onto empty lots where they can build their own market stalls, usually out of permanent materials. In 1991, only 21 out of rs6 concentrations were on the streets. Most had been moved onto private property or property belonging to the city. Concentrations may eventually be recognized as public markets administered by the city, but in many cases the organizations of vendors themselves are opposed to this since it would take power away from the leaders in the assignment of stalls and charging of fees. Because in most cases these markets are in the process of moving away from the street, city officials generally support them. By accepting locations off the street these vendors hope to make their livelihoods more secure-as long as the costs of construction can be passed along to consumers by the absence of competition from other sources. Thus, government policy has been to reduce competition around both public markets and concentrations by keeping other types of street vendors out of their "market zone," considered to be an Sao-meter radius for public markets and saometer radius for concentrations.

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Concentrations are largely found in marginal areas of the cityespecially those that have grown enormously since the bulk of public market buildings were constructed in the 1950's and 196o's; for example, Iztapalapa became the largest city delegation in 1990 with an r8.o7 percent increase in population since 1980. (The Federal District population as a whole dropped by 6. 74 percent.) In Iztapalapa the number of concentration vendors grew 40 percent from 5,o 55 to 7,094 during that period, while the number of market vendors increased only 3·5 percent, from 2,878 to 3,002. The area accounted for more than half the concentration vendors in the city in r 99 r. Since vendors in concentrations and public markets serve residential communities from a fixed location, they are essentially shopkeepers who are concentrated to increase cross-trade and facilitate purchasing by housewives. Building up a steady clientele is very important to success, and sales tend to be slow except during peak hours before major meal times. "TIANGUIS"

A second form of street vending generally tolerated by the city administration is represented by weekly rotating street markets called "tianguis," a word for "market" derived from Nahuatl (the indigenous language spoken in the valley of Mexico before the Spanish conquest). These work one day each week in a given neighborhood, and many operate in a weekly circuit, going to a different neighborhood each day. The tianguis offers a distinct advantage over stationary markets in a number of ways, explaining why city officials have continued to tolerate them. First, because they occupy an area for only a single day, traffic-flow problems and complaints from neighbors are limited. Second, moving from one site to another, while apparently inefficient in terms of added transportation costs, gives the vendors a number of marketing advantages. By selling in a different market zone each day, a vendor who sells seven days a week effectively has a market area seven times larger than a vendor in a

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fixed market. Large families may use older children to manage stalls in other tianguis, allowing the family to sell in dozens of different neighborhoods each week. While some neighborhoods have become saturated with tianguis, with three or even five such market days a week, in general the effect is to give the vendor "fresh" customers each day, at the same time building up a clientele because of their regularity. As a result tianguis vendors can adopt a high-turnover/lowmarkup strategy that makes them highly competitive in most neighborhoods. Food prices are often lower than prices offered in the public markets (even though market stall holders have lower overhead costs because of their heavily subsidized stall rents), and lower than those in concentrations, neighborhood stores, and even large chain stores and supermarkets. Furthermore, whereas customers can go daily to stores or public markets and may therefore buy only a little each day, the tianguis appears only once a week and thus, when it can supply goods at a cheaper rate, customers buy sufficient goods to last a week-or at least until the next tianguis day in the neighborhood-providing a strong incentive for competitive pricing. Because it appears only once a week, the tianguis also has something of a fair atmosphere. Particularly in neighborhoods that have few other attractions, many residents will go simply to see what is available that is new, or how prices have changed, allowing them to become impulse buyers even when they had no specific buying plans. Typically, most tianguis have a small number of prepared food stands selling traditional Mexican antojitos such as tacos, "gorditas," and other popular Mexican snacks. Besides feeding vendors and their customers, these stalls also attract people by providing an economical alternative to home cooking. Vendors of clothes and non-essential goods, such as fantasy jewelry, perfume, and household appliances, tend to benefit from the tianguis for the same reasons, but to a lesser degree. Market zoning for such items differs from zoning for food. Food is best purchased locally because it must be bought regularly and can

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spoil on long trips. Clothes and other non-perishable items, particularly if they are expensive, are best bought in central areas where high competition drives down prices, and the travel and time expense can be offset by the higher savings. Thus, these types of vendors tend to do a slow business in the tianguis, far behind vendors of fresh foods. Tianguis vendors are required to use a metal frame stall made up of a pole structure on which wooden planks can be placed to form the display and vending platform, and over which a cloth and/or plastic tarp can be pulled to protect the merchandise, vendors, and customers from the sun and the rain, although a small minority of vendors do not have these minimal facilities. The 1991 cholera scare in Mexico led health officials to require that prepared food vendors provide a basin for vendors and customers to wash their hands in, and that portable toilets be provided by the tianguis organization. Despite some discussion of these requirements by the organizations, no progress has been made toward these well-meant but complex and expensive goals in the years since the rules were promulgated. Neighbors frequently complain about tianguis. As one official noted, "Everyone wants a tianguis, but not on their street." They create noise and garbage problems (although officially tolerated tianguis pay the city to clean up after them), and cause inconvenience by blocking access for cars. Residents of streets where tianguis operate have to move their cars before the vendors begin to set up, between 7 A.M. and 9 A.M. or face the prospect of having them stuck in their garages or even at the curb. Furthermore, neighbors complain that vendors frequently cause damage to their window bars and walls by tying their tarps to them. Still, these problems are limited to a single day, and the tianguis also creates the potential for neighbors to make some money. Bathroom facilities are usually provided for a fee by neighbors, and some also open small restaurants for the vendors. Small stores always benefit from the location of a tianguis in front of their doors and, although city policy is to keep tianguis away from public markets and concentrations, small markets frequently request that tianguis

The Commercial Role of Street Vending 95 be set up around them for some days of the week to attract more clients. 5 "MARKETS ON WHEELS"

Closely related to the tianguis is another type of rotating market called the "market on wheels" (Mercado sobre Ruedas). These were set up by the Federal Secretariat of Commerce and Industrial Promotion (SECOFI) as an experiment to improve on the tianguis. Following the erroneous belief-still very popular among city bureaucrats-that commercial intermediates were driving up retail prices, SECOFI set up Market on Wheels in the late 196o's as a model program in which, theoretically at least, farmers and artisans would sell their own products (much like the Farmer's Markets in the United States). The plan became impossible to enforce as rural supply areas moved farther and farther from the city as it expanded. Still, the Market on Wheels program remained under the supervision of the SECOFI, and such markets are generally better run and supervised than the tianguis, which are subject to the generally lax supervision of the city's r 6 delegations. Other than that, the only real difference is that they do not have prepared food stands. "AMBULATORY" VENDORS

Officially, all other vendors are considered "ambulatory." These vendors are further divided into categories, some of which have a more secure claim to their activity than others: fixed stalls, wheeled stalls, semifixed stalls, independent neighborhood vendors, and toreros. Fixed Stalls. In the early 198o's the city granted permits to groups of blind vendors-traditionally accorded favorable treatment by the city as a minimalist form of aide for this disabled group-to erect sheet-metal "fixed stalls" from which to sell hand5 Tianguis become detrimental for markets when they are located a short distance from them-competing for the same clients but attracting them to a different area.

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make Mexican crafts. As it turned out, the only type of handmade crafts sold by these stalls are Mexican snacks. Since blind individuals would have considerable difficulty preparing such food, they rent the stalls to sighted people. 6 These stalls have a considerable advantage over other street vendors in that their size and construction allow kitchen facilities to be set up in them and make them virtually permanent fixtures on the sidewalk. A few even operate like restaurants with salaried managers and employees. Wheeled Stalls. Another highly stable group of vendors are those who use smaller metal stands on wheels, which open up into display cases used to sell candy and cigarettes, usually in highly traveled pedestrian areas of the city. Indeed, these are the only form of tolerated street vending, besides newspaper kiosks and shoe shiners, in high-visibility tourist areas such as the "Pink Zone" near Chapultepec Park. It is not entirely clear why they are so advantaged, but it has been suggested that they are allotted to the families of city employees. The wheels on the stalls allow them to be moved to a storage area at night with merchandise locked inside them. Semifixed Stalls. The vast majority of "ambulatory" vendors, however, are made up of those who set up daily in the same space but are supposed to take down their stalls at night. These can be found in groups on sidewalks and streets throughout the city, but especially in key commercial areas such as the Historical Center and traditional market areas such as Tepito and La Merced. A 1991 census carried out during the slow summer months in the central delegation of Cuauhtemoc found 26,865 vendors, of which 8oo were "fixed" stalls and the rest "semifixed." Altogether, u,r67 tolerated vendors were located in the area considered the 6 In some cases, the organizations of the blind vendors themselves take care of renting out the stalls, and some leaders take advantage of the situation by paying only token rents to the blind permit holders while they charge market rates to the vendors using the stalls. In other cases, leaders of blind vendors have been accused of putting sighted people on their membership roles to expand the number of stalls to which they are entitled.

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Historical Center comprising a one-square-kilometer area of colonial heritage around the National Palace. Another 7,3 I 3 tolerated vendors were located in Tepito with 3,473 tolerated vendors in other areas; I ,3 51 were members of groups fighting for recognition, and another I,76I were considered outside any organization and therefore not officially tolerated (DDF I992). In the city as a whole there were more than 67 ,ooo such vendors in I990, of which 52 percent sold in the two central delegations of Cuauhtemoc and Venustiano Carranza, while another 23 percent sold in the working class delegations of Gustavo Madero and Iztapalapa (Mexico-INEGI I990). Vendors in the city center and other large street markets throughout the city have a very different market strategy than that of the concentrations and tianguis. Vendors in the Historical Center and Tepito (a working class area just north of the Historical Center) generally sell clothes, toys, electrical and household items, and other durable goods for a customer base that includes the entire city, not just the immediate neighborhoods where the vendors are located. 7 In these two areas, fewer than I percent of more than 2o,ooo vendors counted in a I 99 I survey sold unprepared foods, since they were not trying to meet local needs (CETEPI I99I). About IO percent sold prepared foods to the vendors and people coming to shop in these huge street markets from all over the city. But the largest single category of vendors was for clothes and shoes, which accounted for 26 percent of the vendors in the Historical Center and 32 percent of the vendors in Tepito. 8 7 Some tianguis sites also function as attractions for customers from around the city-such as the huge Sunday tianguis of San Felipe de Jesus, a working class suburb in the northeastern corner of the Federal District, in which more than ro,ooo vendors sell everything from clothes to new and used tools and metal scrap. 8 Tepito's fame dates back to the establishment in the last century of the "second-hand goods" market, also called the "thieves market" because at times goods were separated from their first owners under dubious circumstances. It branched out into not only petty industry (refurbishing the used goods) but also the sale of contraband in periods of high tariffs, and therefore established itself as one of the key suppliers of electronic goods in the city.

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Another downtown street market area, La Merced, is historically a wholesale area for fresh foods, as well as the retail food supplier for the above downtown areas. Here, prepared and unprepared food each accounts for about 22 percent of the total number of vendors (in addition to the more than 3,000 public market vendors in this area who specialize in fresh food), and clothes and shoes account for only 14 percent. In these magnet markets the key to success is the concentration of similar products in the same area. Thus, whole streets are given over to the sale of leather jackets, others to fancy dresses, others to stereos and television sets, and yet others to electronic components. Although this may appear strange from a competitive perspective, it actually represents a highly effective way of attracting clientele: While no single stall offers a sufficient variety of goods to attract potential clients-and obviously none has the potential for mass advertising-collectively the vendors provide a large assortment of a specialized commodity in a competitive environment that allows purchasers to browse and choose among the different offerings. The emphasis is on low margins and rapid turnover, providing an incentive for clients to come from throughout the city to find the best selection and prices for these goods and creating durable "word of mouth" advertising for the entire street and neighborhood. While many of these vendors have been tolerated by the city administration, they tend to have the most problems-particularly those in the city center. Both large and small stores in the downtown area, joined by a number of city agencies and what might be called the cultural elite of the city, attack vending in this area as "disloyal competition" and as an eyesore for an area that has been designated a historical monument for humanity by UNESCO, in addition to other inconveniences that they cause. The attacks culminated in a massive market construction program to relocate more than ro,ooo vendors in the area in 1993.

The Commercial Role of Street Vending 99 VENDORS WITHOUT TOLERANCES

Besides the types of vendors listed above, most of whom have been tolerated by city officials through extralegal regulatory systems, other vendors continue to sell on the street with no official recognition by city officials. Independent Neighborhood Vendors. First of all, an unknown number of the "ambulatory" vendors in the city are not registered with any city agency. In most cases, these vendors include the lowest level of street vendors set up in comparatively poor areas, which organized vendors have not bothered to occupy. These independent vendors have not themselves needed to organize in response to attempts to remove them. Many are never counted. A large but nebulous number of part-time or temporary vendors sell products just outside their houses or at the entrances to schools. Toreros. The few truly ambulatory vendors are called "toreros," or bullfighters, because they spend their time dodging the "bull"-the market or "street" inspector who works for the city. Toreros may include migrant Indian women who sell tacos or sandwiches from baskets in the city center, but more often the word refers to vendors selling products to cars at street corners. After picking a particular intersection to work, these vendors spend the day-or sometimes just rush hour-hawking products to drivers waiting for traffic lights to change. Typically, the goods sold are fairly cheap and easy to carry, such as chewing gum, flowers, or cheap toys. Occasionally, toreros are joined by windshield cleaners or street clowns, jugglers, or fire-breathers who perform during the brief time the light is red, and some switch between these activities in order to make a living. Because of their mobility and flexible work hours, these are the hardest vendors to quantify. Unlike tianguis and the "ambulatory" vendors mentioned above, who set up in the same space on each market day, these vendors shift from street to street over different days and even within the same day, looking for the best corner or traffic lights for each time of day, day of the week, or season of the year. Furthermore, since they are not formally organized (although in-

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formal mechanisms exist to control competition on the most lucrative corners), access costs are negligible, and thus these workers are much freer to come and go as they please. To these should be added vendors who set up outside schools and peddlers who work specific neighborhoods, tracing a constant route over the same streets daily, selling anything from prepared food to tortillas to plants, or those who make a living exchanging new goods for old clothes. Metro Vendors. Although they have never been officially tolerated by the city, vendors in the metro are usually organized informally anyway. A census of metro vendors in late 1991, before a major crackdown, found more than 4,200 vendors installed in the passageways of most of the metro system's r 53 stations. In some stations, vendors occupied virtually every available area of space, severely narrowing the passageways and frequently leading to confrontations between the vendors and passengers. In this situation, vendors usually had to guarantee their spaces by paying fees to the guards or, more typically, to individuals who claimed control over the stations and paid off station officials themselves. The relationship between the guards and the vendors was very close-when a crackdown on vending in the metro was carried out in 1992, it was discovered that some station managers allowed vendors to store their merchandise in the stationmaster's office, and some guards arranged for their friends or relatives to sell in the stations. The 4,200 figure quoted above, however, did not include all of the vendors in the metro system. Rather, only those who sold in the station passageways could be counted, since they usually occupied a single area during rush hours by spreading their wares on the floor. But many other vendors were not counted because they sold on the trains themselves by moving constantly from one car to another at each station, hawking a single type of cheap item that they carried in shoulder bags. These vendors were usually organized by section of rail line to prevent the entrance of too many or at least to space out those who were admitted. For example, two vendors could not sell in the same car at the same time, because hawking in this situation required the vendor to walk down

The Commercial Role of Street Vending

ror

the car calling out his or her wares (or singing, in the case of ambulatory entertainers). And obviously if there were vendors constantly in each car, the passengers would get tired of them. HOW MANY STREET VENDORS ARE THERE?

Officials have data on certain types of street vending-typically types that are tolerated-but only recently has an attempt been made to collect this information on a city-wide level. For example, since 198 5 COABASTO has been charged with keeping data on public markets, concentrations, tianguis, and the markets on wheels, but until 1990 there were no reliable data at all on "ambulatory" vendors. Furthermore, there is no reliable source of data on "nontolerated" vendors such as toreros. Thus, an estimate of the number of individuals involved in street vending is highly problematic. What I will attempt to give here is a conservative estimate based upon reported figures and estimates for these different forms of street vending. 9 Concentrations. Most concentrations are off the street and therefore do not technically count as street vendors. Of more than 12,ooo stalls in concentrations, only about 1,500 sell in locations on the street or sidewalk. Tianguis and Markets on Wheels. In 1991, COABASTO documented about r 52,ooo stalls in these forms of rotating markets. However, since each stall represents only a single day of the week, this figure should be divided by some amount to account for the fact that most tianguis vendors sell on different days of the week in different areas. Many sell only on weekends, or only in areas close to their homes. A conservative estimate is given by dividing 9 An exact count of street vendors is almost impossible when many vendors are unlicensed. McGee (r973) recounts many of these problems. For example, he found the number of vendors fluctuated from one day to the next and even during a single day. Some vendors only sell in the morning, afternoon, or evening. Others may move from one location to another during the day, appearing settled at each. The same vendor "family" may have several different stalls in the same market or in different markets, all managed together under the same license, further confusing the question of what is a vendor "unit" or business.

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this total by four, assuming that vendors in these markets sell for an average of four days a week. Thus, in terms of physical stalls rather than stall spaces, the tianguis and market on wheels program account for approximately 37,500 stalls. Ambulatory Vendors. According to the 1992 count carried out by the various delegations of the Federal District, there were 67,248 of these stalls. This number is taken to include both regulated and unregulated vendors in this category, although it probably undercounted the latter. Metro Vendors. In addition to the 4,200 semifixed stalls counted by the city in the Metro facilities, an estimated 8oo additional vendors operated in the metro trains themselves on a permanent basis. While both of these figures have been reduced since vendors were cleared out of the metro stations in February 1992, many simply moved to locations around the stations or in other areas of the city. Toreros. Any estimate of the number of mobile street vendors selling to cars at street corners as well as neighborhood peddlers in the city is really pure guesswork given the problems noted above. In order to include them among the count of street vendors, I used a conservative estimate of 1o,ooo in this study. Thus, as summarized in Figure 2, a total of 121,748 stalls provides the most conservative estimate of the number of street vendor "retail units" in the Federal District. However, the number of stalls is not an adequate measure of the number of individuals who work in this activity because many stalls employ more than one individual. In the city center many stalls are staffed by two or three people, and in the tianguis high volume products such as food require four or even five people at a single stall. Thus, some multiplier is required to arrive at an estimate of the number of actual street vendors. While there is no reliable source for an estimate of this kind, we will assume that each stall is worked by an average of r.6 individuals, the same average number of people who work in small stores, which gives us a conservative total of 185,600 individuals permanently involved fulltime in street vending. Since most of the above figures do not in-

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67248

70000 60000 011

:; 50000 ti 0 40000

.! 30000 ~ 20000

10000 0 Concentration

Metro

Torero

Tlanguls

Armulatory

Type of stall F 1 G.

2. Estimated number of vendor stalls by category

elude vendors who occasionally sell in the street or who add to the numbers during peak commercial seasons, this figure is only a measure of the basic core of vendors in the city. The inclusion of such temporary vendors would probably add at least 50 percent to the above figure. 10

Street Vending As a Way of Life Street vendors are proud to talk about the difficulties and discomforts of their trade: exposure to the weather, fluctuating income, boredom, long working hours, and long and inconvenient trips to purchase merchandise. The negative aspects of street vending are certainly present, but many vendors see them as challenges they proudly overcome in their struggle for survival. Many are quick to note the benefits of street vending as well: the pleasures of independence and the social life of the street. While all work places are social, the lack of solid barriers between stalls in a street 10 When I shared this estimate with a city official in 1995, he stated that their estimates were higher, but he did not want to share them with me. In general, officials are not anxious to reveal the magnitude of street vending since it is a touchy political situation. Newspaper reports, which are rarely accurate, range from 2oo,ooo to 6oo,ooo, but generally the number reflects the degree of antagonism of the speaker or writer toward the activity.

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market and the lack of employment constraints on the actions of the vendors means that they are largely free to socialize when not actually busy with customers or maintaining their stalls. While the life is not for everyone-some vendors I spoke with complained of the boredom and crass nature of street life-many expressed the feeling they would choose selling on the street even if they were offered more income in a factory job. As one vendor said, while agreeing that higher income was a reason for vending, "besides that, this job is real quiet ... there is no one to boss you about." Rather than experiencing boredom he added, "on the contrary, here we chat and we have some fun." In interviewing this vendor, I had the sense that he was part of a small but stable community among the rush of passing, fleeting pedestrian relationships, in which time could be taken to chat and establish lasting friendships. Certainly, vending is not all fun and games. Most of those with the highest incomes have to work long hours, but vendors seem to boast about their discomfort rather than complain. In accompanying one family of vendors, I found their day began before sunrise at 5 A.M. with a trip to wholesale markets and did not end until well past sunset at 7 or 8 P.M., when the stall and unsold merchandise was unpacked at their home. During the day, they were frequently so busy for several hours at a time they did not have time to sit down or relax. During one day heavy torrential rain interrupted sales threes times as customers and vendors attempted to stay dry under the stall tarps. Even then, the rain provided relief from the heat and demands of selling. A high level of cooperation and camaraderie exists among vendors because of their common problems. One problem was a constant lack of change. Since customers paid individual vendors rather than a centralized cashier, change had to be made for each product purchased, and it was frequently in short supply. As my notes from working with the above family (Marta and her son Sammy) show, this problem is "solved" by constant cooperation among the vendors:

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At one point we needed to break a $ro [peso] bill. Marta asked [a neighboring vendor], but she said she had no change. She asked another vendor too, but they didn't have any either. Sammy finally asked [the first vendor] to lend us $5 to make change, which she did. Later, a similar problem arose. I needed change for $ro, and Marta went to the pork stall to make change, but she made change for $so-two twenties and a ten. I told her I needed fives. She said she was sorry and went to another stall, where the vendor shook her head with a laugh. I turned and told [the first vendor] if she had another $5, I would give her $ro. She agreed, and I told Sammy that we were square with [her]. I gave the $5 to the clients, a couple who had been waiting for a while for their change. I looked around for Marta to tell her we didn't need change, but she was nowhere to be seen. She finally came back after a few minutes with a $5 bill, two $2 bills, and a $r coin. We now had a reserve of change. However, the next customer had to pay $r2, and gave us a $20 bill. I looked into the change bag [located under the stall mantle] at our hard-earned change, and, looking up, asked the client if she had $2. She said she didn't, and I gave her $8. Afterwards, I grumbled to Marta that people always try to get as much change as they can, and she agreed. THE HISTORY OF A TIANGUISTA FAMILY

Despite the problems noted above, street vending is for many vendors a vast improvement over their previous work experience. Artemio (Temo) and Marta have been street vendors for more than 30 years. Since 1968 they have sold in one of the circuits of what is now the most powerful organization of tianguis in the city, with almost 1o,ooo vendors on the streets on any given day, the Confederacion de Comerciantes y Organizaciones Populares (CCOP) led by Celia Torres and Fernando Sanchez. Today their circuit consists of up to r,ooo vendors on the best days, but when Temo and Marta started it consisted of only 30 vendors outside a tortilla mill. Marta and Temo both came from families where street vending had been practiced occasionally as a way of making ends meet, but both went into factory work in their youth. After marriage their combined income was barely enough to scratch out a living, and it was reduced even further when Marta had to quit her job to

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take care of their children, several of whom died because of their poverty. After working all week at the factory, Temo would spend Saturdays shining shoes downtown, while Marta looked for odd jobs washing clothes and cleanir.g. After originally renting a tworoom shack covered with a laminated roof that absorbed 40 percent of their income, they were forced to move into a 3-metersquare room, which they lived in for six years, eventually sharing it with three children. Desperate to find any alternative income, Marta did odd service jobs, and found herself taken advantage of by true exploiters within the informal economy, as she recounts in one anecdote: One time a lady told me she would give me work. She would teach me how to sew well so that I could work. And she told me, "If you help me to wash, I will help you" and everything. [She had] ... almost a roomful of clothes. And me with the illusion that I wanted to work, I wanted to do something, I washed it, dried it and everything. It took a week to [wash] all the clothes-every day from early until late. Do you know what she did? She said, "Do you know what? Come back in a month and I will have the sewing machine to show you so you can sew ... and say, come around next week. Probably I will have more clothes for you to wash again." And you know what? I didn't go back. I said, "No, how am I going to wash for the lady?" No, I didn't return.

Marta, inspired by a friend who was selling there, began to sell avocados in front of the tortilla mill. Temo was opposed to the idea, seeing it as both demeaning and dangerous, since in the early 196o's street vending of any form was strictly banned. But on her first day, working only four hours, she was able to earn more than 2 5 pesos-several times the minimum wage of the time. He soon changed his mind. Since the street vendor ban was rigorously enforced by a special market patrol, it was necessary at this time to work early in the morning before the first patrols. Thus, a typical selling day would be from 5:30 to 7:30 in the morning. This explains why the market grew outside a tortilla mill, where housewives would congregate early in the morning to buy the day's tortillas. Despite their

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care, the market was raided several times during this period and Marta had to run, leaving her possessions behind. But neighboring residents and business owners were supportive. On one occasion, a neighbor helped to hide her from the police, and on another the owner of a furniture store secured her money and the merchandise she had had to leave in the street. On yet another, she left her children behind, and they were found several hours later sobbing in a hollow tree stump. Later, the police changed their tactics and stopped trying to arrest the vendors. Instead, they simply confiscated their merchandise, which was more effective in damaging their livelihood. Because of the early hours, Temo and Marta would often travel to the wholesale district by bus at 3:30 in the morning, then return with their merchandise again by bus. Crime was often a problem, since thieves knew that merchants would be going into the area with cash and returning with goods. But despite their early hours and the dangers and discomforts of their trade, their economic situation immediately and radically improved. Selling seasonal fruits and vegetables and switching to toys before Christmas, Marta and Temo were able to make sure they had the best goods by buying as early as possible and always paying cash. In 1966 the mayor who had ruled Mexico City for 14 years, Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, was finally pushed out of office. When he left, his policy of repressing street vending was replaced by a much milder regime, and the vendors at Marta's market approached Celia Torres, then a young politician in the PRI, to get her support. In negotiations with officials it was agreed to change the market into a tianguis, meaning the vendors had to exchange their stable location for a circuit. The change was arduous but beneficial. On the negative side, Marta and Temo had to give up the market location they had built up over the last few years and build up new locations. At first they were constantly relocated because of neighborhood complaints or, more often, complaints of the established market vendors. In some cases, they were assigned areas that were virtually uninhabited and

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had to petition for relocation themselves. There were many days, indeed, when they would spend the whole time looking at each other rather than receiving any real clients. But, as they began to establish themselves in viable market areas and, more important, began to attract local residents in each area, business began to take off. One change that Temo and Marta went through during this period was a change in product line. While seasonal vegetables and toys had made sense in their fixed location, they now saw the need for the new tianguis to have high-level staple goods that could attract customers. They also realized that the rotating market system provided an excellent opportunity to offer these goods at reasonable prices by relying on a more rapid turnover than fixed neighborhood stores could provide. Finally, their new legality meant they could afford to invest more money in their merchandise, since they no longer faced the threat of arrest or confiscation. As a result, they switched from selling vegetables and toys to selling fish. Fish represented a substantial risk in many ways. First, fish is far more expensive than vegetables to purchase in bulk and far less durable than toys. Second, it required substantial labor costs in terms of supply, transportation, and storage. The legality of the new markets and their access to multiple market zones over the course of the week helped substantially to alleviate these risks by offering rapid turnover and stable market patterns. The new legality and resultant growth in terms of both numbers of vendors and quantity of produce also spurred the growth of a secondary service sector of truck drivers and "assistants" to provide transport, storage, and "set-up" services for a fee. Still, Temo and Marta had to spend inordinate amounts of time with their growing business, getting up in the early hours to go to the fish wholesale markets for the freshest fish trucked in from the coast, and then arranging for transport back to their market areas. Later, however, they purchased two trucks of their own so that they could have more control over transport and storage of their highly perishable goods. While they might grab a few hours of sleep after this, they then had to set up and occupy their stalls before 9 A.M., when vacant

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stall spaces were usually assigned to stand-by vendors in order to make sure that the market was always full. But fish became a bonanza for them, since it was a product that was only partially available, despite its cheap cost relative to chicken and beef, in the working class neighborhoods that the market serviced. Further, the product was specifically prescribed by Catholic tradition on Fridays and during lent, thus providing a regular peak in sales that could be anticipated. The most hectic and most profitable time of the year was Lent, when they would at times turn over a thousand dollars a day. On a recent Lent morning, Marta was held up at gunpoint near the wholesale market with $3,000 dollars hidden in her socks, an area the thieves did not think to investigate, thus leaving with the equivalent of a little less than a hundred dollars.

Criticisms of Street Vending Street vending has been criticized for causing or contributing to a number of social ills that afflict Mexico City. Indeed, rhetorical claims by critics of the practice often blame it for being the source of whatever is the latest problem city officials have identified. Letters to officials in the 19 so's frequently cited traffic congestion as one of the main problems caused by street vending (although the narrow and archaic street system of the time surely had something to do with it). Today pollution is blamed on the vendors by similar groups-either because they slow traffic in some areas, or because of the alleged contribution of thousands of taco stands throughout the city. In reality, the contribution of street vending to the massive ecological disaster enveloping the Mexico City metropolitan area can hardly be more than minimal. Paradoxically, although street vendors are decried as "disloyal competition" by the established commercial businesses they undersell, city officials have long criticized these same vendors for promoting "intermediarism": excessive reliance on commercial intermediates such as wholesalers or semi-wholesalers, which is claimed to be a cause of inflation. The claim that street vendors

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cause inflation obviously cannot be true if they can compete effectively with other retailers. In fact, even supermarkets frequently complain about the competitive advantages that street vendors enjoy. Other problems associated with street vending cannot be as easily discounted. The difficulty of supervising the sale of articles sold in the streets as opposed to those sold in established stores makes street markets more congenial to the sale of illegally obtained and smuggled products. Folklore long had it that stolen goods could often be retrieved in Tepito-for a price. Tepito is still accused today of providing an outlet for truckloads of stolen and smuggled television sets and VCRs. In I98 5 President Miguel de la Madrid ordered a major operation by Mexican customs officials to end the sale of smuggled goods in the area once and for all. For several weeks, hundreds of customs officers surrounded the Tepito street market, but according to several Tepito residents, vendors soon found ways around the customs blockade. Vendors began selling goods from catalogues, offering home delivery at no extra charge. Tepito also became one of the cleanest neighborhoods in town as a surge of cleaning personnel wheeling garbage barrels began serving the area. Hidden in the barrels, smuggled products were passed under the noses of the customs officials. The campaign ended painfully for the customs service, however, when the powerful September I 5, I 9 8 5 earthquake destroyed many of the cheap hotels that the customs officials had used as lodging, and hundreds died. The Tepito vendors responded with a huge memorial service for the deceased officials, and took up collections for their surviving dependents. Another major concern is the health risk that prepared food and meat vendors may pose for the public. Sanitation is difficult for all street vendors because of the lack of running water and public lavatory facilities. While local residences or businesses may allow vendors to use their facilities for a small fee, the sanitation level of these facilities is usually very low. Most vendors appear to be conscientious about cleanliness and proper care of their produce-and for good reason, since many clients are steady custom-

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ers and appearance is important-but it is impossible to ensure completely sanitary conditions in the open air where the food is exposed to dust and other possible contaminants. In general, however, the city has been unable to prevent the sale of prepared foods or meat despite several attempts to do so. Instead, some partially enforced rules have been put into effect-for example, meat and prepared food vendors are required to display their merchandise in enclosed glass containers. Certainly, hygiene in the antiseptic American supermarket sense is a rare commodity in the street market, although some semblance of an attempt to approximate it is made: Most vendors of food items wear smocks, and keep the stands in fairly decent shape with some attempt at uniformity (tarps of approximately the same color, for example). Some street markets are better at this than others. Another problem concerns the practice of "robbing the scale" to raise prices illegally. For example, one technique is to use differently weighted pans. The scale is set to zero with a small pan in it, but marks 200 grams with a large pan in it. Vendors claim this is necessary to recoup losses and that buyers are aware of it. Certainly, the practice is widely reported in the press, and its commonness is reflected in the hundreds of scales confiscated by city officials in occasional raids. In one such raid, a vendor recounted: They took away the scale, and when we had a lot of people, too. They arrived: "Aha, your scale," damn! Well, they saw about 200 grams in front of everybody. Damn! Well, we were really embarrassed, right? And they asked a lady, "Well, do they always rob you?" [She replied] "No, they always give us the exact amount." [They argued] "But aren't you seeing that the scale has 200 grams?" She says, "And what about it? They always give us the exact amount." [The inspectors] said, "Well, what do they want? Let's go." But [the clients] said, "No, because they are going to take the scale." And the people there got really angry with them. 11 11 This way of increasing prices is so common it has even become a selling point. One vendor assured an acquaintance of mine that he would give him a full kilo (r,ooo grams) at 20 percent over the listed price of some vegetables,

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Finally, street vendors rarely pay full taxes, if any, on their earnings, sales taxes on merchandise, or permit fees. While the government has attempted to enforce some tax payment for decades, the ability to assess a tax based upon earnings or sales has proved impossible because of the lack of accounting procedures. As noted above, a floor tax had to be dropped by the city because of the lack of a regulatory system for vending, although some delegations have resorted to charging vendors a periodic fine for violating municipal regulations. In I99I, the city discussed a new method for charging taxes, and began to require all vendors to register with the tax department. But the tax rate depended upon the individual vendor volunteering information on approximate earnings. No proof of earnings was required-or indeed could even be expected, since most vendors have only a shady idea of what their long-term earnings are. Finally, discussion of the proposal was dropped as the city turned to the plaza construction project.

The Economics of Street Vending Street vending's role in the economy also stands at the center of controversy. In terms of the general economy, street vending has long been seen as evidence of an "overdistended tertiary" or "marginal" economy that held back progress and development in the general economy, but studies of street vendors-some within the "marginality" literature-have also argued that it allows the circulation of products at an increased rate by lowering distribution costs for producers (Alonso I98o). At the same time, in terms of individual incentives, most scholars have argued that street vending is a "refuge" occupation, while many neo-Marxists have argued that street vendors are simply since his practice was actually to give only 8oo grams at the listed price of a kilo. The acquaintance, a novice vendor himself, felt honored to be thus treated by a fellow vendor, until his family ridiculed him later. How was he to know that the "full" kilo was not also just Boo grams?

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"disguised workers" who really function as underpaid appendages of formal commercial or industrial firms. Several specific studies have noted that street vendors can often earn more than formally employed workers, although when unpaid family labor and the lack of fringe benefits are accounted for, they note, these advantages tend to disappear. While this is not an economic study, to determine the general (social) and specific (individual) values of street vending, the following discussion will attempt to draw some conclusions from recent studies on the "informal economy" as well as from field research in Mexico City. One of the criticisms of street vending noted above is its ability to evade taxation. In I988, the Chamber of Commerce of Mexico City estimated that street vendors evaded more than 500 billion pesos in taxes-or U.S. $200 million dollars-and for I989 they estimated that evasion would total more than 477 billion pesosso percent more than the city collected in taxes in the first half of that year! 12 (CANACO I987; I99o). The CANACO added that, "The biggest evil of the toleration of ambulatory establishments is an enormous and growing production of fellow citizens untrained for the jobs that the growth and development of the nation now demands" ( I990:46). A third factor that may be detrimental to the economy is the sale of large amounts of imported goods, especially electronic goods, in many cases smuggled past lax customs agents. The role of Tepito in the smuggling trade was underlined by sev12 Most of these claims are probably vastly exaggerated. While vendors certainly evade taxes, many vendors pay sales tax when they purchase their merchandise (although not on the added value when they resell it), and fresh food vendors are exempted from sales tax. The vast majority of vendors do not qualify to pay business income tax and, while they evade personal income tax, it would usually not amount to more than r 5 percent of their net income. If, as the CANACO assumed, vendors sold a total of 1.5 billion pesos (U.S. $soo million) of goods during the year, assuming they enjoyed an average mark-up of 50 percent and assuming that business costs and losses consumed 20 percent of their earnings, their total evasion of sales taxes would amount to approximately U.S. $ro million, while their evasion of income tax would be about U.S. $2o million. In other words, total evasion would be only U.S. $30 million at most, and probably closer to $ro million-far less than the CANACO claimed.

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era! highly publicized mafia-style killings among vendors and distributors from the area as they arranged purchases of merchandise. The police claimed that the killings were the result of a war between rival gangs of smugglers fighting for control of the market. Certainly, warehouses full of expensive electronic goods are common and very easy to identify in the neighborhood, leading many to assume that they operate with the "tolerance" of customs officials. Some business leaders have even gone so far as to claim that each vendor eliminates two formal jobs-one in commerce and one in industry. However, this claim ignores the fact that small commercial outlets sell only about 30 percent of what large stores sell per employee. Thus, even assuming that street vendors have the same efficiency level as small stores, it would take three vendors to sell the same amount as one worker in a formal store. On the other hand, street vendors appear to provide an outlet for small industry or for the dumping of outmoded products by large producers, particularly for the clothes industry where the CANACO estimated that 95 percent of the products were of national origin (I990:39). Finally, there is no reason to suppose that street vendors sell imported goods in any greater quantity than established stores, where imported goods frequently benefit from an anti-Mexican bias on the part of the middle class. 13 Furthermore, as an outlet for 13 Fernando Sanchez, the leader of an organization of tianguis turns this argument around, claiming that large stores and supermarkets represent "disloyal" competition for his members because they use international capital to finance the wholesale purchase of goods. When a supermarket forced the removal of several of his members' stalls, he threatened to call a march and take officials through the supermarket to see all the imported products they sold. 14 The generally low open employment rate in Mexico is largely credited to the large informal sector. Urban unemployment is one of the lowest in Latin America. It reached only 6.6 percent at the height of the economic crisis in 1983 and then dropped to 2.6 percent in 1991. In comparison, the rate for Latin America as a whole grew to 10.1 percent in 1985 and was at 8.1 percent in 1991 (PREALC 1992). 15 lnformal fringe benefits also exist, however. For example, all employees I spoke with said employers paid for their meals and in some cases helped

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new manufacturers, street vending provides an important way for entrepreneurs to get around the virtual monopoly that established manufacturers have of supermarket shelf space. Bromley notes: Strong links ... exist between street trading and many forms of large and medium scale businesses. Street traders represent an important distribution system for many Colombian importers and manufacturers and for several multinational companies. They are particularly significant for the sale of cheap manufactured goods that are consumed frequently and in small quantities, for example, cigarettes, matches, confectionery, and newspapers. In such cases, street traders provide a lowcost, labor-intensive distribution system, which works long hours and involves virtually no commitment or responsibility for the manufacturer or wholesaler. (1978b:II64-65).

Furthermore, by using their own savings and labor productively, street vendors are able to employ themselves, preventing the growth of social problems associated with unemployment. Indeed, in I987 a major advertising campaign was launched in Mexico City by the National Publicity Council (Consejo Nacional de Publicidad), a private industry group, extolling citizens to learn a trade and "Employ yourself fully-Employ yourself." When street vending later came under attack in the press, a columnist drew attention to this advertising campaign, asking sarcastically, "What before was a source of pride is today a grave crime?" (La Jornada Ih3/90:22). While street vending was not suggested as a trade, the campaign was blamed by many people for having legitimized the practice. 14 Certainly, if the objective of the advertising campaign was to get people to "employ themselves," street vending fulfilled with unexpected expenses, such as medical bills for employees they trust and wish to retain, especially when they are family or fictive kin. The relative lack of control over these employees, compared with the control formal stores enjoy, however, may allow for substantially higher income. By selling goods at a higher cost than that reported to the owner of the stall, such employees can often double or triple their incomes. The ability to trust the employee is therefore far more important in the informal economy, causing vendors to employ family members or simply to rent out the stall. The need to trust employees limits the number of stalls such an enterprise can manage.

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this objective. Indeed, when Keith Hart first used the concept of "informal economy," it was in this positive sense of investing personal savings in a way that could be managed by the individual. As he stated: The "entrepreneurs" of this paper are primarily savers, that is persons who do not consume all their income and who seek avenues for productive investment rather than hoard their savings. As there is no advanced capital market for savings, in order that their stock of wealth may give rise to increased flow of income they must invest in various forms of enterprise which they manage themselves. Their investment is productive in that they purchase fixed capital assets or deploy savings as working capital for enterprises producing goods and services. (I970:II3)

What about the effect of street vending on those involved in it? How beneficial is it for them? Certainly, not all street vendors are successful independent businessmen. Income levels are largely a matter of opportunity as well as resource capacity. However, the resources are not the same as those for formal businesses. For example, the ability to use family members to purchase merchandise or man the stall is an important resource that is difficult to quantify but which substantially increases the earnings of the family. Entrance costs are lower because of the lack of expensive and time-consuming legal requirements, but it is not free. The most lucrative areas of the city are controlled by associations that may charge large fees to allow new vendors in, and to open up new areas frequently leads to conflict with the city. or payments to city officials to receive status as "tolerated" vendors. In either case, "contacts" are very important, and probably go a long way toward explaining the low numbers of recent immigrants among street vendors. Besides getting the actual stall, the vendor must secure a supplier that gives the individual a competitive supply cost relative to other vendors, given the high degree of competition between them. Frequently, this means buying from wholesalers in the case of food, importers in the case of electronics goods, or direct from factories in the case of clothes (CANACO I990). Again, knowledge of these supply sources is necessary.

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A large number of street vendors are so dependent upon a single supplier that in many senses they are not independent vendors but actually employees of their distributors. For example, Bromley estimated that 3 5 percent of street vendors in Cali, Columbia, fell into this category (Bromley 1978b). In Mexico City, given the different forms of street vending, the percentage that fall into this category is difficult to estimate. Vendors who sell expensive electronic goods do not have the capital to purchase them and sell on commission for distributors who in many cases receive them from smugglers. Thus, these vendors along with many of the same ice cream and hot dog vendors that Bromley mentions are undoubtedly "disguised workers." The difference between these vendors and those who buy on credit, such as most clothes vendors, is only marginal, although in the latter case the vendor assumes greater risks and has greater flexibility in setting prices. Many vendors, however, see their economic independence as too valuable to establish these types of relationships, preferring to assume the entire risk over their merchandise by paying for products in cash. This observation is particularly true among food vendors, whose large turnover allows the vendor to recoup the cost of their investment within a day or two. For example, when an agricultural producer in a meeting with tianguis leaders offered to extend credit to vendors who purchased his products, he was roundly rejected by the leaders. One leader told him that their members preferred to be able to choose among different suppliers in order to get the best price and quality, and credit relationships tended to reduce their ability to choose. "If you offer the best price and quality, they will give you cash," he added. In the same manner, many vendors prefer to sell cheap goods instead of expensive goods because they are easier to purchase with cash and thus the independence of the vendor is not compromised. Besides, while large commissions may be earned on stereo sets, sales are sporadic and cannot be guaranteed on a daily basis. On the other hand, many vendors-particularly in the lucrative streets of the city center-use employees to help them sell, particularly when excess family labor is unavailable. Typically, the daily

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wage for these employees is slightly above the official minimum wage to make up for the lack of formal fringe benefits.H Some owners of stalls may be too old to sell or have other obligations, or simply have several different stalls that they control, and therefore leave their stalls entirely in the hands of employees. For example, when the Delegation Cuauhtemoc listed the named owners of stalls in the delegation, they found that some individuals controlled up to I8 different stalls. While this practice is technically not allowed by the city, it is fairly common, particularly for leaders who can supervise their employees directly. Given the scarcity of stall space in these areas, many young people begin vending as employees of other vendors until a stall space opens up or they are able to join the invasion of a new street. In many cases, they still prefer working informally to working for a formal store, where control would be stricter, income often lower, and taxes and other obligations would be subtracted from the weekly check. Furthermore, selling in the street puts them in daily contact with leaders or delegates who can help them obtain stalls when these become available, meaning that informal employment on the street offers an advantage few formal employee positions can meet-the opportunity to become selfemployed or even an employer. The informal relationship between employer and employee in these situations is often another attraction. Because obtaining alternative employment in the street market is far easier, given the fact that employees are daily in contact with many other potential employers, bosses try to increase the personal loyalty of their employees by restraining their demands on them and by offering additional benefits when sales are high.

Conclusion As I have shown, street vending in Mexico City is a complex socio-economic phenomenon that can be seen from a variety of different angles. From the perspective of most vendors, vending is a profession that, while uncomfortable or demanding, is generally considered well worthwhile. The ability to control one's work

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pace and to have greater control over income are powerful incentives that go beyond the rather simple question of whether vendors earn more or less than formal workers. In addition, street vendors can use family labor far more flexibly to meet family subsistence or savings needs. Above all, street vending seems to be valued as a way of obtaining more control over one's own life-an ability to cheat the growing proletarianization and alienation of industrial life-that appeals to those who value their independence. In this context, many vendors are worried about changes in the economic and political situation in Mexico that may affect how or whether they will be allowed to continue this lifestyle. As one young vendor commented, "I just wish I could be a tianguista forever. I don't ever want the tianguis to disappear." In its efficient and economical distribution of goods and services, street vending also appears to perform an important macroeconomic role, which, added to its role in providing sustenance for hundreds of thousands of families, may have much to do with the relative ease with which Mexico has, in the last 12 years, gone through two devastating economic recessions with comparatively little social and political dislocation. On the other hand, the lack of control over street vending has led to a number of problems that are used by state officials andestablished businesses to argue that street vending in any form, and especially in the city center, must be eliminated. These problems range from "disloyal" competition with more respectable established stores, evasion of taxes, traffic flow problems in key commercial areas and, particularly acute for a city proud of its historical heritage, the "despoilment" of the beauty of the Historical Center. Even when these claims are exaggerated or erroneous, they are important factors in the political equation of street vending.

CHAPTER FIVE

Street Vendors and the State Co-optation, Competition, and Resistance

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M A J oR 1 T Y of regular street vendors in Mexico City belong to associations ranging in size from a few dozen to 7,ooo members. This is not, however, simply the result of "grassroots" organizing. Rather, as I will show, it is a direct result of administrative procedures requiring individuals to form part of a "recognized association" before being allowed to sell in the street. Furthermore, most of these associations are affiliated with the PRI. Typically, scholars of social movements in Mexico have defined such relations as co-optation or clientelism that serves the general interests of the Mexican state, supporting the idea generally accepted among such authors that the Mexican state most closely reflects a "strong- polity" model. I will question this model of the Mexican state by showing how the very mechanisms by which the political apparatus has attempted to co-opt street vendors into the system have given these vendors and particularly their leaders the ability continuously to thwart the attempts of administrative officials to control them. We shall see that by forcing street vendors to form or join civil associations before granting them a "tolerance" to sell in the street, the political-administrative apparatus creates and then solidifies for street vendor leaders positions as authoritarian urban caciques who are then able to overcome the "free-rider" problem of social movements by threatening to prevent members from selling in their area. But even though they are a product of the system, the HE vAs T

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interests of these leaders are often at odds with city policies. Not only are their direct interests served by expanding the area and number of vendors they control, which is the source of their income and power, but they are also compelled to defend their members' interests; if an association fails to do so, the fragmentation of vendors into multiple competing associations-also usually seen as a method of social control-provides vendors with the option, albeit not one without some cost, of leaving that association. Thus, I will show that street vendor leaders have become not only political but also economic intermediaries between officials and vendors, with an entrepreneurial incentive to produce tangible "goods" for their members-lucrative space on the street-or be left without followers as their members "vote with their feet" to go to other areas to sell. After discussing the clientelist relations between street vendors and the state, this chapter analyzes four cases of competition between groups of street vendors in Mexico City to show how the administrative ability of the state to control street vending has been undermined by the political relations between vendors and state officials. In each case city officials had stated policy goals to limit vending and the opportunity to take advantage of conflict between vendors to implement these goals; yet they have been unable to do so. On the contrary, in two of the cases, and possibly a third, the number of vendors increased as a direct result of state intervention. Nor was this phenomenon limited to vendors affiliated with the PRI. In fact, the only group that clearly lost out in any of these conflicts was a PRI-affiliated group competing with vendors affiliated with an opposition party for control of a vendor association.

Street Vendors and Clientelism The relations between ruling or mainstream political parties and "marginal" groups such as street vendors has typically been described as one of clientelism by most studies of this phenomenon-particularly in the developing world. In the literature, how-

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ever, clientelism implies that the client group is reduced to a form of relatively powerless reliance on the co-opting power, and that the exchange of benefits between the two groups is unequal. Typically it is argued that the client group is required to restrict its political and economic goals and, in exchange for political activism on behalf of the co-opting group, is given only a small portion of its original demands. In most cases this occurs through the specific co-optation or corruption of the "natural" leader of the client group. The high level of organization of street vendors, and the affiliation of most organizations with the PRI, seem to provide ample evidence that co-optation has been immensely successful: Street vending is considered illegal by city officials but "tolerated" under an administrative system that requires each vendor to be a member of an established and officially recognized organization of vendors. Administratively, this policy is designed to limit the growth of vending and simplify the procedures for controlling it, since officials can negotiate with the leaders of the organizations who are then entrusted with enforcing limits on their members. 1 At the same time, this policy tends to cement the leaders in their positions because they are the only ones within each organization to have direct access to officials and political allies. However, this policy also gives the leaders substantial power not only over their own members-vendors who do not submit to their authority can be ejected from the market-but also relative to the same officials who create them. That is, the leaders can use their membership base politically and financially to outmaneuver low-level officials charged with controlling them and to appeal to higher-level administrators and politicians, effectively establishing clientelistic relations that undercut the administrative power of the city. 1As an official at COABASTO noted, the organizations were created "because the authorities want to control them. The representatives (of the street vendor associations) are brokers (gestores) between the vendors and the administration."

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Politically, the organization of vendors has benefited the official party since, historically, affiliation with the PRI has been the best guarantee of receiving the required "tolerances" from the city. But while vendor organizations affiliated with the PRI constantly refer to their "loyalty" to the party in their correspondence (and often attack the "loyalty" of their opponents, even if they are also PRI affiliated), mere affiliation has never been sufficient. Vendor organizations, like all other popular organizations, have always required the support of key individuals-patrons-who could push their claims through and usually over the bureaucratic process. Opposition parties also benefit: Recent political reforms have created a number of elected politicians from opposition parties who have substantial contact with officials-and this is particularly true of the Partido Revolucionario Democnitico (PRD), which began as a splinter movement of left-wing elements of the PRI itself. Whether affiliated with the PRI or with the opposition, most vendors appear little concerned about the political allegiance of the street vendor association they belong to. As an official at COABASTO noted, "The vendor in general has the affiliation of the pennies-he tends to go to where there is more help." However, once they are in one political party or the other, he added, they are "an important part of the political system of the country. Those in the front row ... are the vendors." Interviews and observations in various street market sites bear out this statement. 2 Despite their political apathy or alternative orientations, two factors have combined to cause most street vendors to become af2For example, a vendor who sold in a large organization affiliated with the PRI was required to go to many political rallies but sent his worker instead because he did not like the PRI. Likewise, in a tianguis affiliated with the leftwing opposition Partido Revolucionario Democr:itico (PRD), where I was doing field work with a family of vendors during the 1991 election campaign, street market leaders guided PRD candidates for city and national offices through the market, where they spoke to vendors and solicited contributions under the watchful eyes of the leaders. The family I was with actually supported the right-wing opposition party Partido de Acci6n Nacional (PAN) but felt obliged to give a small contribution and regularly sent some members of their family to PRD political rallies.

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filiated with the PRI. First, the question of the "legal constitution" of vendor associations is typically manipulated to favor groups affiliated with the PRI. In reality this has far less to do with "legal constitution"-a fairly simple procedure before a notary public in which the vendors agree to form a civil association-than it has to do with official recognition of the association as one with a valid right to occupy a given area. Since the recognition of new organizations has been technically against city policy since 1984, this is a highly politicized process. The lack of clear guidelines opens the door to corruption, favoritism, and political intrigue. Invariably, the delegation Market Office turns down official requests for recognition, and the group is forced go around them by requesting other agencies and PRI offices to put pressure on the intransigent officials, using marches, rallies, and sit-ins to get attention. The constant circulation of officials among administrative, electoral, and party posts gives vendors affiliated with the PRI one traditional advantage over opposition-party vendors. Support from patrons within the PRI, once obtained, is not as likely to be ignored as requests from other parties when officials know their own political future may be influenced by the patron. Furthermore, because of their delicate position within the political structure, officials are wary of cooperating with groups from opposition parties. This became evident, despite official denials, in discussions with officials and street vendors in various parts of the city. New groups that had affiliated with the PRD (the principal leftist opposition to the PRI) in particular were seen as highly suspect. For example, when a group of vendors in the downtown area rebelled against their PRI-affiliated leader, they were sponsored by the leader of a PRD-affiliated confederation of land invaders. The PRI-affiliated leader used their new affiliation against them to try to deny them control of the area they had sold in while they were members of her association. In private interviews with the author as well as in a meeting between high-level officials and the vendors, officials constantly underscored the difficulty the vendors had caused for themselves by "deserting" the PRI. (Although offi-

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cials put impediments in their way, the vendors were finally successful.) Another example comes from a semirural section of the Federal District. While the official in charge of the Market Office told me very sincerely about a number of programs he was implementing to decrease the number of vendors in the delegation, when I later went on patrol with several of the inspectors assigned to his office they pointed to a vendor crossing the street with her goods in a shopping cart and told me, "She has a permit because she is wearing a green frock," that is, the color worn by members of an association affiliated with the CNOP (a sector of the PRI). They added, "Many vendors are joining them because they are giving out permits." Later that same day we ran across a vendor without a permit. After threatening to take away her merchandise if she could not get a permit by the next day, they suggested that she should talk to the leader of the association affiliated with the PRI to get one. The favoritism shown to organizations affiliated with the PRI appears to benefit the ruling party in a number of ways. First, it is not unusual for vendors to believe that the PRI itself is directly responsible for giving them their permits-and thus their livelihoods. Vendors rarely deal directly with city officials, but receive most of their needs directly from their associations, which are very specific about their affiliations-with PRI slogans and logos painted on their offices and included in their letterheads and credentials. These reminders should orient them favorably toward the PRI in their voting behavior. 3 3 Many are cynical about the voting behavior of street vendors. As one official at COABASTO joked sarcastically, "Those guys don't vote, that's for sure. The most they do is rob the ballot boxes." But during the 1994 elections, in which the PRI defied many analysts by winning more than 50 percent of the popular vote despite high turnout, I was surprised by vendors in a number of areas who, after listing a litany of complaints associated with the plaza construction program forced on them by the government (see Chapter 7), said they would vote for the PRI because it was the only party that had helped their group.

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Another benefit, perhaps more important historically, has been the mobilization of vendors to provide "mass numbers" at rallies, to make political contributions, to distribute propaganda, and, in periods of extreme crisis, to act as "shock troops." In the face of constant questions about the legitimacy of electoral victories by the PRI, organized demonstrations of mass public support have been vital to restoring the appearance of legitimacy. In some cases, these numbers can be obtained by busing in peasants or workers. However, peasants are expensive to bring into the capital city in large numbers (more so as neighboring ejidos have been engulfed by the urban sprawl of the city). Workers have become unreliable in their loyalties to the PRI since PRJ-affiliated trade unions passively allowed salaries to drop precipitously during the 198o's. On the other hand, street vendors are right in the capital, and owe a constant debt to the political system, because their "tolerances" are constantly subject to question and must be repeatedly renegotiated through political activity. This factor is more important in periods of political instability than in periods of stability. For example, speaking about Lopez Portillo, the unpopular Mexican President of the late 1970's, one vendor complained: Oh, how that one pulled us! Go here! Go there! And since no-one followed him, we were the only sheep that would go. There were times that they had us there all day-they gave us a soft drink and our torta [sandwich] for the whole day. And there they had us standing without moving. We had to applaud ... and the delegates [of the market) would tell us "you have to go or we'll punish you." They were told, "You have to bring your people, or you don't work." It was as if nobody followed him and it was just the [street vendors] who were the only ones. Can you imagine, already tired from the stall? And sometimes you returned at ro at night or I r. They have charged us with having us go to support them."

This practice continues today: During the PRI's midterm convention in September 1990, the largest street vendor associations of the downtown area left their stalls empty for the day to attend the large public rally celebrating the closing of the convention in

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the Sports Palace. During the 1991 and 1994 elections such groups of vendors were prominent at political rallies. Almost all organizations are involved in campaigning in one way or another. Leaders are expected to bring their members to rallies, to resell tickets to political fundraisers to their members, and, as the above quote suggests, they are often expected to send members to everyday political events such as the opening of markets, streets, roads, and processions of government officials. 4 But despite the favoritism given to groups affiliated with the PRI, the number of street vendors affiliated with opposition political parties has grown since the mid-198o's as organizations have broken away from the PRI, and opposition parties have gained more political access. One of the first and most important of these was the Confederation of Merchants and Popular Organizations (CCOP by their Spanish acronym), a confederation of organizations made up almost exclusively of tianguis vendors, which officially broke away from the PRI during the 1988 presidential campaign. Paradoxically, this group was most severely attacked by city 4 0ne of the darker potential uses of street vendors emerged during the r968 student movement. During the period leading up to the Tlatelolco massacre (in which hundreds of students were killed by government troops in a desperate attempt to end what they believed was a full-scale student revolt just before the r968 summer Olympics), students began taking more and more control over the city. When they began forming unofficial street markets in and around high schools, city officials saw a way to align market and street vendors on their side. They called all the officially recognized leaders to a meeeting in the municipal palace, and, according to one of the invited leaders, "They wanted the organized merchants to attack (the students) . . . shouting that they were threatening our source of work." Furthermore, the officials promised that "there would be no jail even if there were wounded. And they allowed us to carry chains, knives, even firearms." The plan was never carried out, the leader claimed, because some of the leaders threatened to take the proposal to the press. The use of such "shock troops," called porristas (cheerleaders) because of their mindless support of the government, was notorious throughout the period. But it is impossible to tell to what extent, if any, street vendor organizations were used in this manner. More recently, some PRI leaders have used their members to stage counter-rallies at protest marches by opposition vendors.

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officials before they broke away from the PRI and while they were supporting an internal dissident segment within the PRI itself.S During this period, officials used a range of negative sanctions, from an organized negative media campaign to the confiscation of previously approved vending areas, all orchestrated by an official who told me his superiors ordered him to "do anything I can" against them. The problems with the CCOP began in 1985 during the midterm elections. While still affiliated with the PRI, it supported the reformist "Democratic Current" movement within the PRI led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who later split from the PRI to run as an independent candidate. 6 Several of the leaders in the confederation also ran for congressional seats as members of the leftist Partido Popular Socialista (PPS). In reaction to these signs of disloyalty the administration began to look for ways to undercut it. In March 1985, city and PRI officials supported (and also instigated, according to the CCOP) a rebellion by a delegate of one of the leaders in the CCOP. 7 That the leader was a PPS candidate for congress and had allegedly required vendors to support him was the only reason given by the delegate for his rebellion. A year later the city supported another separatist move by a delegate who controlled more 5 This discussion is based on interviews with leaders and members of the CCOP, newspaper reports, interviews with officials, and files on the organization kept by COABASTO. 6 Cardenas was passed over as the PRI's presidential candidate with the nomination of Carlos Salinas de Gortari. He then became a "unity" candidate for a coalition of left-wing opposition parties in the 1988 elections and officially came in second. Many Mexicans believe, however, that he was the real victor. He later formed the PRD as the main left-wing opposition party, but other left-wing parties refused to join it, and it fell to a distant third place in the 1991 elections. 7The "delegate" represents the leader in the street markets in large organizations where there may be various different work sites each day in different parts of the city and hundreds or thousands of vendors to control and collect fees from. Payment is usually a portion of the fees collected from the market. Given their everyday contact with the vendors, the delegates often become more familiar to the vendors than the actual leaders. When the leader's position with authorities has been weakened, the delegate may capitalize on this by taking control of the market with the backing of authorities.

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than 20 tianguis plazas. In all, the city stripped the CCOP of dozens of plazas with thousands of vendor stalls between 198 5 and 1988-plazas that CCOP leaders had controlled for more than a decade-and broke its own regulations when it recognized the separatists as new organizations. Furthermore, a series of internal memos in COABASTO during the period followed changes in the membership of the CCOP and accused them of being uncooperative with city "modernization" plans as well as infiltrating other organizations and provoking violent confrontations. The memos made clear that the CCOP was seen as a significant threat that merited close attention. Newspaper reports of the time, which painted the CCOP's leaders as bandits, confirm that the conflict was not just with COABASTO, but with other government offices and the PRI's Federation of Popular Organizations (a subunit of the CNOP), with which almost all street vendor organizations, including the CCOP, were affiliated at the time. Paradoxically, after the 1988 elections, with the CCOP officially aligned with the opposition, the attacks were dropped. While the CCOP continued supporting opposition party candidates in regional elections and during the 1991 elections, it was no longer subject to negative sanctions. In areas where the CCOP operated, almost all officials interviewed had a good impression of the organization, even though many noted that its affiliation with the political opposition was a point against it. As Fernando Sanchez, the President of the CCOP, noted, "Now that we are no longer in the official party, it appears that the government is respecting our organization more than before." An aggressive campaign of wining and dining city officials-sponsoring breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with the high officials in each delegation and city-wide agencies on a regular basis, and giving free tickets to these and PRI officials for association dances and festivals-has helped re-cement alliances on a personal and organizational level with the city administrative apparatus. But another important factor is that by 1988 opposition parties were already allowed into middle-range electoral positions such as

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the Federal House of Deputies and even the Senate, where the PRD had two elected members. One of the leaders of the CCOP was also a PRD Federal Deputy. While PRI organizations still had the upper hand, the political opening also provided a "clientelist" openmg. But what is the nature of clientelism in these cases? If one asks the PRJ-affiliated street vendor leaders directly, clientelism appears to be one-sided as they deny having any political influence. In an interview with Guillermina Rico, the leader of one of the largest organizations of vendors in the city, she claimed, "The PRI doesn't help us in anything; rather we as Priistas have to fight for the PRI. Just because I'm a Priista I'm not going to bring the president of the PRI so that he can help me, but as a Priista I have to fight so that my people can continue onwards." But a high official at COABASTO, asked if he would agree, answered, "No, no, she is very strong. She can stage a rally of 5,000 people in the Z6calo. If lower officials refuse to cooperate with her, she can threaten to pull down a mountain of higher officials on his head. It is better for him to simply accede and let her get her way. So, if somebody wants a stall, they go to her and she tells them for so much and then gives then a space. And only then does she do the paperwork with the delegation. " 8 As the following discussion will show, the framework of clientelism has not only allowed political figures to benefit from the organization of street vendors, but has also allowed street vendors to resist and thwart administrative attempts to control or limit their numbers and to establish and defend a system of informal "rights" to their commercial activity on the street. 8 Despite her modesty, this leader could get help from the president of the PRI. During my field research, she was also invited several times to state dinners at Los Pinos, the presidential residence. While her organization was probably one of the most active in its support of the PRI (attending rallies regularly and showing constant support for President Salinas) its size and centrality-controlling the most lucrative streets in the city-suggests that its strategy paid off.

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3I

Four Conflicts over Space This section will lay out two connected arguments that form one basis of the theoretical argument of this book. If it is true that street vendors have successfully used organizational resources to prevent the state from challenging their status, it must be made clear how those organizational resources are mobilized and utilized. First, I argue that attempts to remove or contain street vendors in a given area have usually resulted in those vendors organizing to defend "their" work area, and city policies favor the establishment of a single representative in each organization who is expected to control other vendors. Second, this very authoritarian nature of street vendor organizations makes them successful in dealing with city officials because it allows street vendor leaders to mobilize their members to pressure or reward officials. The following discussion briefly relates the history of four conflicts between rival groups of vendors in which city officials had an opportunity to limit the growth of street vending or to control street vending organizations. The first two cases show conflict between entirely separate groups of vendors: in each case one already established and recognized and the other originally "unorganized" and without any official recognition. In each case, although the recognized organizations appealed to the city to remove the unorganized vendors, the attempt to do so actually prompted and later hardened organization among the previously unorganized vendors, and the multiplicity of potential allies allowed them ample means to defend their areas. The third and fourth cases represent conflicts within recognized organizations in which rebel vendors attempted to wrest control of the area or the organization itself from the recognized leaders. In these cases a second control factor is used: In one case the recognized leader is affiliated with the PRI while the rebels are affiliated with the opposition PRD; in the other the affiliations are reversed. Although as expected, given the co-optation argument above, city officials tended initially to favor the PRJ-affiliated leaders, these

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groups were not ultimately successful. Indeed, in the fourth case the PRJ-affiliated rebels were defeated while the opposition-affiliated rebels were largely successful. Thus, while city officials attempted to use the conflicts to limit the total numbers of vendors in each area and to favor groups affiliated with the PRI, they did not succeed on either count. On the contrary, the number of vendors grew in those areas where city officials tried most to limit them, and both opposition-affiliated groups were eventually successful. More important, the structural dynamics of city/vendor relations, dynamics largely created by the "co-optative" mechanisms themselves, in each case led to the solidification of the role and strength of the vendor leaders both with respect to their fellow vendors and with respect to city officials. None of these cases was selected in a way to ensure that it was "representative" of such groups or struggles in the city. Rather, each case came to my attention during the course of my research, and cases were selected primarily because they offered opportunities to observe conflict in progress. Except for the second case, based entirely on files located in COABASTO, they were all studied from early in the actual conflict-long before the outcome was known-through observations and interviews with the leaders, members, and officials concerned, and over intensive periods of three to four months, with a follow-up process lasting several years in each case. Although it is impossible to claim that such a small sample of cases fully represent the political processes street vendors go through, interviews with officials and comparison with other cases more briefly studied indicate that they are not atypical. Furthermore, the fact that the outcomes were unknown at the time of selection mitigate against the possibility that they were selected unconsciously to strengthen a particular argument. In the following discussion, all personal and place names have been altered to prevent identification of the individuals involved. "EL CENTRO"

El Centro, a traditional working class neighborhood next to the Historical Center, was a suburb of the original Aztec capital of

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Tenochtitlan and an Indian ghetto during the colonial period. During the market construction period in the 1950's, public markets were built to replace thousands of wooden shacks that formed the center of a thriving street market, and provided homes for many merchants. But the street market was never completely destroyed, and by 1972 new organizations had been recognized in the area. Later, to increase their negotiating power with the city, the organizations formed a single confederation. Subsequent disagreements between leaders caused it to split into two rival confederations. Later, a new single confederation was formed, but this one also split, following the two most powerful leaders in the area. One, representing almost So percent of the vendors in the area will be called the "Conglomeration," while the other will be called the "Federation." Both are affiliated with the PRI, although each has different "sponsors" within the PRJ-state apparatus. For example, the Conglomeration was well connected with local city officials, to the point that one of its most important members was hired by the local delegation as an advisor to the Subdelegate in charge of Governance. The Federation, on the other hand, boasted about highlevel contacts within the PRJ's party structure itself. When a new major thoroughfare bisected the neighborhood, the city negotiated an agreement with the 21 organizations in the area to leave the thoroughfare clear of vendors. Nevertheless, the vendor associations began a slow invasion of the thoroughfare. The street was occupied by unorganized vendors who made arrangements directly with Market Office inspectors through the payment of daily or weekly bribes. After years in which some of these vendors organized as associations and others were incorporated into already existing associations, only a two-block area with approximately 30 vendors remained unorganized. These vendors were directly in front of market stalls built by the city in the 197o's but rented at a nominal cost to vendors affiliated with the leader of the Conglomeration. In 1990 the leader began negotiations with the city to privatize the stalls, with an estimated market value of $250 million pesos (U.S. $82,500) each, according to one official. At the same time, he also began developing plans for a

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mall-style market for 400 of his members in which each stall would have an estimated value of more than U.S. $5o,ooo. When the unorganized vendors threatened to undercut the commercial value of the property, the leader began pushing to have them removed from the area. To back up his claim he pulled out his copy of the previous agreement, long since forgotten by city officials. 9 In March 1991 the city began to remove the unorganized vendors, who initially did not know how to respond. Officials claimed that the entire thoroughfare was being cleared of vendors, but when no other group was removed, the unorganized vendors began to protest. One of them (to be called Roberta), a forceful woman who knew some of the other leaders, began to emerge as a leader. Looking for allies, Roberta first asked for the support of a local official who was also on the Board of Directors of another vendor organization. However, the ally tried to take over leadership of Roberta's organization, threatening to embroil it in a conflict with another powerful group of vendors in the area. As the two leaders distributed flyers charging each other with various "abuses," Roberta asked for support from the Federation, which helped to organize the vendors formally and, over time, to establish negotiations with the delegation. The city still refused to allow them to return to the area, however, and they were removed violently in April. In response they staged rallies outside the delegation and city hall, held all-night vigils in their work area, and when the city let up its vigilance, they set up their stalls to retain their rights to the area. They also 9Since officials change at least once every three years and frequently far more often, and old files are usually "archived" with each change of officials, such agreements are typically ignored by the city itself after a few years, and sometimes only months, of signing. Since vendor organizations keep their own copies, and typically are led by the same leader or leadership clique for decades, they can pull their copies out when it is useful for their own purposes. It also did not hurt this group's cause that one of their members was employed by the local city offices as an advisor on street vending, nor that their leader had a long history in local politics, helping to organize (and, some rumors claim, spreading the benefits of) various "urban renewal" projects in the area.

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tripled their membership, adding 90 new members with the promise that, if they were successful, they would have access to one of the most lucrative areas of street vending in the city. Although they had been able to sell for only six days between mid-April and late May, this proved too much for the Conglomeration, which accused the city of corruption in failing to remove the vendors. In late May they sent out a series of flyers calling for a rally at the Delegation. The centerpiece of the flyers read, "No more invasions on the streets and thoroughfares," and mentioned an invasion by 200 vendors. 10 The rally appeared to have its desired effect, and for the next week the area enjoyed the presence of a large force of market inspectors. However, two weeks after the rally, an altercation between one of the newly organized vendors and the leader of the conglomeration almost led to bloodshed. A vendor threw water on the leader after an argument, and the leader called for support from his members. A rumor spread that someone had beaten up the leader, and hundreds of people came from their stalls to set things right. A large group of vendors appeared with clubs, metal poles, knives, and machetes. Paraphrasing a conversation in which several of the unrecognized vendors discussed their experience, my notes state: When [the] crowd arrived, they were petrified. The metal doors [of the stalls] went down, flap, flap, flap in a row. Only a few vendors were there, and many of them ran to get help from other affiliated groups and members. "I told them not to go because there were only eight of us left," one of them said. Even when others arrived to help them they were very few, and one told them to spread out so that it would look like more people. One said an old man who sold next to her brought a suitcase. "Why did you bring that? It'll get smashed," she told him. He simply opened it to show a machine gun inside. Others also had brought guns. But in general they said they had metal poles and bottles while [their opponents] brought poles and machetes. But they added, "They didn't know why they were there. We did! That's why they didn't attack us." Several commented that their families had been 10 Despite their apparent civic-mindedness, several top members of the conglomeration boasted to me that they themselves had spearheaded most of the recent invasions of streets in the area.

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urging them to forget about the whole business because it was too dangerous."

The two groups never arrived at blows, but the threat of potential violence led the delegation to start looking for a compromise. At first, they suggested to Roberta that if she could get at least half of the original signatories of the I982 agreement to sign a letter stating they would allow her to set up on the thoroughfare, they might be able to permit her to do so. 11 She got six of the I I required signatures, but found it almost impossible to get more. While other leaders said they sympathized with her, they either did not want more competition for themselves or feared the powerful Conglomeration leader too much. A compromise was worked out, however, in which Roberta's group was allowed to occupy a side street off the thoroughfare. Although the area was not immediately big enough to hold all their new members, nor as potentially lucrative as the area they were forced to leave, it represented a base from which they were able to expand in the following months as they became integrated into the political system. By approaching the Federation, the unrecognized vendors were placed in direct contact with the PRI's city-wide apparatus. At this time, the PRI was carrying out internal elections for positions in its Youth Revolutionary Front (Frente Juvenil Revolucionario, FJR) 12 11 This was a strange requirement from a number of perspectives. First, some of the original signatories were dead. Second, the agreement was in effect null and void because almost every organization and the city itself had violated its provisions. More important, the leaders had agreed with the city, not with each other, not to invade the thoroughfare. To state that a majority of the leaders could permit another organization to invade the thoroughfare implied that they, and not the city, controlled access to it. Thus, the city negated its own de jure right to the street and gave legal credence to the de facto rights of the leaders. 12Under the PRI's 1990 "democratization" reforms, internal offices must be filled via secret ballot with open competition between opposing candidates, rather than simply by "acclamation" after being nominated by higher authorities. Another important factor in this case was a cabinet shuffle about this time that reassigned the head of the PRI in the Federal District to the position of General Secretary of Governance of the Federal District (see Chapter

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and Roberta's vendors suddenly found themselves supporting one of the contending candidates. As one vendor noted, "We are just sheep-we are supporting him because hopefully he can help us out." At several rallies they responded with resignation but effectively, cheering and clapping at the appropriate moments although they were not members of the FJR. Just in case someone checked, they were issued random credentials at the market and then asked to hand them in after the rallies. But real credentials were handed out the day before the election, making them all members of the FJR although none of them had applied. Some were given false names and, to the glee of the older vendors, years or even decades were shaved off their ages to make them eligible for membership. Maximizing their effect, the new members voted twice-being bussed to different cities after using paint remover to remove the "indelible" ink placed on their fingers by the PRI's voting officials. 13 The sheer perseverance of the vendors also was vital to their success. By remaining in the area, they forced the Market Office to expend a substantial amount of its human resources and also forced a showdown (albeit unwillingly) with the Conglomeration. "THE TIANGUIS"

The second case also concerns two groups of vendors affiliated with the PRI, although in this case in a middle class residential 7). Federation officials, pleased with the change, boasted that they were wellconnected to him. Not long after this the problems of the new organization were settled. 13 These were only internal elections for positions within the PRI, not the official Mexican midterm elections of 1991. According to most outside electoral supervision teams, the 1991 elections were relatively fraud-free, but internal PRI elections were not supervised by outside agencies and used poor security measures to prevent vote fraud. In the past, however, vendors were regularly bussed to areas where the PRI was weak in order to vote one or more times for the PRI's candidates in general elections. One informant used to look forward to his periodic trips to Morelia-funded by the PRI. While this may continue today, I did not find vendors who still claimed to participate in it.

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suburb in the south of the city. 14 In late 1985, an established tianguis leader complained to a city-wide agency about a group of unauthorized street vendors who were selling near one of their work sites, cutting into their sales. Apparently, a small street-corner market of some 20 vendors had grown during the previous five years until it included r 50 stalls. After making inquiries, the agency concluded that the new group of vendors would have to leave the area because they were not organized into an association and therefore could not be recognized as a tianguis, and in addition, a ban on new vendors and organizations had been ordered by the Secretariat of Governance in 1984. They proposed that the vendors be absorbed into one or more of the surrounding tianguis locations, and removed them from the area. In January 1986, however, a member of the Federal Chamber of Deputies wrote to the director of the agency claiming that neighbors of the street market had complained to him about removal of the vendors, and he requested that they be returned. A week later, in a meeting in which officials of the agency repeated forcefully that the vendors would have to accept relocation, they were surprised when the vendors told them the Federal Deputy and the Director had agreed to recognize them as a tianguis, if they formed a civil association. In a second meeting in which the Director and the Federal Deputy participated, the new group was authorized to sell in the location they had been occupying for four years without any permit. Understandably, Severiano de Ia Rosa, the leader of the established tianguis was quite upset. In a letter dated February 6, 1986 to Fructoso Lopez Cardenas, Delegation Director in Coyoacan, he protested the recognition of the new group, and asked sarcastically "that you make clear to us whether the suspension of authorizations is still current, since we consider it unjust that a group of (unorganized) vendors ... be recognized as a tianguis ... consid14This case is compiled from files of the city-wide agency in question. The agency is not mentioned to avoid identifying the individuals involved.

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ering that we vendors in tianguis have more rights to new authorizations since we support the program of the (government) and are disciplined with our party" (my translation). As in the first case, the removal of an unrecognized group of vendors was requested by another, affiliated with the PRI, that had been recognized for 1 5 years in the area. Besides the complaint, the removal of the vendors was clearly required by the law as well as by the administrative policies of the agencies in question. Furthermore, in each case the removal was initially more or less efficiently carried out. However, by finding a political ally within the PRJ with a close connection to high officials in one of the regulatory agencies, the unregistered group in each case was able to obtain recognition successfully, even though the agencies and officials had to break a direct administrative order to recognize no new groups of vendors. 15 "STATION PLAZA"

The third case occurred outside a downtown metro station where a large street market had sprung up to take advantage of the constant flow of pedestrians between the station and local shops and offices. Their leader (called Karla here) was working with the city to plan a commercial plaza that was to be one of the first constructed under the new plaza program in the Historical Center (discussed in Chapter 7). In anticipation she began raising her fees and insisted on collecting a U.S. $1,ooo "downpayment" from each vendor even though the market would not be ready for more than a year. But 120 of them decided to rebel and, since they were the actual vendors for whom the plaza was to be constructed, they thought they could lay claim to the area where they were selling and the plaza that was to be constructed there. How15 A month after these events, another memo noted that the Federal Deputy was receiving many more requests for support from other groups of vendors. In 1988 the Federal Deputy was elected to an important position in the Federal District Assembly (ARDF), and the Director of the agency, to the Federal Chamber of Deputies.

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ever, the leader sent several groups of men to intimidate the vendors, resulting in a fight and prompting the city to remove all of the vendors to prevent further violence. Despite their recognition that Karla was at fault and their open agreement that she was one of the most abusive and brutal leaders in the city, officials claimed they were forced to support her because she had cooperated with the plaza project, which was of paramount political importance at the moment. Instead of allowing the rebel vendors to occupy the area, city officials dragged on "negotiations" with Karla, offering to allow the rebels to set up their stalls in another area of their choosing in the meantime. The vendors decided to set up in front of the ARDF to get immediate political and media attention and to force the officials to speed up the negotiations and move them back to their original location. At the same time they appealed for help to the leader of a large "popular" organization, comprising mostly land-invader groups, who was affiliated with the leftist opposition PRD. The first move got them a lot of mostly positive attention in the press and from assembly members. The second won them many enemies in the administration, especially since the old leader used their supporter's affiliation against them. Several times key administrators identified the political position of the rebel group as part of the problem, although the rebel vendors said they were apolitical, and had simply requested advice from the opposition leader. Again, in order to meet with administration officials, they were compelled to form a formal association with a board of directors, although their experience with Karla made them reticent to create a new leader in their midst. The person elected as their president tried to deny he was important and insisted on not collecting daily fees. But he was forced to take a leadership role externally, dealing with the press and functioning as the primary contact with the PRD "advisor" and with city officials. The conflict at this point focused around which contender Karla or the rebel vendors-should control the prime commercial area where they had been located before. The rebel vendors argued

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that they should should have the "tolerances" to sell there because they had been there physically when they were members of Karla's organization. But Karla argued that the area belonged to her organization because the "tolerances" had been given to her to distribute among her members. Since the rebels had left her association, she argued, they had lost their right to the area. Rather than assert the city's own control over this area of public property, city officials simply attempted to "negotiate" between the two groups, although they favored Karla's claim since the tolerances had, in effect, been given to the organization and not to any specific vendors. Matters were "solved" by fiat, however, when Karla simply reoccupied the area with several hundred vendors who had been kicked out of the metro system in February 1992. As a result, the rebel vendors were forced to occupy a much poorer commercial area behind their original location, now occupied by Karla's new vendors. The new area was so bad that some of the rebel vendors wanted to return to the ARDF, but such a move would have been politically unfeasible. Karla adopted several strategies to weaken the rebel vendors, including setting up even more stalls (breaking the agreement with the delegation) to block access to the rebels' stalls and luring rebels back to her organization with promises of cash payments. At the same time, officials insisted that the rebels could not be allowed into the new plaza unless they reached an agreement with Karla or forced her out of it. As one high official also noted ominously in a meeting with the rebels, the delegation had no agreements with any organizations affiliated with opposition political parties. 16 16 ln the same meeting the official noted that Karla was being allowed to build up her organization, even if it meant that she expanded her area illegally: "That is her problem. But we need the (plaza) project carried out," he stated. The official apparently toned down his statements because of the presense of the researcher, whom they had tried to block from the meeting by threatening to deny him any access to official documents. Nevertheless, the vendors insisted on his presense as an observer.

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They appeared to be stonewalled as both the delegation and the General Secretary of Governance, at that time in charge of the plaza program, kept delaying and putting off their appointments. But when the responsibility for plaza construction was shifted to a new agency, the "Program for the Improvement of Street Vending" of COABASTO (see Chapter 7), the position of the rebels was greatly improved. The rebel leader had threatened to stage a large protest with support from the PRD, but much more significant, the new officials were under much greater pressure to show rapid results. By incorporating the rebel vendors into the plaza they were able to start construction immediately, although it was now almost double its originally planned size, rather than risk a confrontation that might prevent the plaza from ever openingY "CANAL MARKET"

The Canal Market is a Sunday tianguis located in a commercial area at the edge of Mexico City bordering several densely occupied municipalities of the State of Mexico. Beginning in the late 196o's as a scrap metal market occupying a street next to an open sewage canal, the market went through several official attempts at control before getting completely out of hand. In the 196o's a market was built for vendors of secondhand goods (barateros), but it soon became exclusively used for new tools and hardware supplies-its use to this day. The barateros moved out into the street again, only to be persuaded in the early 197o's to build a concentration of wooden shacks on a strip of land between the canal and the street. But the shacks soon became storage huts and the street became the place of business again. By 1975 the street was securely controlled by a single organization that had itself begun in 17By the summer of 1994 this group was well settled into its market building, one of the few relatively successful markets in the Historical Center because it controlled foot traffic over a busy thoroughfare and most access to the metro station. Still, Karla refused to cooperate with the rebel vendors in the administration and maintenance of the building, threatening to provoke future conflict in the plaza.

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1961. Then, in 1982 a series of splits within the organization broke it into several splinter groups that spread into nearby streets to avoid conflict over territory. Eventually the tianguis filled large areas of the neighborhood with more than 1o,ooo vendors selling everything from scrap metal to clothes and electronics. In one of these splinter groups, consisting of about 500 vendors, the leader (whom I will call Jose) was accused of fraud by his members. He was sentenced to jail in the summer of 1983. An elderly man ("Pedro"), who had been on his board of directors, took over as leader (according to him by acclamation, but according to Jose's allies by fraud). When Jose left jail, he tried to take back control of the organization. Although he was never fully successful, he managed to persuade some of his old followers to ignore Pedro, preventing him from establishing complete control over the market. Thus, there were two competing leaders, although Pedro was clearly dominant. Because of Jose's temporary absence from the tianguis, officials had already recognized Pedro as the new leader, as did the confederation of tianguis organizations to which the association belonged (the CCOP mentioned above, which affiliated with the PRD in 1988), giving him access to officials and blocking access for Jose. Substantial confusion resulted. Some vendors paid fees to one leader and some to the other, while some took advantage of the confusion to refuse to pay anyone. Because of the difficulty of collecting fees, the association charged the lowest fees in the area, and Pedro could barely collect enough to cover the basic costs of the tianguis. 18 Still, many of the vendors were highly indignant and worried that it might affect the market because an impending project to cover the canal might require the relocation of the tianguis. Without a strong leader, they were worried their group might 18 The most important cost in this area was for garbage collection, which Pedro paid. To collect his fees he would follow a fixed path in the market, skipping over stalls that he knew were going to refuse to pay. Others he charged only half the regular fee, apparently because they also paid fees to the other leader.

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get left out. As one complained to Pedro, "Here everyone asks for money, everyone orders, everyone takes away, and when we need help, we don't know who is who. No one wants to help us!" To strengthen his own position within the association, Pedro stressed his contacts with the CCOP and fear of the imminent relocation of the tianguis to persuade vendors to support him. For example, when the city asked each association for a list of its members, he told vendors that the market would be relocated because of plans to pipe the sewer, and only those on his list would be includedY To get vendors to obtain credentials through his office, he followed the same strategy, as field notes show: "Pedro stops at a stall and asks the vendor if she is getting her credential. She ignores him. 'The Tax Department is going to come and you're not going to have a credential,' he warns her. 'Really?' she asks, and says that she will bring her photograph [for the credential] next Sunday." He also made much of his connection to the CCOP: "At another stall Pedro is showing a young man the photos from (a CCOP meeting), pointing out Fernando Sanchez as their leader. 'This is the big honcho?' the boy asks. 'Yes, he's the big honcho, so you know that it isn't just Mr. Pedro by himself.' The boy asks if Sanchez is the leader of this tianguis only. 'No,' Pedro answers, 'he is the leader of all the tianguis in the nation.' The boy seems to doubt him (for good reason)." 20 19In reality, while laying pipes for the unsanitary open sewage canal had been discussed in the press, there were no concrete plans to do so within the next few years. As it turned out, when it was finally carried out before the 1994 elections, the tianguis was not affected at all. 20Another tactic used by this leader was to suggest to wavering vendors that the researcher's presence authenticated his authority in the tianguis, a practice that raised ethical and methodological issues for my research process. At times the leader would insinuate that I was a reporter or had some official capacity. When I could, I tried tactfully to deny the suggestion, but at other times it was impossible to do so without completely undercutting the authority of the leader. To the extent that such vendors were convinced my presence indicated official sanction for the leader, it might have affected the processes I was studying by raising his status. On the other hand, if I had denied that my presence indicated official support in such a way that made the

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Thus, Pedro played on the fears of vendors about relocation, treasury action, and his own exaggerated power to protect them from these rumored threats, hoping to persuade them to identify with him rather than the old leader. But Pedro's problems were also accentuated by the CCOP's break with the PRI and affiliation with the PRD. Jose used the PRD affiliation of the CCOP against Pedro in his own discussions with vendors, claiming that he could better represent them through the PRI, and vendors later raised this argument with Pedro, leading Pedro to dance around the whole issue by claiming that he was really a PRiista even though the organization was technically affiliated with the PRD. Nevertheless, despite his technically more valid claims of loyalty to the PRI, officials still ignored Jose. But a more serious challenge using the same logic came in early 1992 from a splinter group of Jose's followers who, claiming that neither leader represented the market, formed their own leadership clique led by a woman (to be called Maria). A proliferation of flyers from each of the three leadership groups flooded the market as each claimed to represent the best interests of the vendors and as charges and counter-charges were made by each leader against the others. The new clique met several times, and Maria claimed to have been elected by a quorum of the members of the association, although very few of the 500 members ever seemed to appear at the meetings. They also made much of their loyalty and support for the PRI, which they contrasted with Pedro's "disloyalty" for supporting an opposition party. In their flyers they claimed to have support from a list of PRI officials, although those I spoke leader appear to be a liar, my intervention would have had the opposite effect. As it was, I was also interested in the way the leader used my presence to legitimate his position, a practice that very probably would have occurred anyway behind my back or even without any explicit statement on the part of the leader. (I was on numerous occasions identified spontaneously as a reporter or official by vendors in various street markets because of my notetaking activity.) Thus, I decided to refrain from commenting except in extreme cases in order to study the process by which leaders and vendors "explained" my presence in a favorable light.

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with said they had merely been presented to the vendors in a meeting with a congressman who appeared to be supporting them. But since Pedro was supported by a powerful federation, even if affiliated with the opposition, the local PRI office did not feel secure enough to support Maria's leadership clique without proof they enjoyed support in the market. Thus, the new group was obliged to call a new meeting to "confirm" their election as the official representatives of the market, this time with the attendance of PRI officials and neighboring leaders. An official from COABASTO also was invited, but left before the meeting began upon seeing that it was sparsely attended.zt Only 50 vendors arrived. When a neighboring leader claimed this was not a quorum of the soo members of the organization, he was forcefully ejected from the room. Despite the fact that the new clique claimed reelection at the meeting, it was a dismal failure, with neither the PRI nor the city committing itself to supporting the new group. The following week, when I saw Pedro again, he was elated, claiming that he had won a great victory and was able to consolidate his hold over the market. Two years later Pedro's control of the tianguis was stronger but still not complete. Both Jose and Maria were still members-and still refusing to pay fees-but their followers had decreased significantly.

Organization as a Response to Repression These case studies illustrate the form conflict takes around street vending and the process by which it becomes politicized. As noted previously, vendors have been required to join organizations in order to sell in the public thoroughfare, whether with actual permits or under "tolerance." In the first two examples we see that 21 The official bumped into me as he was exiting and specifically asked me not to tell anyone in his office that he had gone to the meeting. It was not clear why, but office politics at COABASTO appeared to be particularly thick around this issue.

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the process of becoming organized is in itself a political process that usually starts when an unorganized group of vendors without permits are repressed by the city. That the group might have existed for years before the city takes action against it makes no difference-it is quite normal for small groups of vendors to "escape" the attention of higher level officials while street inspectors charge small bribes from the vendors on a daily or weekly basis. Indeed, as long as it is possible to do so, it is probably quite rational for vendors to pay bribes rather than organize, since organization entails its own costs. Officials quite freely admit that bribes are commonplace,22 although naturally none admit taking them themselves. Bribe collection from unorganized vendors can continue as long as powerful interest groups do not push for their removal. These third parties could be an organized group of vendors (as in these examples), a public market, a large business or local business associations (as in the case of the Historical Center), the local association of residents, or even, in some cases, a state agency. Complaints by groups that are not able to bring pressure to bear on the Market Office are unlikely to have an effect, however, because the street inspectors can take temporary action and allow the vendors to return later. 23 22 0ne high official expounded a psychological theory to explain the phenomenon: Vendors have a psychological need to validate their activity by paying someone a "tax," he argued. Since the city did not itself charge a tax, this need became personalized in the street inspectors who cook advantage of it. While inspectors would not talk directly about this practice, an inspector's spouse, who was also a vendor, gave a different perspective. She claimed the inspectors had to hand the proceeds to the head of the Market Office, presumably to be distributed upward through the delegation hierarchy. If an inspector were suspected of keeping some of the money, he could be fired or suspended for a month without pay. The delegation where both these officials work has a very high rate of inspector turnover. Out of about IOO street inspectors, the Delegation Director announced in June I990, 86 had been fired during the previous I8 months. It was not made clear, however, whether the turnover was due to corruption, the failure to "share" the bounty with superiors, or simply the firing of old employees to place beneficiaries of patronage in these lucrative positions. 23For example, when I joined a group of street inspectors during an operation against an unregulated street market, vendors crowded around the in-

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Such a market will generally grow slowly over a long period of time, as the initial vendors attract clients and new vendors and start "validating" a market zone, until it gets to the point where the groups mentioned above complain about them as a "nuisance" or as "disloyal competition." (Sometimes an already established group of vendors will expand or move into a new area, in which case an instant market appears.) As we saw in the first two cases, the local Market Office responds by doing its duty and removing them. But the act of repressing the vendors sets up a series of processes. First the vendors themselves, after years of selling in the area, have built up a client base they do not wish to give up. Second, there are abundant examples of organized vendors who are able to sell. Third, organization is usually mentioned by officials themselves as a necessary criterion for even discussing their status. Middle- and high-level officials refuse even to talk to unorganized vendors, preferring to talk to a small number of "leaders" with some claim to represent the rest of the group. But as we see in the above examples, organization alone is not at all sufficient for vendors to be allowed to sell. The newly organized vendors must find a "patron" who can help them get appointments and favorable attention from officials, an important point that I will return to later. Also, there is an incentive for the organizations in conflict to increase the number of their vendors to improve their strength and bargaining position. Thus, Roberta's vendors in El Centro quadrupled the number of vendors in their organization, while Karla brought in a whole new group of vendors to take over the area previously used by the rebels in Station Plaza. Finally, sheer persistence and group participation in rallies and protests at local city offices are necessary to show officials that they will not easily give up. As in the first three cases, the newly organized vendors rarely get exactly what they started out with-in El Centro vendors were pushed onto a side street; the Tianguis vendors were changed from spectors to complain. "Just get your stuff and go somewhere else," the official in charge told them. "You can come back when the big stink is over."

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a stationary to a rotating market, and the rebel vendors in the Project were initially pushed into a marginal area. The result was a compromise among the interests of the different groups involved, which each group was able to use to expand into a better situation later. The only case in which a compromise was not possible was the Canal Market, where the conflict had been over not control of space, but control of an existing organization. Although normally such unresolved battles would simply lead to a splintering of the old organization into new groups, division was impossible in the Canal Market because of the sheer saturation of vendors in the area: There was simply nowhere else to go. But by their nature, such compromises favor the vendors as a whole, since they are compromises between the competing interest groups (all being groups of vendors), but not between vendors and the city. In fact, in each of the first three cases the net effect of the city's intervention was that more vendors were allowed to sell in the streets even though officials claimed they were trying to cut down on vending. Not only were unauthorized vendors in each case eventually given permits, but the number of vendors increased as each group sought to increase its size in response to the city's actions. That these cases are not isolated events is evident since the number of street vendors in the city as a whole doubled between 198 5 and 1991, even though city policy throughout this period was opposed to the provision of new permits for individuals or organizations while COABASTO's files are replete with memos detailing the efforts of officials to remove illegal markets and prevent their recognition. ORGANIZED RESISTANCE: FROM SOLIDARITY TO AUTHORITY

The common experience of seeing their livelihood threatened and mobilizing to save it creates a high level of solidarity during this initial phase of organizational development. In El Centro vendors could light-heartedly share stories of tricks their children had pulled on them while they slept in the street guarding "their" area, and they developed a high level of spontaneous camaraderie. For

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example, after one fruitless visit to a minor official in City Hall, 40 vendors started back to El Centro on a dozen bicycle carts normally used for tourists. After a wild ride in which each group of vendors urged their pedaling drivers to beat the others back to the thoroughfare as they dashed through traffic and street markets, we arrived with seven carts abreast on the wide thoroughfare, whistling and hollering the name of the association and attracting attention from the entire neighborhood. As a celebration it lacked a cause to celebrate-the meeting had been a complete waste of time-but as a show of solidarity it was much needed by the putupon vendors. When several vendors arrived later, having waited for another cart, they were cheerfully thumped by all the vendors in turn for having "lost" the race. Likewise, when the rebel vendors from Station Plaza held a rally outside the Delegation Cuauhtemoc offices, the event appeared more like a celebration than a protest. The chants denouncing their previous leader and officials were mixed with laughter as they made up steadily more insulting taunts. But once recognition is secured and the organization begins to become institutionalized, solidarity is rapidly replaced by authority. In El Centro this occurred as soon as vendors were allowed to set up stalls in their first side street. Only 3 2 stalls would fit in the allotted area and, even though they decided to put two vendors at each stall, only half their membership would fit. Roberta assigned the stalls herself based upon her perception of each vendor's loyalty to the group, and the result was a near riot among the vendors. "Some people are never satisfied," she commented later after trying to deny to me that a near-rebellion had occurred. Furthermore, using the stalls as leverage, she began to punish those vendors who did not participate in rallies and protests by suspending their rights for a week. The number of rallies she compelled the members to go to increased as she began to support a patron for public office. Finally, even though the vendors had only half a stall each, she charged the highest fees in the area, and, when she later expanded the area unilaterally, sold access to the new stalls for U.S. $roo each half.

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Within a year, even the most loyal of her previous supporters, one of whom had been shot in the leg in a scuffle on the thoroughfare, and others who had been actively engaged in the administration of the association, had become disillusioned. "It's all right to take something, but not to exaggerate," one commented. But beyond their complaints about the high fees lay the feeling that they had lost control: that now they were just renters obligated to pay fees and attend rallies when ordered, but with no control over what had been their association. The new-found authoritarianism was itself a direct result of the way they had obtained permission to sell in their street. While city officials require street vendors to form such associations as a condition for negotiating with them, the patron-client system in which they have to immerse themselves to get access to real negotiations tends to strengthen the leaders relative to members. First, as with Roberta, typically only the leader gets to meet regularly with the patron and officials. Officials usually insist on this, since they naturally frown upon rallies and crowds. Thus, the leader begins to function as the liaison among the patron, the officials, and the vendors. As the leader of the association, she distributes the stalls the city allows her to set up among her various members, and she is also required to get her vendors to attend rallies to support the "patron," or the patron's allies. Roberta, and not her members, was ultimately the one with access to the patron and officials, and she became the patron for the members of her association. Even in Station Plaza, where the rebel leader tried to avoid any hint of authority-refusing to collect regular fees and bringing, much to the chagrin of officials, as many as I 5 members to his meetings with officials-he later began to take on more and more of the trappings of a "leader": meeting or calling their "advisor" alone most of the time, and later going to official meetings alone as other members "didn't have the time." While he never became as authoritarian as Roberta, he clearly became the authority. And although he did not charge fees of his members to get into the market project, he did manage to obtain for himself the three bestpositioned stalls out of his group's allotment.

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A vivid example of the relationship between administrative procedures and internal authoritarianism comes from another conflict not included in the above discussion because of the brief amount of field work completed in the area. In this case, a group of vendors were being pressured to leave by the local Market Office in response to complaints by a concentration. After registering as an organization and selecting a leader, and a month of tension while a dozen market inspectors were sent daily to make sure they left their area, they were allowed to relocate around the corner. An illustrative episode occurred when the supervisor of the inspectors, in response to a question by one of the vendors about where their new location was, casually told him to set up in the area on the other side of a lamp post, where it was agreed the group would be distributed. But the vendor took him literally, setting up his stall directly beside the post-the space the leader had reserved for himself. When the leader told the vendor to move, he refused, claiming the supervisor had given him the space. The leader immediately went to the supervisor and demanded that he straighten out the situation immediately. After he had waited a few minutes to show-as he told his crew of inspectors-that "he can't boss me around," the supervisor was obliged to comply. In the hour-long debate that ensued, it became clear that the supervisor had to back up the leader. As he told the vendor, "If I say, 'set up here,' (the leader) is going to complain to (the Market Office) that I'm disorganizing, not organizing here." Finally, the leader pointed out that he could ask the supervisor simply to confiscate the vendor's stall if he did not move, since he was not supposed to be there. The supervisor agreed, adding, "I don't care what you do. I'll be back in five minutes with my truck, and I'll do whatever he (the leader) tells me to do." The Canal Market and Station Plaza also show how city policies tend to favor established leaders over rebel groups, reinforcing the authoritarian role of leaders within street markets. In each case, it is clear that the officials' initial inclination was to support the established leader. In the case of Station Plaza, the rebels almost lost their rights to vend in the new plaza altogether, while in

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the Canal Market even the PRJ-affiliated status of the rebel vendors could not provide the level of support they needed to overthrow a leader associated with the PRD. A third factor that tends to reinforce authoritarianism is that such leaders can extract substantial financial benefits. While the daily, weekly, or monthly fee vendors pay to their associations is supposed to pay for administrative costs, such as cleaning and office costs/4 they can also provide substantial incomes for the leaders themselves. In addition, many associations charge entrance fees that may amount to several hundred dollars. Leaders can also diversify, controlling trucking services in the case of mobile tianguis markets or functioning as suppliers. In addition they often control informal credit facilities such as the tanda, a rotating credit association, or savings banks (the misuse of which was source of the charges of fraud against Jose, the original leader of the Canal Market). While not all leaders abuse these "perquisites" of office, some have become very wealthy over their decades of service as leaders. Finally, authoritarianism is promoted by the very needs of vendors themselves. In an environment in which vendors must be effectively mobilized to protect their areas against government encroachment and to provide support, whether political or financial, for their patrons, the most successful associations of vendors are those in which the leaders are best able to force vendors to cooperate politically and financially. Indeed, periods of conflict lead to greater authoritarian measures by leaders in order to get the resources necessary for protection or expansion of their areas, meaning that pressure by city officials not only leads unorganized vendors to organize, it also leads organized vendor associations to become more authoritarian. For example, when a new director in one delegation threatened to crack down on street vending, one leader used the threat to justify the collection of special fees from all his vendors in order to buy a 24Some associations have quite elaborate offices, with computer facilities in one case and a social center in another.

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present to "sweeten" the official. Such action can lead to further abuse; in one case some vendors complained to reporters that the threat was exaggerated to line the leader's purse. Likewise, when in Christmas 1992 officials declared that no seasonal permits for vendors would be distributed for the Historical Center, as was previously the custom, the only noticeable effect was the increase in the size of the fees charges by the leaders-again ostensibly to pay bribes to officials. One way in which the PRI and the city attempt to control leaders is to threaten to take away their positions. Legally, this is unconstitutional, since the street vendor organizations are registered as independent civil associations. Thus, while I have seen numerous letters from vendors complaining about their leaders, city officials almost always respond that they are unable to intervene officially in their associations even though they may agree with the complaints. In practice, however, there are several ways officials intervene when it suits their purposes of control. The simplest way is to file criminal charges against the leader in question-a tactic used against the CCOP discussed at the beginning of this chapter and against several other leaders in cases I am familiar with. But this mechanism achieves little more than petty harassment when the leaders are well connected or can afford good legal services. Another way of attacking a leader is to support a rebellion from within the association itself in much the way Coppedge ( 1993} discusses, by cutting off access to the leader and providing support and access to one of his subordinates. Again, this tactic was used against the CCOP in 198 5 when rebellions by two of their delegates were supported by officials, effectively stripping them oi dozens of their tianguis plazas. When an association is formally affiliated with the PRI, the PRI acts as the "parent" organization. According to its bylaws, the PRI can force an election in an affiliated organization if 10 percent of the members sign a petition for one. In practice, the question of who exactly is a member and what constitutes 10 percent of the membership is problematic for any association in the best of times and becomes highly politicized during periods of inter- or intra-organizational conflict as each

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side tries to attract new members and bend the rules, as we saw above in the case of Station Plaza. While officials and the PRI can manipulate these criteria to undercut the authority of politically uncooperative leaders, I have found no cases in which they did so to attack leaders for expanding their areas. Even while the city and the PRI were attacking the CCOP in 1985, street vending was in the middle of an intensive period of expansion. Thus, this mechanism has been used for political rather than administrative reasons. Even then, it requires a relatively high level of state integration to prevent the ousted leader from finding new patrons who could provide new sources of "access" to the administrative structure. That is, during periods of low state integration, when governmental and party officials are searching for sources of support outside that state structure, it becomes easier for street vendor leaders to find potential patrons to support them, and consequently harder for access to be shut off to them. Thus, as I argued in Chapter 2, the ability of street vendor organizations to thwart the attempts of city officials to control them depends not only upon their own level of organization, which is stimulated by the political system's attempts to co-opt them, but also upon the level of integration of the state itself-the degree to which city officials are forced to be loyal to their superiors rather than to their cliques. State integration may, for example, be heightened around a specific issue: Police officers might accept bribes to allow traffic violators go free, but not allow murderers to go free on the same basis. In the case of the attacks on the CCOP, it would seem that the internal threat posed to the PRI by the "Democratic Current" was sufficient to prevent the CCOP from finding new allies during this period. However, as noted above, the attacks on the CCOP ended as soon as it split definitively with the PRI and as it became part of a "loyal opposition" rather than a "disloyal internal schism." Another reason for the end of the attacks may also be that, since the CCOP was no longer a part of the PRI, the PRI could no longer force it to have internal elections.

rs6 Street Vendors and the State THE LIMITS OF AUTHORITY

Despite the authoritarian structure of street vendor leadership, vendors themselves are not entirely at the mercy of their leaders. After all, if that were true, then leaders could in fact restrain their membership and therefore serve state goals of restricting street vending by exploiting them until they disappeared. Because the leader's authority is limited with regard to their vendors, they are required to maximize their benefits through expansion. Despite the lack of democracy in their associations, vendors have two weapons they can use against leaders who abuse their power without protecting vendor interests. As we saw in the third and fourth cases, vendors can rebel, although this avenue of action is fraught with its own dangers. Not only might the leader use violence to maintain her position and push out the rebels, but her highly developed system of contacts and patrons gives her greater political leverage than the rebels in most cases. Success requires the vendors' ability to find their own sponsors and the numbers and the tenacity to force the administration to pay attention to them. But the most important weapon vendors have is simply to leave a leader who fails to protect prime commercial areas or who charges too much in fees and political activism. This act is not necessarily political: Rather, it is a product of the leaders' function as economic as well as political entrepreneurs. If vendors can no longer make money in a street market because their fees are too high, political obligations too onerous, or because the leader agrees to relocate their market, they are forced to leave by economic circumstances alone. Unfortunately, there is little reliable data on turnover in such markets because membership roles are usually faulty or partial. But leaders themselves acknowledge that their members are first of all people trying to make a living, not trying to make political statements, and above all that their loyalty to the leader is predicated only on the provision of lucrative commercial space. This explains why, even though they are authoritarian, leaders cannot "sell out" their members to officials: A leader who gives up a prime selling area or who agrees to restrain the ex-

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pansion or earnings of the members will not be overthrown-his members will simply leave. Unlike workers in a factory or an ejido, where a single organization must represent all workers, street vendors can change their "representative" by simply moving their stall from one leader's area to another, meaning that leaders, in order to survive, must provide a competitive "package" of benefits and costs for their members. "Voting with your feet" is not cheap either. If vendors leave an established space, they lose their clientele and may have to "buyin" to a new space. But this is why leaders have to resist relocations: Relocation would already destroy the clientele base, lowering the cost of leaving for members. At the same time, while people have been known to pay thousands of dollars for a prime stall space, vendors can usually get a free stall by joining a street invasion being planned or under way. Ultimately, leaders compete for space and expansion into lucrative selling areas to maximize the number of their vendors. At the same time, efforts by the city to restrict or relocate market areas will be stymied by each leader's fear that other leaders will invade areas his vendors left or agreed not to go into, a point that will be made again more clearly in the next few chapters. Economic incentives, not political incentives, are the ultimate driving factor for the leaders, as they are for their members. Although state officials strengthen the political position of leaders, making them more authoritarian, their economic incentives lead them to use their political power against the administration's attempts to limit street vending, not against the street vendors themselves. The only exception to this rule occurs if the city is able to enforce limits on all the vendor organizations in an area, such as in the market construction programs of the 195o's and the 1990's, thus undercutting any competitive advantage that one leader could obtain at the expense of the others. A high level of state integration is needed to prevent any of the leaders from being able to secure special treatment from their contacts in the administrationexplaining why such events are rare and transitory.

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Conclusion Obviously, street vendor organizations have not helped state goals of limiting the growth of street vending. To the contrary, the requirement that street vendors join organizations that become increasingly authoritarian and powerful has enabled those organizations to turn larger and larger areas of the city into street markets. However, what are the implications for the theoretical models discussed earlier? A polity-centered theory would consider this the cost to the PRI-state structure of continued political power. However, the power of street vendor organizations is fairly consistent across the political spectrum. Not only PRI-aligned organizations but also opposition party affiliated organizations have benefited from the ability to maintain and expand their areas, even in the face of attacks from PRI-aligned vendors. Rather, it is the specific interests of state bureaucrats and political middlemen that are best served by the pattern of street vendor organization in Mexico City. Certainly, the PRI-state apparatus has benefited indirectly to a large degree because these individuals are in the vast majority of cases members of that apparatus. Street vendor organizations, even when affiliated with the PRI, are not, however, aligned with the PRI as a corporate body. Rather, they identify with specific power players who are either within the government or can use their contacts and allies within the government to help them. This help is possible because street vendor organizations can offer officials two benefits the state by itself cannot because of its structure and the inherent insecurity of all officials: First, a political support base of vendors can provide politicians or bureaucrats with valuable political assets in their individual and collective struggle for survival and advancement. Second, they can often provide monetary incentives that are all the more tempting given the lack of job guarantees and comparatively low salaries of many lower government employees. The growth of agencies to control street vending, far from preventing the corruption of state interests in favor of street vendors,

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has actually increased the number of officials who can cash in politically or economically on the relationship with street vendor organizations. Historically, the more authority over street vending has been divided up into different jurisdictions, the easier it has been for groups of street vendors to find allies and thwart attempts to restrain them. In the following chapters we will analyze and compare the radically different relationships between the city and street vending during three periods of recent history: the market construction program carried out during the regency of Ernesto P. Uruchurtu between 1952 and 1966; the period between 1966 and 1991 in which street vending surpassed all attempts by officials to limit its growth; and the post-1991 period in which Manuel Camacho Solis began the recent Historical Center relocation project. The fundamental question for our analysis is whether the differences between these periods are due simply to changes in city policy, or whether they are due also to changes in the ability of the city to take action against street vendors, and of street vendors to defend themselves. If the former, why did these changes occur? If the latter, what factors allowed the city to take effective action against street vendors in the 195o's and 196o's but not later?

CHAPTER SIX

The Legacy of Uruchurtu Repression and Renewal "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first as tragedy, the second as farce." Karl Marx, The I 8th Brumaire of Louis Bonapart

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P • u R u c H u R T u , popularly known in Mexico City's history as the "Regent of Iron," is a central figure in the modern history of Mexico and Mexico City. He stood out from the many other mayors of Mexico's Federal District not only because of his authoritative leadership during the modernization of the city in this crucial period but also because of his unprecedented 14 years in power. In a nation where control of the Federal District represents the most powerful administrative position after the presidency itself, the normal pattern is for presidents to appoint their own candidate for the position. For this reason, no other mayor has ever survived the changeover between one president and the next, and often more than one serves under a single president. But Uruchurtu was able to create a power base that, while insufficient to leverage himself into the presidency as he desired, was powerful enough to keep him in power despite two presidential transitions. 1 As Davis (1994) painstakingly shows, Uruchurtu owed his political success to his ability to represent the interests of the petitebourgeois merchant and service classes of the city center, classes

A version of this chapter was published in Cross (1996).

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that had been ignored by the PRI with its urban-policy focus on the interests of workers and industrialists. As a result of this focus, the PRI's support in Mexico City had declined to a low of 49 percent of the vote in the elections of I 9 52. By vigorously supporting the previously underrepresented interests of small shopkeepers, artisans, and service providers through populist policies, Uruchurtu reversed the fortunes of the PRI, which obtained 68 percent of the city's vote in I958 and 65 percent in I964. Uruchurtu's policies toward street vending were part of a wider attempt to integrate the interests of these groups while avoiding a major urban renewal project developed in I95I that would have largely displaced them from the downtown area. By removing street vendors, he hoped to obviate the immediate need for massive street widening in the downtown area, which would have destroyed much of its traditional housing and commercial stock. At the same time he presented a "can-do" image for middle-class voters who wanted a "modern" vendor-free city. By constructing massive new markets for them in the area, and later throughout the city, he was able to turn the vendors into a subsidized class of petty merchants who would be loyal to his political banner, while at the same time he placated the interests of large construction firms that had been hoping to profit from the urban renewal project. Finally, by attempting to restrict growth of the city by preventing the subdivision of land for new housing projects, and by vigorously repressing illegal land invasions, he hoped to forestall the demographic pressure that would later demand massive changes in the urban infrastructure. But like the ancient King of the Britons who set his throne in the tide, Uruchurtu could not stop the massive changes affecting the city, rooted as they were in the economic conditions of the nation as a whole. Migration from depressed rural areas continued, doubling the population of the city despite his policies. While he was successful in obstructing the construction of the metropolitan railway system, he was forced to construct a system of major thoroughfares bisecting the city. Finally, the sheer economic cost

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of construction and maintenance of the new markets made it impossible, in the long run, to keep up with the growth in demand for commercial activity. Indeed, although he initially championed the cause of petty merchants and artisans, the continued repression of street vendors and land invaders throughout his regime gave him a decidedly authoritarian image toward the poorest members of society, which his opponents in the PRJ used to force his resignation in 1966. Still, he was seen as an ideal political figure by many in the middle and upper classes for whom the order imposed by Uruchurtu, however brutally, had its own merit. As a major Mexico City newspaper editorialized after Uruchurtu's resignation: "We remember that before Uruchurtu we metropolitans came to believe that the ever-present dirtiness in our markets and the quality of "z6cos" (open air markets) that were in our most central streets were just part of our national idiosyncrasies" (Excelsior 9lrsl66}. But the failure of Uruchurtu's legacy is evident in the fact that, while the markets he built still stand, the city's streets are again filled with vendors. Is this fact simply the result of later bureaucratic incompetence or changes in policy? Or did officials fail because they were unable to overcome the long-term resistance of street vendor organizations? Paradoxically, Uruchurtu's policies helped to form and strengthen the organizations that allowed street vendors to resist the city administration in later years because of his incorporation of the market program, and by extension, street vending, into the political system. The tragedy of Uruchurtu, however, is not in his failure to carry out his policies. His policies were effectively carried out largely because of his long duration in office. Rather, the tragic nature of his regime stems from the success of the policies themselves, which led to his eventual downfall and the reversal of much of what he had hoped to achieve.

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The Market Construction Program First, it is necessary to review the objective legacy of Uruchurtu: the market construction program itself. Street vending had been on the decline in Mexico City before World War II, when it took on fresh life as a way of skirting price controls and rationing (Vasquez Torres I99I). After the war, a new regulation for street vending was passed for the Federal District permitting the establishment of special vending zones through a procedure to be regulated by the Market Office of the Treasury Department of the city. The law, passed in June I9 5 I, has been widely cited by both officials and the press as the justification for preventing vending in the Historical Center and other areas of the city, but in fact its provisions were very liberal. The only outright prohibition is on the sale of livestock in the area of the Z6calo and the placement of stalls within 3 meters of a street corner. Other limits, such as a section that forbids "obstructing traffic," were designed to be interpreted administratively (Mexico I95I). But the law was never implemented as such. Upon entering office in December I9 52, Uruchurtu simply outlawed street vending by administrative fiat. Within a week he ordered the city center cleared of its 2,Ioo vendors, who were required to relocate into a recently constructed but empty market building, even though the I ,ooo-stall market was far from sufficient to handle all the displaced vendors. Still, as newspaper editorials trumpeted, the new mayor appeared to accomplish in a few days what previous administrations had been claiming for years could not be done-he had cleared the downtown area of vendors, and before his first month of office was over he had extended the ban to the rest of the city as well. His authoritarian style gained the new mayor the reputation of a decisive leader, and earned him the moniker "Regent of Iron." The press acclaimed him profusely: An editorial cartoon in Excelsior showed him as an American football player rushing a football marked D.F. (Federal District) irrepressibly toward the end zone, while the caption read, "May he never stop!"

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The Legacy of Uruchurtu

But the decision to abolish street vending had been made without any negotiation or planning, and the resultant backlash forced the city to modify its plans subject to the availability of suitable alternatives. Two thousand vendors staged an occupation of the city's offices, and the director of the Market Office, Gonzalo Pefia Manterola, was personally compelled to lead a search for "alternative" sites for the displaced vendors (Excelsior I2/r8/p). In fact, the city was forced to allow street vending in most areas until a compromise could be worked out that would allow for the elimination of vending without major social protests or dislocations. As a solution, rather then simply forcing street vendors to give up their trade, Uruchurtu began an ambitious program for the construction of covered market buildings to house the vendors who were displaced by his orders. The markets were built from public funds and rented to the vendors at a symbolic cost. Officially this was supposed to reduce the cost to the final consumer but, more important, it was used to "bribe" vendors into moving off the streets without resistance. As an official who worked in the Market Office at the time explained, to entice the vendors into the markets, Uruchurtu gave them refrigerators and scales, "and even then he gave them the maintenance and care of their merchandise, with guards, the light, the water," and many of their other needs included in their nominal rents. In the market area of La Merced-at that time the largest outdoor market area of the city-markets were constructed for 6,727 vendors. In the area known as La Lagunilla, 2,03 6 vendors were accommodated, and in the commercial area of Tepito 4,488 vendors were placed in market structures. All of these were inaugurated in 1957. 2 In fact, in this one year alone 18,414 vendors were relocated into 36 markets, and between 1953 and 1966 a total 174 markets were constructed or reconstructed for 52,070 vendors, raising the number of public markets in the Federal District 2ln some cases previous market structures for far fewer vendors had been replaced.

The Legacy of Urnchurtu 00 ~

r 65

29179

25000 20911

0

"0

c 20000 Cll

>

..

0 15000 Cll

.a 10000 E :I

z

5000 73 15

0 53-58

59-64

65-70

71-76

77-82

83-88

89-91

Sexenlo

FIG. 3. New market and concentration vendors by sexenio, 1954-88. Data from DDF-COABASTO 1991)

from 44 to more than 200. This level of market construction has never been repeated. The markets built during this period accounted for 77.6 percent of the 67,066 public market stalls in the city in 1991, 26 years after Uruchurtu. 3 Figure 3 gives an idea of the immensity and singularity of this undertaking. It shows the number of vendor stalls in markets and concentrations inaugurated between 1953 and 1991 by presidential term. The first two terms, the effective period of Uruchurtu's reign (1953 to 1958 and 1959 to 1964), account for 69 and 90 markets respectively, although the first period accounts for the greatest number of stalls (29,179 as compared to 20,911 in the second) because of the huge size of many of the markets. After Uruchurtu was removed from office, however, the role of the city in market construction was radically reduced. Instead, as the 3 Even these figures underestimate the contribution of Uruchurtu to the present-day public market system in Mexico City since over a dozen markets were in the process of final planning or construction when Uruchurtu was removed from office. All information concerning the number and construction dates of markets and concentrations was compiled from DDF-Coabasto (1991). This document lists the date in which markets or concentrations were first "inaugurated" as well as information on the number of vendors they hold.

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graph shows, a growing emphasis was placed upon "concentrations"-permanent markets recognized by the city but constructed by vendors themselves. In fact, many of the "public markets" inaugurated in the post-Uruchurtu period were in fact vendorconstructed concentrations redesignated as markets by officials eager to show their industriousness. But even the combined growth of markets and concentrations is less than spectacular in the late 196o's and 1970's, and both became negligible in the 198o's. But if the market construction program, with its refrigeration units, childcare centers, security, lighting, running water, and other "modern conveniences" were the carrot designed to entice vendors off the street, Uruchurtu also wielded a big stick-street vendors who refused or were unable to enter the markets were faced with the most severe police repression in the modern history of the city. Guillermina Rico, today one of the most important street vendor leaders, but too young to qualify for a stall in La Merced when the market was constructed there in r 9 57, explained what happened when she stubbornly continued to sell on the street to help support her family: "Then those of us who were left out stayed to suffer: 36 hours, 15 days, draggings, kickings and beatings. They threw us in jail for 3 6 hours, and the children were sent to the orphanage. Many of the (street) merchants didn't know prison, but they got to know it for being merchants, for earning their living honestly." Another woman, who started selling during the last years of Uruchurtu's reign, recounted a similar experience: There was no permission to sell, so since the [market patrol] trucks arrived, we had to find a way of working early. We worked from 5 to 7:30 in the morning because the trucks arrived and removed us. At first they just took the people, and the things were left thrown on the ground. But later, since the government saw that some kept selling, they changed their system again. Then they came back and they took all the merchandise. They let us go free, but they took our merchandise. Everything, they took everything, whether it was money or the merchandise, everything there was.

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A high level of repression was a crucial aspect of the market construction program. Since commercial patterns had become established in the streets, vendors would not enter the markets unless the city could guarantee that their old sales areas would not be taken over by new vendors who could steal their clients. Once they were given this guarantee, the street vendors would then occupy the market as a group, and usually markets would be designed and constructed for a single association of vendors. Thus, vendors who decided to stay in the street were left without any organizational representation or force to resist the repression against them. All they could do was to attempt to avoid the repression, as these women did. 4 COLLAPSE OF THE LEGACY

Why did these policies cease when Uruchurtu left office? Not only did the city government virtually stop constructing new markets, but slowly street vending began to reappear almost as soon as Uruchurtu resigned. If we are to understand why these policies failed to survive Uruchurtu, we have to have a broader understanding of the economic and political benefits and costs they incurred for the Mexican political system of the time, and the role the policies were designed to play in Uruchurtu's own career. Uruchurtu was a close friend and confidant of President Miguel Aleman with whom he had gone through college and served as campaign manager. In 1952, he was appointed to head the Federal District by President Ruiz Cortines in a move that is largely seen as a compromise between the outgoing and incoming presidents to attempt to maintain some powerful positions within the cabinet for Alemanistas (supporters of Miguel Aleman). There is less agreement as to why he was reappointed by Adolfo Lopez Mateos six years later for an unprecedented second term. One argument is 4 Later, however, such vendors became the nucleus of today's powerful street vendor organizations, which helps to explain why many of today's leaders are women, and why all of them seem to have such strong characters. They have lived through repression and won.

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that the reappointment represented continued power on the part of Miguel Aleman. An alternative explanation is that Uruchurtuhimself a pre-candidate for the presidency-had become so powerful Lopez Mateos could not get rid of him. 5 Lopez Mateos was selected as a compromise candidate over Uruchurtu because the latter was too closely identified with Aleman's supporters within the government, and thus was rejected by the supporters of Cardenas, the powerful left-wing president of the 193o's. But he was a weak president who was dominated by the Alemanistas and Cardenistas in his cabinet. Uruchurtu, on the other hand, had a long history in administrative positions in the PRI and in state and national government, and had a powerful cadre of allies, as well as the local interest groups that had formed around him in the Federal District. Thus, while he may have been blocked from the presidency, he was still able to retain his powerful post as mayor under the Lopez Mateos administration, giving him a base from which to attempt to reach the presidency again in 1964. But, although Uruchurtu was again a prominent pre-candidate for the PRI (and forces within the PAN also invited him to become their candidate), Gustavo Diaz Ordaz was elected in 1964. Many argue that tensions between the two figures were apparent from the beginning, although Uruchurtu was again reappointed to the position of mayor. While Uruchurtu's conservative yet populist stance was similar to that of Diaz Ordaz, his power as mayor and behind the scenes became a threat to the President's authority. As one scholarly work in its discussion of the conflict between these two political figures notes: "A President generally guards the expectation that his collaborators will not exceed him in power, so that he can shine (destacar) personally" (Lerner de Sheinbaum and Ralsky de Cimet, 1976: 395). It is highly significant, however, that the final downfall of Uruchurtu was precipitated by his policies against informal-economy5 See Camp (1976), Davis (1994), Hofstader (1974), Gomez Castro (1963), and Ward (1990) for more information on Uruchurtu's career.

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linked movements within the capital city: street vendors and land invaders. In particular, his practice of ordering land-invader communities to be razed was an unpopular one that provoked ideological problems for the PRI as the party of the "popular" classes. When the city bulldozed a community of 400 land invaders during a downpour four days before Mexico's independence day celebration (September I 5, I966), members of congress lined up to denounce the act and the PRI skillfully distanced Uruchurtu from the President before censuring him and forcing his resignation. It is significant that, both in the press and in the congressional debate, land invaders and street vendors were held up as noble victims of the cruelty of Uruchurtu's policies. One columnist argued that the attacks on street vendors had formed part of Uruchurtu's "dictatorial pattern" against "the poor indigenous women who in the use of their inalienable right of survival sold their miserable merchandise on the urban sidewalk" (Carlos Alvarez Acevedo, I966). Four powerful worker unions affiliated with the PRI, including the CTM and the Federation of Revolutionary Workers (FOR), also attacked the "injustice that is committed against the humble merchants, ambulatory vendors, who are imprisoned and whose goods are confiscated" (Excelsior 9II5/66:IA). The emergence of such a "spontaneous" outburst of both congressional and journalistic opinion, combined with the mobilization of groups of street vendors and land invaders (some of whom were reportedly allowed into the congressional building to observe the debate and cheer the anti-Uruchurtu speeches), against a man who had held an iron grip over the most important Federal jurisdiction for I4 years suggests that pressures to remove Uruchurtu had built up gradually not only among the "popular" classes, but also within the PRI itself, waiting for an opportunity to explode. Uruchurtu had built up a long list of enemies both within the PRI and among the business classes who wanted a change of leadership to get their projects going, especially the metropolitan railway system that Uruchurtu had blocked. The paradox here is that Uruchurtu's policies toward street

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vending-the construction of markets and the resultant necessary repression of vendors-was originally a key component of his power base. Not only did the policy please the middle classes and provide a substantial source of lucrative contracts for the Mexican construction industry, it also enabled Uruchurtu to create and organize a large class of market vendors that he could manipulate politically for his own purposes. THE POLITICIZATION OF VENDING: COSTS AND BENEFITS

One section of the r95I market regulation allowed street vendors to form voluntary civil associations to represent their interests and, to prevent city officials from ignoring them, required that the Market Office recognize them as long as they had at least roo members. After Uruchurtu decided to construct markets for the relocation of street vendors, he had to decide how to construct markets for the thousands of vendors who existed throughout the city. Astutely, he laid down a policy that only "recognized" groups of at least roo street vendors would have a market constructed for them (Pyle r968). More important, only these groups would be allowed to sell on the street pending completion of their market: Vendors who were not members of "recognized" associations would therefore be repressed. Administratively, the civil associations enabled city officials and market administrators to negotiate with a single body of vendors that represented-or at least could be held accountable for-all the vendors in a given street or market. Politically, the civil associations were also obliged to affiliate with the PRI and support political actions on behalf of that party. 6 More important, Uruchurtu used the associations to advance his own career. The skillful manipulation of the market construction program was already paying off powerfully in the political realm by r958. On February I2 of that year a rally of 4o,ooo market stall-holders and their families showed up for a huge political rally in support of Lopez 6

As far as I can tell, every single one did.

The Legacy of Urnchurtu

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7I

25,000

~

'3Ill 0 ...Cll .a E :I

z

20,000

•Last two years

15,000 10,000 5,000 0

53·58

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65-70

71-76

77·82

83-88

Presidential term (sexenio) FIG. 4. Market stall construction by phase of presidential term. (Data from DDF-COABASTO 1991)

Mateos. The head of the PRI in the city, Rodolfo Gonzalez Guevara, noted that the I958 campaign was the first in which small merchants had played a substantial role-something he attributed directly to the market construction program. More significant, leaders of the market vendors overtly connected their support for Lopez Mateos with his promise to continue Uruchurtu's policies within the city (Excelsior, 21!/58 and 21!5/58). The timing of the inauguration of markets during the two presidential terms in which Uruchurtu served as mayor further indicates that the inaugurations were calculated to garner immediate good will and support for himself and the PRI. By comparing the number of vendors who received a stall during each two-year section of the sexenios of Ruiz Cortines and Lopez Mateos, when Uruchurtu was in full charge of the city, it becomes clear that the last two-year period of each sexenio-the period directly before the presidential election-were the object of the highest level of market construction. As Figure 4 shows, 78 percent of all new market vendors during the Ruiz Cortines presidency (I953-58) received their stalls in the last two years of that sexenio, as did 61 percent of new market vendors during the Diaz Ordaz sexenio (I959-64). More striking, in subsequent presidential terms, after Uruchurtu was forced out

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of office, the proportion of market stalls constructed during the last two-year period drops to around 3 3 percent-the expected random occurrence. This comparison suggests that Uruchurtu deliberately planned the construction of markets to coincide with the period just prior to presidential elections as a political tool. The fact that this policy declined significantly after the Uruchurtu period ended demonstrates that the construction of markets ceased to be used politically and suggests that other mechanisms were used to garner support for the PRI: notably politicization of street vendors themselves. It was in fact this very politicization of street vending and the market program that ultimately spelled the doom of the program. Although the markets were used to entice vendors into the PRI, this practice was self-limited by four factors: First, while the policy of market construction had created a large pool of associations loyal to the PRI, this loyalty was obtained at a huge financial cost. Second, by r966 the vast majority of street vendors were either in market structures or had rejected them in favor of a return to the street. Third, support from market vendors tended to decline over time. Finally, the enormous subsidy of market vendors led to profiteering by vendors and actually led consumers to request the return of street markets. Once these limits had been reached, the politicization of markets turned into the politicization of street vending, turning the program upsidedown.

The Political Limits of Market Construction THE COST OF THE MARKETS

The market construction program required an enormous sum of money to build and then maintain a huge system of markets at virtually no cost to the occupants and direct beneficiaries of the markets. While exact figures are impossible to find even for present-

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day maintenance costs/ between 1953 and I958 alone, $350 million pesos were spent building or refurbishing almost 90 market buildings, the equivalent of slightly more than half of the entire budget for the Federal District in I 9 57 ("Texto del Reporte Presidencial," Excelsior 9h/58). All this during a period in which Uruchurtu radically slashed the budget of the Federal District and raised taxes to create the first balanced budget for the District in its history. Such an enormous fiscal drain on the city's limited resources could be justified only if the markets produced substantial political benefits, which at first were forthcoming but later dwindled. THE REJECTION OF MARKETS

Uruchurtu never completely eliminated street vending. Although street vendors seemed pleased with the market construction program at first, the markets were simply not profitable for many vendors, who began a slow process of returning to the streets. A number of problems accounted for their dissatisfaction: (I) The lack of adequate marketing studies; (2) resistance to the greater level of control over vendors in the markets; and (3) changes in the nature of commercialization that resulted from moving the vendors from the public thoroughfare to the enclosed market buildings. Constructed on available lots or areas of cheap land values, the markets were usually not as centrally located as the street markets they replaced, meaning that fewer clients came to them. Although new clienteles were built up over time, many vendors left during this initial phase. 8 In addition, the symbolic rents were by no 7 Present-day market vendors have balked at a program in which the government is offering literally to give them their stalls for free and make them into owners precisely because it would saddle them with maintenance costs. As one official noted, "Why would they want to pay for what they've been getting for free all along?" 8Pyle (1968) pointed to low vacancy rates in many markets to argue that they were a failure. While almost all are today full, this is the result of a long period in which they have rebuilt their market base.

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means the only cost of entering the markets: Besides the continuation of corruption/ city officials also used the markets to control commercial activities they had found difficult or impossible to control in the street, for example, by imposing regular hours and regulating giros or product lines. In addition, the change of locale from the public thoroughfare to a market changed the nature of selling, requiring vendors to adapt their marketing strategies in ways that few were prepared for. For these and other reasons, the relocation of thriving street markets into closed markets damaged the commercial allure of whole neighborhoods. In mid-19 53 even the established merchants of swanky Polanco urged the city to let street vendors return because they claimed their sales had dropped by 50 percent, while neighborhoods in which vendors remained experienced an increase in sales ("Distrito Federal," Excelsior, 6!2o/53). Market vendors from this period claimed they suffered even greater losses, and their savings were depleted. Some took to selling door-to-door; some had to get factory jobs, while others simply went to areas where markets were under construction in order to be allowed to sell until the market was finished. A good example is presented by the working class area of Tepito, where vendors sold from wooden shacks in the middle of the street, which in many cases also doubled as homes. These vendors presented few protests when the markets were constructed and their stalls and homes were destroyed in 1957, but Alfonso Hernandez Hernandez, a Tepito historian and an official in the Cuauhtemoc Delegation, maintains that after three years, vendors began leaving the markets faced with the prospect of complete financial ruin if they stayed in them. In some cases they sold their rights to their stalls, 10 in others they just left the stalls vacant9 Many of the administrators were ex-police officers, and highly susceptible to such activity (Eckstein 1977). 10This is supposedly illegal, since the market stalls, like ejido land, were designed to be "inalienable" for the sole benefit of the vendor originally assigned to it. In practice, if vendors sold their stall they would give a bribe to the market administrators to change the names on the official roster. In this

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giving up all rights to them. One of the Tepito markets-which successfully bills itself as the "worlds largest shoe market" since each of its 700 stalls began specializing in shoes-is now reportedly controlled by seven families who bought out most other vendors as they left the market. 11 THE DECLINE IN SUPPORT FROM MARKET VENDORS

While initially market vendors could be counted upon as a powerful support base for the PRI, they had little need to continue their support once their titles were secure. Once given, the stalls could not be easily taken away, and thus the PRI had lost the most effective threat to use against individual market vendors to maintain their loyalty. The only "service" the PRI could offer to the market vendors was to keep rental payments symbolic, thus preventing the city from recouping the enormous cost of the market program. On the other hand, since street vendors never gain any form of legal title over their spaces on the street, they are compelled by lack of security to engage in constant political activity to retain their "rights." SUBSIDIES AND PROFITEERING

Finally, one of the principal justifications Uruchurtu used for taking action against street vending was the allegation that they were commercially inefficient and thus caused inflation. 12 Obviway, some vendors have amassed a large number of stalls purchased from others. Since individuals are allowed to have only one stall, vendors use "name-lenders," usually family members who are listed as stall-holders, but actually have no control over the stalls. 11 See Couffignal (1987) and Tomas (1990) for further details on street vending in Tepito. One vendor I spoke to noted that the stalls were now worth thousands of times the price he and his fellow vendors were selling them for during the first, difficult years of this market. 12 This argument, reminiscent of authors such as Geertz (1963) and Bairoch (1973) but still repeated by officials today, is that street vendors who often purchase from semiwholesalers and even retailers must be less efficient commercially since they create a larger number of "intermediates" between

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ously, the simple shifting of petty retailers from the street to public markets could do nothing to solve the problem of commercial inefficiency, since the vendors operated with the same commercial strategy for the most part. On the other hand, the official justification for the enormous subsidy of the market vendors was that it would lower the cost to consumers in "popular" areas. But since official policy was (and still is today) to reduce "unfair" competition against the markets from street vendors and even supermarkets to protect the economic and political investment in the market vendors, there was simply no incentive for the market vendors to lower their prices or even to rationalize their purchasing and merchandising strategies to be able to lower prices. As one official who joined the market office in 1968 comments: "Ninety percent of the merchants that have been selling (in the markets) for 20, 30, or 40 years have become very wealthy because the government has given them everything." The lack of competition allowed the market vendors to amass wealth, rather than pass their savings on to consumers. The neighbors of many markets frequently complained of high prices and poor service and in many cases requested that street vending be renewed to create competition. The above factors reinforced each other to produce a steady reduction of the political rate of return from the market construction program over time. While the construction and maintenance costs mounted, the political benefits dwindled until the fantastic expenditures no longer made sense. At the same time, the market construction program implied a massive enforcement campaign to force street vendors into the markets on the one hand and to prevent them from competing with the markets on the other. Thus, while the market construction program produced steadily diminishing political benefits in terms of support from market vendors, on the other hand it produced more and more political liabilities in terms of attacks on street vendors. In a word, these policies were producers and final consumers, thus presumably raising prices. However, the fact is that street vendors are highly competitive with large retail outlets, including supermarkets.

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no longer politically or economically viable. The street vendors were no longer amenable to entering markets, and by enforcing stiff penalties against them, the PRI succeeded only in alienating them. The city administration-and by extension the federal government-had merely reinforced its authoritarian and dictatorial image on the national and international level. One must also consider the broader political aspects of the Mexican political scene. A decade and a half of economic growth had awakened hope of improvement in both political and economic aspects of the Mexican domestic scene-neither of which were nearly as fast coming as had been anticipated. At the same time, political control had been virtually monopolized by the right wing of the PRI. Growing political unrest began during this period and the student movement-which ultimately was repressed by the army in a massacre costing hundreds of lives in July 1968already had a strong and growing presence. As Cornelius suggests (I 97 5 ), it was simply not possible for the state to continue alienating a growing proportion of the "popular" classes during this period. Just as the PRI became intimately involved in land invasion issues during this period, so it also needed to find allies, not enemies, among the street vendors. Thus, Uruchurtu's market construction program had changed from a political asset to the PRI in 1958 to a financial and political liability of huge proportions by 1966. The razing of a community of land invaders was not simply an excuse to get rid of a political rival, but a symptom of the very danger that Uruchurtu posed for the regime. He now got in the way of the PRI's attempts to cement support among the lower classes because of his refusal to allow land invaders or street vendors to become incorporated within the PRI's corporative structure.

The Post-Uruchurtu Period: Rebirth of a Tradition Nevertheless, the market construction program, as it was implemented by Uruchurtu, established two precedents that are cru-

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cia! in explaining the power of street vendors today. First, by requiring street vendors to be members of a civil association in order to be considered for a market stall or to be "tolerated" in the street, Uruchurtu laid the groundwork for today's powerful street vendor unions. Instead of the "voluntary" civil associations envisioned by the I95I market regulation, Uruchurtu's policy gave complete power to association leaders over their members since only vendors recognized by a leader would be given market stalls or allowed to sell in the street. Second, Uruchurtu's policies not only firmly centered the market vendors within the PRI, they also provided a model future associations could follow of exchanging loyalty to a political patron (usually within the PRI, but later also within other parties) for reciprocal support of their "right" to a market or a street. Above all, street vendors learned that if they could hold onto an area long enough, the city would recognize their "right" to it or provide an alternative market or area nearby. When Uruchurtu was forced to resign, these policies, originally tied to the market construction program, had to be realigned. The new mayor, Alfonso Corona del Rosa!, had been the head of the National Committee of the PRI, from which he had brought many of his appointees. The combination of external political factors and the internal needs of the PRI made it impossible to continue Uruchurtu's policies. First of all, the outcry against Uruchurtu's repressive policies that was used to force his resignation made it essential for the new administration to cease rounding up and arresting street vendors. Second, with the start of the construction of the metropolitan railroad system, there simply were no more funds to continue constructing markets. Third, the regime and the PRI urgently needed to expand its base of support in the city. Thus, the new administration switched from a policy of eradication (relocation of street vendors into public markets) to a policy of containment, although vendors were still required to organize into "recognized" associations within the PRI in order to sell in the street under the fiction that a market would be constructed for them. But

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there was no longer any real plan to construct more markets, and the number of street vendors slowly grew throughout the city. In residential areas the Uruchurtu regime had already begun to experiment with the mobile markets called tianguis that rotated among different neighborhoods throughout the week as a way of meeting demand for basic foodstuffs in areas that still had no marketsY This program was heavily increased during the period following Uruchurtu's decline. Permits for tianguis were given out to many groups of street vendors in residential areas, again as long as they were organized and affiliated with the PRI. Pyle (1968) noted that by 1967 more than 1o,ooo registered tianguis stalls existed in the city .14 While the government attempted to prevent the number of street vendors and tianguis from growing, the pattern of forcing vendors to form associations and search for support within the PRI made it difficult to do so. Rather than dealing with isolated vendors, the city administration was dealing with well-organized groups that had patrons within the political system who could be used to bring pressure down on enforcement-level officials. Furthermore, a number of changes in the administrative structure weakened the city's hand. In 1973 the city was divided into 13 0riginally, the vendors were supposed to be farmers selling their own prodm:ts to keep prices low, but in reality they were simply merchants who purchased their goods in the various wholesale districts for resale in residential areas. Still, they could often undersell regular stores and markets, and therefore originally were removed from an area as soon as a market was constructed to avoid presenting "unfair" competition. 14 Pyle claimed that the tianguis were the "front runner" of the public market system expansion, arguing that a tianguis location would slowly build up a number of permanent street vendors until they reached a large enough size to merit construction of a market. At that point, the tianguis was removed. Her argument fit the data at the time-the tianguis locations that existed in the 196o's were predominantly in the more peripheral areas of the city where other markets still did not exist. However, since that time tianguis have struck into the center of the city. Rather than being pushed steadily outward by the expansion of the market system, they have grown inward, and are now present in every area of the city, even some of the most exclusive neighborhoods.

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r6 "delegations" to decentralize public functions and make them more efficient. However, the delegation officials were still appointed by the mayor and were not responsible to residents of their delegation, and the move in many cases simply put another level of bureaucracy between the city administration and actual enforcement activities on the street. The result was that each delegation largely did what it wanted in terms of most matters, with only general policy direction from the regent-a situation that continues today as the delegations jealously guard their power from attempts by central agencies to control them. Whereas during the Uruchurtu period there had been a single Market Office in which corruption and other problems were perhaps difficult to root out, enforcement was now divided between r 6 Market Offices where the central offices had very little ability to monitor what was happening at the local level. Indeed, between 1973 and 1984 there was no centralized organization charged with coordinating the activity of these different Market Offices or even collecting information from them. A number of problems arose. First, there were no centralized data-and in many areas no data at all-on the real dimensions of street vending. The number of street vendors grew by leaps and bounds, while the city-wide administration remained largely ignorant of what was going on. Second, the files of the central Market Office appear to have been misplaced during the transition, meaning that the officials had to take the word of the street vendors themselves about who had legitimate permits and who did not. In most cases the "permits" were not credentials but simply letters from city officials to a leader stating that his organization could set up in a given area. In 1984, in reaction to the perception that the city administration had lost all control over street vending in the city, a new agency was instituted under the office of the Secretariat of Governance designed to centralize information on public markets, concentrations, and tianguis and to establish a uniform system of norms and controls for their activities. The new agency, the Coordination of Supply and Popular Commerce of the Federal Dis-

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trict (COABASTO), had no enforcement powers, and its mission reflected the different power interests involved in its creation. On the one hand, it had a mission to reduce the number of tianguis and to make sure those still allowed to operate were placed in communities that needed them. A memorandum written in the first year of the agency's operation projected that the number of tianguis in the city would be reduced from 724 to 450 by I988 in response to COABASTO's policies (DDF-COABASTO I98 5 ). But at the same time, the agency was supposed to "modernize" the tianguis, public markets, and small stores to make them more competitive. In other words, it was supposed to both hinder and help street vending. The result was a disaster. COABASTO became an agency to which tianguis vendors could appeal if local delegations refused to allow them to sell in a given area. At the same time, its lack of power meant that delegation officials could safely ignored it if they wanted to. Despite a ban on new tianguis locations (and indeed any new street vending) announced in an executive order from the Secretariat of Governance in I984 and again in I985, the number of tianguis sites and vendors almost doubled between I98 5 and I99I, from 84,000 to I52,ooo, according to files held by COABASTO. COABASTO itself suffered from severe cutbacks of staff over time. The office charged with overseeing the tianguis started with 3 6 personnel in I 984, but had only 8 in I 99 r. The office charged with overseeing the markets suffered the same fate, and the agency's only power became that of persuasion.ts COABASTO was never entrusted with collecting data on "ambulatory" street vendors, such as those in the city center, so information and activity on this matter were still retained exclusively by the delegations-which as a COABASTO official sarcastically commented, 15 The Subdirector of Tianguis boasted in I99I that he got some things done because, with six years in office, he had friends at some of the delegations. On the other hand, he said, "Those people in the Market Office (of COABASTO) get no attention from anyone." After later events had further tarnished the image of COABASTO, however, he admitted he too had become completely ignored.

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suited them fine: "A rio revuelto, ganancia de pescadores." ("The more turbulent the river, the more the fishermen's catch"meaning delegation officials could take advantage of the chaos to make a lucrative living.)

Theoretical Interpretations: State Integration and Disintegration The repression of street vending during the Uruchurtu regime appears to show that the vendors played little role in the policy construction and implementation process. If street vendors had power, why were they so poorly treated during this period? Given the authoritarian nature of the state, it makes sense that both the repression of vending and the subsequent tolerance of the same activity responded to internal dictates of the state apparatus rather than actions of street vendors themselves. Initially, as noted above, the construction of public markets was a powerful political tool that strengthened the power of Uruchurtu and the PRI. If more than 5 2,ooo vendors were included in the market system during the Uruchurtu period, then more than 52,ooo new members were added to the PRI rosters; 52,ooo more people could be counted on for political contributions, and 52,ooo more people could be brought out at rallies in favor of PRI candidates or, when necessary, in protests against candidates or officials of other parties-all of this in the capital city where the PRI had traditionally been relatively weak. The timing of the construction program to coincide with election periods also seems to indicate this. Furthermore, the subsequent period of tolerance could be seen as a rational response to the gradual reduction of the political "rate of return" of the market program as the limitations began to take effect. But one problem with this argument is that street vendors and market vendors were not the only groups affected by the state's policies toward street vending. While it makes sense for the state to enhance its relationship with street vendors, what about its re-

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lations with the middle classes and merchant classes who had applauded and supported Uruchurtu's policies? By embracing street vending, did the state not also stand to lose the support of these influential groups? It must be remembered that Uruchurtu had been widely praised for his stern approach toward street vending, particularly by the press. Most columnists suggested even more drastic measures, and even when the press attacked Uruchurtu as he left office in disgrace, the market program was still widely seen as his greatest achievement. By allowing street vending to grow out of control, later regimes have damaged the perception of the state among those classes that it ultimately most represents: the middle classes. The regime-wide benefits it gained from allowing street vending to reemerge have been partly counteracted by these negative perceptions on the part of the middle class. The "polity-centered" argument also ignores the street vendors by focusing entirely upon the interests of the state. While street vendor organizations have existed throughout Mexican history, Uruchurtu's policies substantially strengthened them by making membership a requirement for individual vendors. And, paradoxically, the associations more than anyone else were directly responsible for the repression of street vending, because those vendors who entered the market system could do so only if the city could guarantee that new vendors could not take over the streets-and customers-they had just left behind. The severe repression of street vending in this era was a result not of street vendor weakness, but a condition imposed by the large street vendor organizations that were enticed into the market system. Once this argument is combined with a theory of low state integration where the state itself is divided into multiple competing cliques or camarillas, as in the case of Mexico, it becomes much more persuasive. For example, the Uruchurtu regime was in fact something of an aberration in the modern history of Mexico City, when a single individual controlled policy for I4 years, allowing a stable cohort of functionaries to run the city without major changes in policy or

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personnel. Indeed, the director of the market office, Gonzalez Pefia Manterola, held office for r 6 years, having been appointed in r950 and maintained in office by Uruchurtu. During this period, alternative cliques were locked out and the normal process of competition between rival camarillas became less important in the implementation of policy. Uruchurtu in effect reproduced a miniature version of the "ejido" system in an urban setting. By granting rent-free but "inalienable" stalls to vendors who were members of PRJ-affiliated associations, the market system incorporated street vendors into a corporatist hierarchical relationship with the PRJ, which could be controlled directly by Uruchurtu himself. His control deprived political rivals within the PRJ of receiving support, while, by repressing street vendor groups and land invaders,. Uruchurtu prevented rival politicians from attracting potential clients from these groups as well. As a result, some street vendors joined opposition political parties because PRJ politicians saw little utility in organizing them. On the other hand, during the post-Uruchurtu period the level of state integration was progressively lowered by the rapid changeover in officials between and during sexenios and the decentralization of implementation into the local delegations. Even the formation of COABASTO-designed to provide oversight over the delegations-simply provided another bureaucratic level for street vendors to appeal to in being allowed to sell, while it lacked real power over the delegations to prevent them from allowing vendors it was opposed to. The lack of continuity and problems of decentralization that plagued the city contrast with the authoritarian model adopted by street vendor organizations. While nominally democratic, in fact most leaders are able to retain their positions more or less permanently, giving them much stronger organizational capabilities than officials. Thus, in any conflict between street vendor organizations and city officials, leaders can adopt a long-term perspective, delaying change if possible until officials change, or bowing under pressure from one group of officials with the hope of gaining back any lost territory when those officials move on to other positions.

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At the same time, while the street vendors were divided into multiple competing organizations, the competition between organizations actually strengthened their hand relative to the administration. Leaders could on the one hand pretend to be sympathetic to administrative needs to relocate their members or to restrict their growth, while at the same time refusing to cooperate until all the other leaders also had agreed. Otherwise, they could legitimately claim, the other groups of vendors would simply take over the territory they had left open. The PRI is an important part of this process, but as a fractured rather than a single entity. When city policies attempt to limit or reduce street vending, different organs of the official party often hamper or prevent the city agencies from carrying them out, even while other organs of the PRI support them. For example, when some tianguis leaders persuaded the PRI to sponsor its own Sunday markets ("PRI-tianguis") in the ceremonial plaza of each delegation (ostensibly to provide a cheap alternative to the high prices charged in the public markets), the plan was defeated not by city officials but by public market vendors themselves, who underscored their loyalty to the PRI and attacked the Sunday markets as a stab in the back. As in most struggles involving street vending, the PRI itself was identified with both sides of the conflict, often milking both sides for support, and rarely with a coherent policy of its own.

Conclusion As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, the tragedy of Uruchurtu is that the elements that made the attempt to eliminate street vending a failure, and which continue to do so today, essentially originate with the particular policies that Uruchurtu implemented to obtain the double goals of eliminating street vending and creating a dependent client group of market vendors supportive of his own political career. These objectives required Uruchurtu to embark on an ambitious program of market construction while at the same time conducting the harshest policy of repression

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against street vending in modern Mexican history. Over time, the demands of these two policies contributed to Uruchurtu's downfall. But the more important legacy of Uruchurtu is the way he patterned relations between petty merchants and the city that later allowed street vending to re-emerge with a vengeance. It was never the intention of the new city officials who replaced Uruchurtu to allow the spectacular growth of street vending that occurred in the following three decades. Rather, they simply wanted to reverse a situation that had become politically untenable for the PRI and economically untenable for the state. However, Uruchurtu's policies had radically politicized street vending by using the market construction program as an incentive for vendors to organize within the PRJ and as a reward for loyalty toward his own political objectives. His successors, in order to capitalize on the political benefits of organizing street vendors in the same way that Uruchurtu had organized market vendors, made the fatal mistake of continuing to apply the letter of his policies without their spirit, and thus fomenting the creation of street vendor organizations. Soon after Uruchurtu was forced to resign from office the market construction program was scrapped in favor of new programs, such as the Metro. But officials continued to compel groups of vendors to organize into associations that had to prove their loyalty to the PRJ-typically by finding a patron-to be "tolerated" in the streets. Officials hid the fact that they were allowing street vending to re-emerge with the fiction that the groups were being "tolerated" only until markets were built. By compelling street vendors to form or join associations, the city gave the associations the ultimate power over individual vendors, allowing the leaders of the associations to use their members in any way they saw necessary to defend their interests-increasing their memberships, increasing their space on the street, and ultimately increasing the "phenomenon" of street vending to a level unprecedented in Mexican history. In the next chapter, we shall see how these powerful street vendor organizations fared when presented with a new attempt to

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eliminate the phenomenon under a neo-liberal model inspired partly by the desire to "modernize" the city after the passage of NAFTA, and partly by pressure from more formal merchants who were themselves being pulled into the tax structure of the state as part of the rationalization of the fiscal system required by Salinas' neo-liberal policies.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Historical Center Repression and Resistance

H

1 sToRY APPEAR Eo to be repeating itself when plans were unveiled in the fall of 1991 to relocate Io,ooo vendors from the city center into market structures. Indeed, officials were happy to draw a parallel between themselves and the "Regent of Iron" as they spoke of the Historical Center as a test case for the expansion of the plan throughout the city. But times had changed: Officials were motivated by different objectives, stymied by a far more complex administrative structure, and faced with a better organized adversary. Instead of repeating the tragedy of Uruchurtu, they presented a parody: the farce of Manuel Camacho Solis. When Camacho Solis was appointed mayor of Mexico City by President Salinas de Gortari in 1988, the PRI faced even more difficulties than it had faced at the beginning of Uruchurtu's term in I 9 52. With a population hammered by the economic crisis of the early 198o's and unhappy with the government's handling of problems resulting from the devastating earthquake of 1985, support for the PRI in the Federal District dropped to an unprecedented 27 percent (Davis 1994:33o). For the first time since the birth of the PRI, two opposition senators and a large number of opposition deputies were directly elected to the Federal congress. Even the election of President Salinas was clouded by widespread charges of fraud. Only careful gerrymandering maintained a narrow majority for the PRI in a new local assembly that was the first

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elected representative body for the Federal District-the Representative Assembly of the Federal District (ARDF). Salinas brought a neo-liberal policy for the first time onto center stage in Mexican politics. Determined to change the nature of the Mexican political and economic system, he sped up the privatization of state-owned companies, radically revised the agrarian code that had been the basis of the ejido, liberalized international trade, and opened direct negotiations with the United States and Canada that led to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). At the same time he promised sweeping electoral reforms that would weaken the PRI's iron grip on Mexican politics. These changes directly undercut the traditional corporatist structure of the PRI as the privatized companies laid off workers, rural peasants became more independent (and risked losing their land), and commercial capital was given greater power. Instead, Salinas focused on programs that emphasized the direct role of the state, such as Solidaridad, administered directly under the presidency, 1 which provided resources to communities for selfimprovement and into which a number of previous programs that serviced the poor were folded. For example, many public markets were arbitrarily designated as Solidaridad projects, and the distribution of basic goods at subsidized prices also was funneled through the program. Thus, Salinas systematically attempted to switch the symbols of benign governance from the PRI to his own office even as he cut back funding for these services. Massive advertising campaigns touted the benefits Solidaridad and NAFTA ostensibly provided. But Salinas faced far greater problems in the Mexico City. The symbolic rents for public market vendors and the de-facto tax-free privileges of street vendors-both emerging as a form of subsidy of popular commerce-undermined his plans to cut subsidies, broaden the tax base, lower the tax rate on formal firms, and provide an 1 Solidaridad was run for many years by his brother, Raul Salinas, who was imprisoned after Salinas left office in a huge corruption scandal with more than $8o million dollars unaccountably in Swiss bank accounts.

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optimal environment for foreign investment. But public market vendors rejected plans to privatize their stalls even when the administration offered to provide the titles for free, since they would then be faced with maintenance and repair bills for the deteriorating buildings. Thus, the administration turned to street vendors, who lacked legal rights to the space they occupied on the street. The formalization of street vending became one of the center pieces of a broader plan to apply a rigorous and uniform tax code on commercial businesses in the city that would clamp down on tax evasion among small shopkeepers as well as market and street vendors and thus both increase tax revenues and eliminate the advantage petty merchants enjoyed over large commercial outlets. But Salinas' position was far from stable at the beginning of his regime because his narrow and problematic victory had robbed him of the legitimacy he needed to carry out these projects. As Camp ( r990) points out, his cabinet was made up primarily of political figures whose power bases were tied up in the corporatist structure of the PRJ, such as Carlos Hank Gonzalez, Jorge de la Vega Dominguez, and Manuel Bartlett, who owed little direct loyalty to Salinas for their positions. His own camarilla members dominated only the economic portfolios. Camacho Solis himself was only marginally a member of Salinas' camarilla. As a result, most of the first half of Salinas' presidency, from r988 to I99I, was taken up with national economic policy-the privatization of businesses, the liberalization of trade, the negotiation of NAFTA, and the Solidaridad program-areas directly under the president's control and where over time Salinas was largely able to legitimate his presidency and consolidate his position. In the Federal District Camacho Solis adopted a "go-slow" policy on street vending with only isolated relocation projects in targeted areas on a test basis, even as the scale of street vending continued to grow. These projects were managed by the delegations rather than the city-wide administration and further differed from Uruchurtu's approach in another important aspect: Rather than build markets that would be leased to vendors at a subsidized rate, the city turned to the construction of "stalls in condomin-

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ium," in which permanent stalls would be sold to vendors and maintenance would become the responsibility of the vendor associations. Two such areas were the Basilica de Guadalupe and La Merced. The Basilica, a cathedral to the Virgin that attracts thousands of visitors and pilgrims a day, had become surrounded by a large street market of ambulatory vendors selling prepared food and religious items. In a portion of La Merced, a market zone near the Historical Center, a thriving street market had reemerged during the preceding three decades. These projects required substantial negotiation between the delegations and vendor associations, backed up by the threat of public force against vendors in these areas and the promise that new vending activity would be repressed in the surrounding streets. Like Uruchurtu, Camacho Solis insisted that vendors become members of an association if they were not already organized, and that they be affiliated with the PRI.l At the same time, the associations were required to collect down payments for the stalls from the vendors while they were still selling in the street. From a commercial point of view, however, the new "stalls in condominium" were absolute failures. Although the city constructed a series of concrete stalls in the area of the Basilica, only those closest to the Basilica were actually occupied; the rest of the vendors left to sell in other areas. In La Merced a r,roo-stall market called San Ciprian, finished in 1990, was never more than 30 percent occupied. Vendors preferred to lose their down payments, which most viewed as a surcharge on street vending, than to pay monthly mortgage payments while their customers went elsewhere. Still, the new markets could be seen as successes in one sense. As one official explained after admitting that the markets were "white elephants" from a business perspective, they gave the city 2Unorganized vendors were removed from the Basilica area but then followed suggestions from officials to form an association affiliated with the PRI, after which they were included in the project.

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government the moral right to keep the surrounding streets clear of vendors, even if, as the official noted, they only moved to the other side of the street. The number of vendors increased noticeably in other areas of the same delegation. In the Delegation Cuauhtemoc, which includes the Historical Center, Tepito, and most of La Merced, little or no progress was made despite talks with two small organizations and a series of proposals for the relocation of vendors into empty lots made available by the 1985 earthquake. In fact, a series of street invasions substantially increased the number of vendors in the area during this period. 3 With disorganization and corruption within the delegation and more than 6o different organizations of vendors jostling for space in the delegation, local planning seemed to be impossible. Even the leadership of the mayor and other officials seemed to be sporadic. When in January 1990 a group of shopkeepers in the delegation obtained a ruling from the Mexican Supreme Court that prevented street vendors from setting up in front of their shops, Camacho Soils denounced the attitude of the merchants as "bordering on fascism" and called for respect of the right of street vendors to provide for their own survival (La ]ornada rh3/90:22). At the same time, the director of the downtown Delegation Cuauhtemoc spoke favorably of street vending in a report to the ARDF, criticizing those who, "with a baroque vision, feel that the Historical Center should be a reflection of the greatness of our ancestors, but not a mirror of the social reality that we live in," and praising street vending as a "reliever of social tension, an alternative employment that closes the door to poverty and opens the possibility of new economic perspectives that come to better the quality of life" (DDF-Delegation Cuauhtemoc 1990). 3 The author listened to a taped conversation of a vendor with a delegation official offering to sell stall spaces in the area. One of the leaders had set up the call after seeing a poster advertising spaces and planned to use the tape to blackmail officials.

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On a broader level, it was far from clear that the political system was ready to attack street vending. In 1989 congress passed a new tax code authorizing the treasury to collect a minimal fee from street vendors pending the passage of new regulations. The ARDF spent its entire first session-from 1988 to 1991-writing a new set of regulations to supplant the outmoded Market Regulation of 1951. Although the administration tried to include a ban on vending in the Historical Center in the new regulations, the attempt was blocked by the PRD with support from some of the PRI's own representatives. Nevertheless, the chairman of the ARDF's Commission on Commerce-having worked two years on the new market regulation-proudly pointed to it as one of the finest achievements of the first session, and predicted it would be passed as soon as the second session of the ARDF convened after the 1991 mid-term elections. The power of street vendor leaders seemed unparalleled when ro,ooo vendors marched to the ARDF building in April 1990 to demand even more permits for their activity in the downtown area (Baca 1990). But the mid-term elections of August 1991 changed the situation entirely. The left-wing opposition parties, which had unified around the candidacy of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in 1988, were now in complete disarray and offered only a poorly coordinated negative campaign attacking the NAFTA negotiations. On the right, the PAN's platform had been virtually usurped by Salinas' neo-liberal orientation. At the same time, a deluge of public service messages appeared on television channels up to 20 times a day, extolling the virtues of NAFTA and the Solidaridad program and provided free and uniformly positive images of the Salinas administration. Salinas' policy of lowering tariffs and overvaluing the Mexican peso meant that imports had become significantly cheaper, fueling a growing standard of living for the middle classes at the expense of a mounting trade deficit that was only barely canceled out by increased foreign investment in anticipation of NAFTA. As a result the PRI swept the elections, winning back almost all the losses it

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had suffered in 1988. Given his power as head of the PRI to select many of the candidates for office, most of the newly elected officials were far more likely to be loyal to the President and his polictes.

The Attack Against Street Vending The trend was immediately reflected in the change of administrative personnel that accompanies all such elections and also in a radical shift in rhetoric: The ARDF immediately tabled its discussion of the new regulations; the new representatives, now almost completely dominated by the PRI, suddenly began attacking street vending brutally, using the previous year's supreme court rulings to argue the activity could not be regulated; the director of the Delegation Cuauhtemoc, who had spoken favorably of street vending, was moved to another post; Camacho Solis began discussing a new agreement he wanted the leaders to sign-calling for vendors to move into closed markets and off the streets; secret plans were laid for a major operation to clear the city's metropolitan underground-the Metro-of vendors who had clogged many of its entrances and passageways with their wares; and newspapers were suddenly packed with stories about the problems caused by street vendors. 4 Meanwhile the leaders, who had been partially responsible for the PRI's victory given their unflagging support for its candidates, appeared to have been taken by surprise, and now they went on the defensive. Most went along with the negotiations, but it seemed clear that they were not quite sure why the government had suddenly changed its approach. The most important change, however, was not publicly apparent: The city-wide Secretariat of Governance suddenly took control of negotiation with street vendor leaders away from the Dele4 A high official in the Secretariat of Governance openly boasted in interviews that he had personally orchestrated the media blitz against the metro and street vendors.

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gation Cuauhtemoc and itself planned and carried out a massive police operation against vending in the Metro. For the first time in r 8 years, the central offices had gone past its oversight function and become directly involved in policy implementation. It became clear later that these changes had originated at the highest possible level: in the presidency itself. THE METRO OPERATION

The first concrete action taken by the city was against vendors who had been a fixture in the Metro system since it opened in the 197o's but had become far more prevalent during the 198o's, often blocking passageways and occasionally setting up rude stalls on the platforms.' In a station-by-station census, the city found 4,2 7 5 vendors in the r r 8 Metro stations, but they could not count about a thousand more who sold on the trains themselves by walking from car to car selling small wares from duffel bags. Officials also began to gather information on vendors they identified as leaders in the stations who, although never officially recognized as such by the city, undertook many of the same tasks as those above ground-collecting fees, controlling access and arranging for payments to higher officials. Police records were compiled on each one so the city could show, as one official said, "They were groups of gangsters-that's why we were not going to deal with them." Planning began in secret soon after the 1991 elections-the author first heard rumors about such a plan from ARDF staff members in October 1991. The Metro operation was scheduled to take place after leaders in the Historical Center had signed an agreement to "reorder" vending, including a clause in which metro 5 Although the Metro had its own security staff and occasionally took action against vendors, it attempted to avoid direct confrontation and was generally ineffective. During the period leading up to the police operation, however, the Metro significantly stepped up its own actions. Officials later suggested this move may have been due to a desire to avoid the need for a major operation that would involve subordinating the Metro to the central city administration.

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vending was ruled out. But as the leaders dragged on negotiations by squabbling among themselves, a better opportunity arose in January 1992 when a Metro passenger was shot by a vendor after an altercation. The city immediately put the operation into effect as if it were a response to this act of violence, which had helped galvanize the press and the public against the Metro vendors by demonstrating tangibly the dangers they presented, and by tainting all the vendors with an aura of criminality. 6 The following morning, 500 riot police were assigned to "protect" r 5 of the most vendor-congested stations, giving the impression conscientious city officials were responding rapidly to a public threat, but in practice carrying out a planned scenario. Over the next two months the operation rolled through the system, flooding each station with scores of riot police for a two-week period and then leaving a small contingent behind to prevent vendors from re-invading the facilities. While the operation was highly successful in the short term, earning accolades from the press and giving officials confidence they could get public support, it required not only an expensive use of force but also constant vigilance. Those vendors who sold on the trains, rather than in the station, were only partially affected, since it was easier for them to slip by the guards and sell quietly. But one such vendor commented that within a month of the operation he was actually better off, since there was less competition/ But the fact that earnings were increasing was in itself a 61n November 1991 the Metro had begun a safety awareness campaign featuring billboards that, among other safety messages, always included a request for users to avoid patronizing vendors-who were thus labeled continuously as the primary safety hazzard in the Metro. Some of the vendors defended themselves by pointing out that many acts of violence and even killings in the Metro installations had nothing to do with vendors, but one episode that did was hypocritically used against them. This defense was completely ignored in the press, which unanimously endorsed the operation. 70f 70 vendors who had worked his area of the Metro line before the operation, only 25 were left, and they prevented new vendors from corning in, "Because it isn't fair that we suffered and now that it is easy, everyone wants to come in."

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sign of the failure of the program, and a preview of what was to come the following year as more and more vendors began returning to the trains. In the stations themselves, the vendors had set up on the floor, so they were much easier for police to deal with, typically by forcing them outside the station and away from the entrance. Still, the vendors adopted a "creeping" policy of setting up closer and closer to the station entrances until they began invading the station again. In the early period this encroachment was often met by a new onslaught of riot police, but later politicians and newspapers began once again to decry the presence of vendors in the entrances of many of the busiest Metro stations (La Prensa 8/n/94,15; 8!I8/94,2). In one area, after vendors had been removed from the entrance of a busy Metro station into a nearby street, they were actually pushed back into the entrance by the local Market Office because they had taken up valuable parking space on the street. 8 Besides the shooting that had preceded the operation, another factor that made vendors in the Metro relatively easy to act against was their lack of formal organization. Although most of the Metro lines and stations were "controlled" by specific groups of vendors, none of these organizations was recognized by officials. (Some were later recognized if they accepted areas outside the Metro facilities.) This lack of recognition weakened the internal organization of the vendors and furthermore made it easier for the city to brand them as "bandits." Despite these factors, the long-term success of the operation is still in substantial doubt, since vendors have tenaciously returned to the Metro every time heavy police reinforcement has been removed. Nevertheless, the Metro operation fulfilled three vital functions for officials: First, it showed leaders for the first time in years that the city was willing to use force if necessary to carry out its poli8This was not the first time such an operation had been attempted. In January 1989 riot police had removed vendors from all but three stations, but vendors soon returned (Excelsior 1/9/89; 1!21/89). Most vendors assumed this operation would be just as temporary.

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cies. Second, by tying the operation to a specific criminal act by a vendor, the city could present it as a legitimate police concern rather than an administrative act that undercut the livelihood of thousands of vendors, which might have been far harder to justify to the public. As a safety issue, it created an upswell of public support for antivendor policies, helping to justify the much more difficult task of relocating vendors in the Historical Center, where vendors were heavily organized and had strong political connections. Third, it boosted the confidence of officials that the Historical Center project was politically feasible. THE HISTORICAL CENTER: FROM CONFLICT TO CONSTRUCTION

The Historical Center is both the official seat of the Mexican government and, since 1987, a UNESCO-designated historical and cultural landmark. An area where colonial and early independence architecture predominates, it holds special significance for Mexicans in general. It is also the traditional commercial center of the city-although the modern commercial center has gravitated to the southwest to areas such as the Pink Zone, Polanco, and the Delegation Benito Juarez. While small stores and boutiques still line many of its streets, so did, until 1993, more than 1o,ooo street vendors, which the small businesses blamed for stealing or scaring away their clients. In response, several associations of small merchants formed to push for the removal of street vendors in the area and throughout the city. The most militant of these groups, Procentrico, was formed by Guillermo Gazal Jafif, a Mexican of Lebanese origin, to push for the elimination of street vending in the city center. Originally ignored by city officials and snubbed by the official Chamber of Commerce (Camara Nacional de Comercio, or CANACO), this group became highly successful in gaining national attention for its cause and was instrumental in pushing the city to carry through the Historical Center project. By now, vendors occupied more than 3 2,ooo square meters in the Historical Center, enough to form a line of stalls about 20 miles long.

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After six months of "negotiations," but only two weeks after the metro operation, leaders finally signed a vaguely worded agreement with the mayor to "reorder" vending in the Historical Center. Given that the term "reorder" was deliberately left undefined, vendor leaders proposed that they be allowed to set up attractive but permanent stalls in the streets. The city, however, had other plans, although these were not made public at first. It later became clear that the administration planned to construct new markets for the vendors in empty buildings and lots, called "commercial plazas" to distinguish them from the previous public markets. Similar plans had been proposed in various versions dozens of times. After the September 198 5 earthquake the destruction and abandonment of many buildings in the Historical Center had led to a series of studies about land use in the area focusing on the relocation of vendors. But now the stalls were to be sold directly to the vendors, rather than owned by the city. Moving slowly to avoid open conflict with the leaders, officials at the delegation level struggled with a number of proposals for relocation that would be satisfactory to the vendors. As one high official noted several months after the agreement was signed, "Our biggest fear is arriving at confrontations. There is a presidential mandate that we have to fulfill, but we don't have the way to do it yet." The official in charge of the program at the time, Hector Luna de la Vega, Subsecretary of Governance, estimated that the planning stage alone would last for ten months, until October 1992, and only then would building of plazas begin. In the meantime, the delegation carried out a series of censuses of vendors in the area. Supposedly, identification cards would be given to each vendor in the Historical Center so that only those with cards would be allowed in the plazas. Meanwhile a "single list" of vendors throughout the city would be created that neither the secretariat nor the delegations would be able to change alone. 9 9The idea was to abolish corruption in the market offices where previously the office director had been the only person to decide which vendors would be tolerated. However, other officials noted that the new program was run-

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Nothing worked as planned, however. Several of the street vendor organizations began extending their areas and augmenting their membership roles to guarantee a larger number of plaza spaces or a better negotiating position. Others took advantage of the plan by charging their vendors huge fees to "guarantee" their places within the plazas. One leader charged 3 million pesos for her members to be allowed to sell in an area in which a plaza was to be built-thus allowing them to buy stalls in the plaza later. But later, the same leader charged a 5 million peso (U.S. $1,soo) "down-payment" for each stall when other vendors in the same plaza paid the government less than 2 million pesos directly. "And we still have to pay more to get good spaces in the plaza," one vendor lamented. The confusion was compounded when officials claimed each organization had to create a fund to pay for the down payment of their project-but vendors received no credit for these payments and were still charged individual down payments by the city after paying into funds supposedly maintained by the associations for the same purpose. With different plans and proposals publicly discussed by various government offices, the opportunities for abuse and mismanagement were immense. Many of these problems resulted because vendors would be compelled to pay for their own stalls. Officials were not sure vendors would really occupy the stalls, given that they would have to make substantial monthly payments on them. On the other hand, the city had no budget to construct the plazas, so loans had to be arranged from financial institutions that were willing to take the huge risk that many of the vendors would default. Finally, most of ning into severe difficulties, because not everyone wanted the system to change. As one official said, "Before, the (director of the Market Office) was the king. He gave permits, took them away, everything. Everything was right there," and the opportunity for graft and favoritism was immense. No credentials were ever given out, and the "single list" existed more in the imagination of bureaucrats than in reality. In practice, the number of vendors in the area continued to grow, and interagency rivalry played havoc with the original plans.

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the vendors had no real collateral with which to secure the loans except for the untested value of their stalls. Thus, one of the biggest factors slowing the program was the inability to find a commercial bank willing to back the construction costs. The slow pace of action finally brought a response from the Procentrico leader, who had for several years been one of the most vocal and militant activists against street vending in the city, leading him into direct conflict not only with the street vendor organizations, but also with city officials and the Chamber of Commerce (CANACO). As early as January 1989, Gazal had attacked city officials for allowing the street vendors in the center to "steal" 1o,ooo million pesos (U.S. $4.5 million) in sales from the small stores, arguing that when the city gave out 9,ooo permits for Christmas selling, the leaders used these permits to justify 7o,ooo vendors. In January 1990, after obtaining a supreme court ruling against street vending, Gazal threatened that his members would stage store closings to enforce the ruling, leading the mayor to accuse him of "bordering on fascism." In late August and early September 1991, Gazal again appeared in the public light, urging that the vendors be taken off the streets immediately. Red Monday. However, despite his activism during this period, Gazal was largely ignored by city officials, who preferred to negotiate with the less volatile CANACO. In May 1992, claiming that three months had passed with no results since the agreement between the city and vendors was signed, Gazal again threatened to initiate a series of "strikes" among the small merchants of the city center. When he was still ignored, he went ahead with his threat by calling a "rolling strike" in which each day a few blocks of stores would close between 10 A.M. and 12 noon. 10 To attract attention, he went personally to "check" on the strikes, preceding each tour with a lavish breakfast for the press to make sure they 10It is not clear to what degree stores actually supported Gazal, since most stores were closed at this hour anyway. Street vendor leaders claimed that Gazal used intimidation tactics to force stores to close and claim nominal membership in his organization. Gazal himself claimed a membership in the thousands, which he was unable to substantiate.

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followed him. On one such occasion when several vendors recognized him, he was surrounded by a group of 3o vendors who chanted insults at him until he made his escape. A week later, on June 9, 1992, accompanied this time also by news cameras from one of Mexico's most important television news programs ("24 Horas con Jacobo Zabludovski"), he checked a previously announced strike on a street occupied by vendors affiliated with Alejandra Barrios, a major leader with more than 8oo vendors in the area. The street had been cleared of vendors already. Barrios said she had removed them for the day to prevent any confrontation. But a large group of vendors staged a counter demonstration against Gazal. What happened is clear, but whether it was intentional or spontaneous is more difficult to assess, despite the presence of eyewitnesses and video cameras. The crowd of enraged vendorscarrying placards against Gazal-marched up to where he was standing with the full press contingent. For a few moments or even a full minute, they exchanged heated words. Then, bright red tomatoes started falling out of the sky besmirching Gazal's cashmere suit. After a few seconds, Gazal and two assistants who were with him began to run, and the crowd ran after them, throwing more tomatoes at them-one young man running up right behind the man to paste him with fuller force. I made the following notes while watching a video tape held by Barrios' organization: The tape shows young people running to the side of and in front of Gazal, throwing tomatoes at him, and shouting "get lost" and less pleasant things. But even though they could have cut him off easily, there is no attempt to do more than throw tomatoes. No stones are seen. When Gazal gets to the corner of [the street] and runs around it with his assistants, several of the attackers follow him, but are called back by the others. The film shows Gazal and his assistants getting into two sports cars parked on the street and taking off as fast as they can. "Get lost, damned a-hole," a voice shouts. Antisemitic profanities are also heard frequently on the tape."

Gazal claimed that the attack had been premeditated, although

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Barrios and some vendors who were interviewed on the street the following day claimed the throwing of tomatoes was spontaneous-the tomatoes being provided by a vendor who happened to pass by. The vendors seemed to hate Gazal, whom they saw as a direct threat to their livelihoods. One lamented that tomatoes had been used against the activist: "They should really have been stones because tomatoes are very expensive. That way the problem would be over," he joked. The event certainly did not appear to be spontaneous. If so, why did it start so rapidly and involve so many of the people in the crowd of vendors? A spontaneous action would have involved only a few people who were close enough to grab some tomatoes. If others were to become involved, it would take a while for them to "load up" before joining in. Second, the "chase" was too orderly. Why didn't anyone hit or punch Gazal? Why didn't they cut off his retreat, as they could easily have done? Why did they all stop at the corner of the street, calling back those who had gone on, as if the corner were an agreed-upon boundary? If the vendors were angry enough to have been raised so quickly to the level of throwing tomatoes, why would they stop at that and not hit him or follow him to his sports car? Furthermore, why was anyone selling or unloading tomatoes in large numbers in an area in which fresh vegetables are rarely sold? Barrios and her aides fiercely denied they had anything to do with organizing the protest or the tomato throwing, but these questions suggest that it was organized by someone within the association. A more cynical member of the press suggested that Gazal may have organized the protest himself to get attention. The event was clearly welcomed by Gazal who, in the opinion of many members of the press, had been hoping to provoke such a response. One noted that even several hours afterwards, Gazal was still in his tomato-stained suit waiting for a television crew to interview him. The story was carried by the top evening news program the same day, sparking massive criticism of the protestors and of street vendors in general, and helping to criminalize the

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Historical Center vendors in the same way the Metro shooting had stripped the Metro vendors of any public support. 11 However, in contrast to the unanimous press opposition to the metro vendors when they were attacked, several key newspaper sources supported the street vendors this time, attacking Gazal for being an opportunist who simply wanted to get attention in order to win a power struggle with the CANACO. A political columnist for La Prensa, a popular newspaper that generally attacked street vendor organizations, went so far as to accuse Gazal of committing fraud against investors who were trying to build markets in the city. The same columnist took delight in noting that even after the above events, Gazal could not get an appointment with the Secretary of Governance. But Gazal was actually far more successful than the columnist believed. Not only was vending on the street involved suspended immediately, with a 24-hour guard of more than 6o riot police, but a week after the tomato attack a shuffling of major posts and responsibilities within the administration was forced on the city by the President. The Secretary of Governance, who had ignored Gazal, was reassigned from the second most powerful position in the city government (in charge of supervising the 16 delegations and of the police, fire, markets, services, in short, of almost every administrative apparatus of the city), to a much less important position in which he became responsible for coordinating policy issues with other states in the Mexican Republic. With him, following Mexican administrative tradition, went his entire staff, including those responsible for planning and developing the plan for the relocation of street vendors in the Historical Center. The head of the PRI in the Federal District was appointed the new Secretary of Governance, suggesting that the mayor felt a more politically aware Secretary was necessary. At the same time a new "coordination" was formed to take over the functions the "Paradoxically, Barrios in an earlier interview with me had privately supported the Metro operation, but after this event she openly sympathized with them.

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Secretariat of Governance had begun to perform in overseeing the plaza construction, with a specific mandate to coordinate construction of facilities for the relocation of all street vendors in the Historical Center. Once again, the Secretariat became a purely administrative office, with no direct policy implementation responsibilities.

The Interests Behind the Actions: Procentrico vs. CANACO Gazal's attacks on street vending are better seen in the light of broader policy changes and related interest dynamics. Small shop owners in the area shared many interests with street vendors. As street market areas grew, so did many of the small stores that catered to the same customers. In fact, a large number of shop owners were wholesalers who relied on street vendors to distribute their goods, or themselves used stalls in the street to expand their sales. In addition, most of the small shop owners were also informal in the sense that they frequently were able to compete with larger commercial firms only because they evaded much of their tax obligation by failing to register their full earnings. With the Salinas administration clearly indicating their intent to cut down on tax evasion so as to broaden the tax base and thereby lower taxes on formal businesses, the small shop keepers began to feel themselves squeezed between large commercial businesses on the one hand and street vendors on the other. The vendors, who could not be effectively taxed while they were in the streets, were powerfully represented by their associations. On the other hand, the large commercial firms expected to benefit from the changes, since they already paid taxes. Early in his regime Salinas had lowered the sales tax from 15 percent to 10 percent, which substantially benefitted this group. Gazal's attacks on the CANACO reflected the different interests of small and large commercial firms with respect to Salinas' tax policies. While all commercial firms (except for public market

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vendors and street vendors) were legally required to join the CANACO, voting within the trade group was based on the level of dues paid, which was higher for larger firms. Thus, the CANACO tended to represent the large commercial firms of the modern commercial centers rather than the thousands of small stores of the Historical Center. Indeed, at one point Gazal attempted to set up a separate Historical Center CANACO that would be controlled by the small stores there, but legislative approval was not forthcoming. When Gazal announced later in 1992 that his members were breaking away from the CANACO-and accused its directors of corruption-he was sued for slander. Thus, according to some commentators and many street vendor leaders, Gazal's actions against street vending were in fact simply part of a larger campaign to discredit and take over the CANACO.U But this effort was tied into another related issue that brought the conflicts involved in the CANACO to a head. As part of Salinas' campaign to cut down on tax evasion, the government began to require that all stores-including the smallest corner candy stores-had to use special "fiscal cash registers" that would record all sales for tax purposes. By making tax evasion more difficult, this policy potentially undercut their competitive edge relative to the larger commercial firms while also widening the difference between the expenses of small stores and those of street vendors. The new policy made tangibly clear the lack of organizational power that the small shop keepers had. Not only were street vendors not included in the policy because they were still technically illegal and in any case had no stable place of business, neither were public market vendors, who had stable locations and were legally registered with the city. The difference was that the market vendors were well organized through associations af12As Gazal argued heatedly in an interview, "When have those of the CANACO been with us? The streets that are clear aren't clear due to the CANACO. The CANACO and the CONCANACO don't act because they have interests with the government, and they are affiliated with the same govern-

ment."

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filiated with the PRI, while the small shopkeepers were only nominally represented by the CANACO. The growth of Procentrico was thus a way of organizing small shop keepers in the face of much broader policy changes that threatened to undermine their economic viability. Its focus on street vending was a successful way of both mobilizing shop owners and attracting attention to their problems. Nevertheless, while Gazal took every opportunity available to attack the CANACO and other large commercial business interest groups, these attacks tended to be ignored or derided by the press even as it held him up as a beacon in the struggle against street vending. Thus, while the city attempted to ignore Gazal as much as possible to downplay his role as a leader and prevent the organization of small shopkeepers in the area, officials were forced to speed up their plans largely to undercut his ability to use the issue as a mobilization tool. INTERAGENCY COMPETITION

But interagency rivalries also were influential in affecting the way the above policies were carried out. The "red Monday" incident provided an excellent excuse for attacks on the Secretariat of Governance by groups that were in danger of being pushed aside by growth of the Secretariat's powers. Not least of these were vendors themselves, as well as the PRI. But within the administration the biggest enemy seemed to be the delegations gradually losing their power to the secretariat. Although the Secretariat of Governance is the second most important centralized office in the Federal District, responsible for policy direction and supervision of all administration and enforcement-related activities in each delegation, the actual power of the office is limited. This put the secretariat in direct conflict with the delegation directors, who are appointed by the mayor and who in turn appoint subdelegates and other officials responsible for day-to-day administration. Thus, while the Secretariat of Governance is responsible for supervising their work, the subdelegates are

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directly responsible to delegation directors. The result is a very high level of conflict between the delegations and the Secretariat of Governance. 13 Although the officials I spoke to in the Secretariat of Governance denied any such tensions, they were writing a budget that included more than 8o new personnel to take over many of the tasks the delegations were supposed to perform. Relations between the secretariat and the delegations were far from tension-free. The second part of the reorganization-the formation of a separate agency to coordinate and negotiate the construction of plazas-also supports this observation. By removing the implementation of the street vendor policy from the secretariat's office, the city appeared to be both allowing for centralization and keeping the secretariat's office from becoming too powerful. However, the new agency had no administrative powers-and in this respect was identical to COABASTO. In fact, it took over COABASTO's office and budget and effectively became COABASTO itself, taking on all of COABASTO's roles along with its focus on the Historical Center. 14 13 0n one occasion, when I was working in COABASTO, an official asked me to obtain information for him on the number of street vendors in several delegations, since he said that the delegations refused to give him such information. But when I suggested getting a letter of authorization from the Secretariat of Governance, he immediately laughed. In colorful language, he told me that it would be harder for the Secretariat of Governance of the DDF to get the information than for me because the delegations spend all their time preventing the Secretariat from finding out what is really going on in their areas. 14 Since there was neither a budget nor office space for the new coordination, COABASTO was basically cannibalized to make room for the new program. Its entire staff was laid off-most with two days' notice-and replaced by the staff of the new coordination (who were all brought in with the new director from his previous post at the delegation Venustiano Carranza). COABASTO's programs were almost cancelled altogether, but salvaged at the last moment by incorporating the new coordination into COABASTO with the staff of the former taking over the functions of the latter along with their own. Thus COABASTO had a new lease on life, albeit with an entirely new staff, and was now responsible for all forms of street vending and "popular commerce" in the city. Nevertheless, despite its broader responsibilities, CO-

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Cutting back on the authority of the Secretariat of Governance also satisfied the concerns of leaders, who were afraid the secretariat's power would be unlimited if it became directly involved in the affair, as had already been clear in its coordination of the Metro crackdown. The secretariat had been writing a budget that anticipated the expansion of the relocation program throughout the city. One of the immediate results of creation of the new office was that, while the secretariat was stripped of any direct responsibility for street vending, the new agency was given a mandate only to begin construction of plazas for street vendors in the Historical Center. The result was a far more limited mandate with less power for carrying it out on the part of the agency entrusted with the elimination of street vending. To head the new agency, the Director of the Delegation Venustiano Carranza-the man responsible for building the San Ciprian plaza-was tapped-and brought a staff of nearly a hundred from his previous delegation. Although officials in Cuauhtemoc had previously described the plaza disdainfully as a "white elephant" they wanted to avoid, the new official, Albores Guillen, was chosen precisely because of his "success" in dealing with street vending in the area of La Merced included in that delegation. In his new office the director had no direct power to carry out any plans, however, and had to rely upon the Delegation Cuauhtemoc to cooperate with the program and enforce any agreements. Because of the constant pressure from the regent and the president, this cooperation was forthcoming-indeed, when the new Coordination announced in August 1992, barely a month after its initiation, plans for relocating all 10,300 vendors in the Historical Center, it had simply taken many of these plans from the Delegation Cuauhtemoc, which had been developing them with the Secretariat of Governance for almost a year. The speed with which the plans were produced precluded any effort on the part of ABASTO had been demoted in status. Whereas before it had enjoyed the same rank as a secretariat, after the changeover it was ranked on the same administrative level as a delegation.

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city to be sure the areas proposed for the plazas would be successful.15 Backed by presidential authority, COABASTO was authorized to negotiate credit guarantees amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars to secure financial backing for the project. A special credit institution, the Fondo de Desarollo Econ6mico y Social del Distrito Federal (FONDEDF) was opened as a subsidiary of Nacional Financiero, S.A., a government-owned bank, to manage the financial side of the program. It put up 4 3 per cent of the 5 8o million new pesos the project required (approximately I75 million U.S. dollars at I994 exchange rates), while most of the rest was provided by the Banco Nacional de Comercio Interior, another government-owned financial institution. The exclusive use of government banks reflected the inability of the city to get backing from any commercial bank and also the support of President Salinas, who had to push even the government banks into taking on the substantial financial risks involved. Since street vendors generally did not have proof of their income, nor were they able or willing to put up other property for security on the debt they would incur by entering the plazasgenerally from U.S. $3,ooo-$7,ooo depending upon the size and type of stall-COABASTO, and by extension the city, had to function as the guarantor of all the financial credits. Thus, even though the city was operating in a new "neo-liberal" mode very different from that of Uruchurtu four decades before, it still incurred a huge financial risk as a direct result of the pressures noted above (DDF-COABASTO r994). At the same time, rather than pass the long-awaited and much debated market regulation, the ARDF passed a directive (bando) that prohibited street vending in the Historical Center and La 15 0fficially, the was the only form For a few markets merely lessees, and

market stall itself, as a form of condominium real estate, of security for the individual loans that vendors incurred. located on Metro property, vendors were not owners but the lease itself had to suffice as the security.

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Merced, to become effective as soon as vendors could be moved into the new plazas (ARDF I993 ). But the administration continued to work through the street vendor associations rather than against them. As in the Uruchurtu period, most of the plazas were designed for specific associations of vendors, and the leaders were given a number of significant powers in the process. The most important was that only vendors who were accredited members of an association could purchase a stall in the plaza program. Thus, the leaders, who defined membership, were made the "gatekeepers" of the plaza program, with the power to control access to plaza stalls and, in many cases, to distribute the stalls among their members-reserving the best stalls for themselves, their friends or those who paid the most for them. Second, it gave the leaders control over the plazas, which opened up the possibility of cacique-type abuse of their powers in detriment to the small vendors who were supposed to be the beneficiaries of the program. Finally, it meant that leaders, far from being weakened by the plaza construction program that was supposed to undercut the associations by making individuals into property owners, were made more powerful as they gained control of the plazas and could threaten to lead a re-invasion of the streets if they deemed it convenient. As one official later noted, "One of the biggest problems was that of concessioning the distribution of stalls to the leaders." Given the fear among officials that the associations would be able to delay or fight the plaza program successfully by simply refusing to leave the streets, the policy to leave substantial power in the associations' hands was rational. But this decision allowed the associations to adopt a dual-edged policy: taking control of the plazas while at the same time preparing to return to the streets at the nearest opportunity. In another similarity with Uruchurtu's market program, the plaza construction project was carried out in the context of impending presidential elections. Although planning started shortly after the I99I midterm elections, most of the plazas were com-

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pleted and handed over to the vendors in the year prior to the 1994 presidential elections. The timing was significant in as much as the mayor, Camacho Solis, was seen by many as the most likely candidate for the PRI's nomination to the presidency. Like Uruchurtu, Camacho Solis used the plaza construction program as a lever into the presidency as a way of projecting a "can-do" image for the middle class and gaining adherents among a new class of "vendor-owners" as well. Unfortunately, but again like Uruchurtu, Camacho was unsuccessful, and he was passed over when Luis Colosio was selected as the PRI's presidential candidate in late November 1993· Angry at being passed over, Camacho resigned precipitously and was reassigned to the less important post of Foreign Secretary (Monge 1993b). Within a month he found himself in the remote southern border state of Chiapas, demoted again to the status of negotiating with the Emiliano Zapata Liberation Army (EZLN), which staged an armed rebellion against the regime on January 1, 1994. By the time Colosio was killed by an assassin's bullet while campaigning in Tijuana, Camacho Solis had broken with Salinas by threatening to run for president as an independent, and Ernesto Zedillo, Colosio's campaign manager, was chosen as the PRI's new candidate for president. The administrative changes wrought by Camacho Solis' resignation did not stop the plaza construction project, since most of the plazas were either finished or under construction by that time. However, only 24 out of the 30 originally planned plazas were built, the rest being tabled for the moment as the city ran out of finances. Furthermore, shattering the alliance between Salinas and Camacho Solis-and requiring the appointment of an interim mayor until a new mayor could be named by Zedillo in December 1994-opened the door for street vendor leaders to begin attacking the agreement they had signed to move into the plazas. Significantly the interim mayor, Manuel Aguilera, was aligned with several of the city's most powerful street vendor organizations, which had been instrumental in his 1991 senatorial campaign. Alejandro Barrio's organization, for example, had organ-

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ized several major rallies for Aguilera at their offices in the heart of the Historical Center. Although he used his influence with the associations to keep them in the plazas until the elections, his appointment suggested the administration had shifted its focus from construction to damage control. When Manuel Aguilera was replaced by Oscar Espinoza Villareal at the beginning of Zedillo's sexenio, vendor leaders began differentiating between their support of the PRI and their attacks on the administration for failing to keep the promises given to them by Camacho Solis. As Barrios argued, the program "was successful enough while Camacho was in office, but after there was no more promotional support, the government gave us nothing. "16 Another leader attacked the new mayor much more forcefully: "Camacho was something else-Camacho came to La Merced. This one doesn't even show his face-he lacks political skill. There is no one in the government who can say, 'Let's do this or that.' All they want is negotiation. The mayor doesn't show his face; the delegation director sends us to the subdelegate, and he sends us to his secretary. What is she going to arrange? Nothing!" FROM CONSTRUCTION TO CONFLICT

The attacks were rooted in the two main differences between Uruchurtu's market construction program and that of Camacho Solis. First, the vendors were now expected to pay the full cost of their stalls, albeit over five or six years. Second, stalls were constructed within two years of the announcement of the project (Uruchurtu took five years), leading to a number of planning and design problems. 16 Furthermore, many of the leaders distrusted Zedillo, whom they saw as a poor substitute for Luis Colosio. Barrios, for example, had her office festooned with pictures of herself and Colosio during the latter's campaign visit to one of her plazas. But although Zedillo had been president for more than six months at the time of my visit, not a single picture of Zedillo was visible, not even the standard presidential portrait that vendor leaders had de rigor placed in their offices as a symbol of their affiliation with the PRI.

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Although many vendors were initially excited by the prospect of "owning" a permanent stall that would give many of them their first commercial property rights and which, being located in the center of the city, were potentially worth far more than they had cost, disillusionment rapidly set in at many of the plazas after they were officially opened. Poorly planned and located, with little input from vendors or their leaders, most of the plazas were complete commercial failures. The largest-with 1,500 stalls packed into a rabbit warren of narrow corridors-never attained more than 20 percent occupancy, even though all the vendors had paid their down payments. Another plaza, built for vendors who had been selling in the metro, was placed three blocks away from its original market area on the opposite side of a major thoroughfare. As a result, it lost all its clientele and was unable to build up a new one. The initial relocation of vendors appeared to be highly successful. The Christmas season of 1993-94 was the first in recent history in which the Historical Center had been virtually free of street vending, but by the summer of 1994-as new presidential elections approached-discontent rose to a crescendo. While officials promised to resolve financial problems and construction problems in the plazas after the elections, vendors as well as their leaders started talking of returning to the streets. Faced with high monthly payments and reduced incomes, vendors either left the plazas altogether or resorted to toreandoselling illegally-in nearby streets to make ends meet. One young man caring for a child in a plaza stall said he never sold more than three pairs of sandals a day, but his wife, the legal owner of the stall, sold illegally in the nearby streets to pay the mortgage and their living expenses. In another plaza an elderly man, who spoke eloquently about his attempts to convince his fellow vendors to give their plaza a chance to build up a clientele, actually earned most of his money a block away from the plaza on a pedestrian bridge. (He had been given a stall in Tepito during Uruchurtu's market construction program but had sold it during the difficult early years.) An Indian woman with a fruit stall in a small but

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empty plaza near La Merced noted that she had to sell her fruits from door to door and on the street to keep her merchandise from rotting in the plaza. While the association leaders remained formally committed to the plaza program at this time, they also began to express their concern. A leader of a small association noted that while he was loyal to the PRI, "People are thinking ... if after the elections they don't offer us a solution for the plazas, vendors are going to go back to the streets-whatever opportunity they see they'll take." But with the small number of vendors in his organization, he had to wait for a large association to take the first step: "If I had the number of people (the large associations) have, I would do it. If I did it now, they would squash me with one hand. But I don't know-sometimes its worth it to take a risk." Furthermore, as this leader pointed out, the competitiveness among leaders meant that as soon as one association started to re-invade the streets, the others would be compelled to follow to prevent other groups of vendors from taking over the streets that throughout the years they had considered "theirs." Barrios, herself a candidate for the ARDF on the part of the PRI, attacked the city savagely for not living up to its end of the agreement and argued that this gave her association a legitimate right to go back on it. Claiming that she had been forced to sign the agreement, she accused the city of building the plazas in cheap rather than commercial areas, of allowing intensified vending around the Historical Center, 17 and of creating a new class of "toreros" who were responsible only to the market inspectors: "They can't sell in the plazas so they are toreando, and the (market inspectors) are the leaders now." The inspectors collected daily bribes to allow them to sell, she claimed. The associations did not wait long. Within days of the inaugu17 Groups of vendors left outside the initial plaza buildings were relocated to areas on the edge of the Historical Center to promote the illusion the project was finished. But they began to attract clients used to shopping in street markets out of the traditional commercial center, compounding the problems of the plaza vendors.

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ration ceremony of President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon in December 1994, the "economic miracle" of Salinas collapsed. A blundered attempt to adjust the overvalued peso and thus curb the bloated trade deficit led to a collapse of the exchange rate, and the country was plunged into a sharp recession as the peso dropped to less than half its former value. Import costs and interest rates both soared, catching the new plaza vendors in a harsh pincer between lower sales and higher expenses. While customers stayed home and suppliers increased their prices, the variable interest rate on the stall mortgages zoomed from ro percent to 50 percent. Already at the breaking point, the vendor associations carried out their threat and began organizing street markets outside the plazas. By the summer of 1995, approximately 4,ooo vendors were again selling in the area. PROBLEMS AND RESPONSES: A SURVEY OF VENDORS

To gain a more accurate portrait of the type of problems vendors encountered during this process, and to see how the problems affected their perception of their leaders, the PRJ and the city administration, I obtained a Ford Foundation grant to carry out a survey of 207 plaza and street vendors in and around six of the new plazas in August 1995. The results confirmed the information we had been given in interviews with both vendors and leaders, showing that vendors reported severe problems paying their mortgages because of higher costs and a sharp drop in sales. Furthermore, it also showed that the vendors blamed the city administration primarily for the problems they suffered, while also blaming the PRI and their leaders for failing to live up to the obligation to protect them. After reviewing the results of the survey, I will discuss how these reactions affected the strategy of the vendor organizations in attempting to reassert their role. Figures 5 and 6 indicate the extent of the problems faced by the new plaza vendors. Figure 5 shows the vast majority of vendors fell behind in their mortgage payments because of the drop in sales and increased interest rates. Of I 24 vendors with plaza stalls, only

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29 were still making payments on time. Of the rest, I 3 had paid for their stalls in full on delivery, but the vast majority were between two months and two years behind. The largest group of vendors had stopped paying installments in the previous six months-that is, since the devaluation. But a substantial number had stopped making payments well before that, indicating that the devaluation was only one of the many problems vendors faced.

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The Historical Center

Figure 6 shows the decline in reported sales for plaza and street vendors in the area resulting from the relocation project and the economic crisis. On average, vendors reported sales had dropped by 50 percent over the previous three years. Factoring in the effect of inflation, real sales dropped by more than 6 5 percent. The drop was sharpest for vendors who sold only in the plaza, and least significant for vendors who sold in both the plaza and the street, showing that from a business standpoint, street vending was the most effective response they could have made. However, it is also clear that those vendors who gave up their stalls in the plaza to return full-time to the street had the lowest reported sales both before and after the plaza project, probably indicating that these were the poorest vendors, who lacked the savings they needed to continue to invest their time and money in the plaza stalls. In the same survey, vendors were asked to give the three most important reasons for the failure of the plaza project in their opinion. While the question was open ended, the responses fell neatly into I3 categories that appeared to reflect five main areas of concern: the economic crisis itself; the continued presence of street vending; specific physical problems with the plazas; problems of administration; and factors-including statements such as "Clients don't enter plazas" and "Merchants charge too much"-that lay the blame on cultural or psychological features of merchants or clients and the need to "accredit" the plazas. The five main areas of concern and the I 3 categories were the following: Economic factors • Crisis: References to the crisis, devaluation, or inflation • Cost: References to high interest rates or cost of stalls 2. Physical problems with the plazas • Location: References to the poor commercial location of the plaza • Design: References to design or construction flaws 3. Problems of administration • Promises: References to broken promises (principally, lack of advertising promised by the city government) I.

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• • • •

Corruption: References to corruption by officials Crime: References to crime or security in plazas Leaders: References to various problems with leaders Administration: References to poor administration of the plazas 4· Competition from renewed street vending • Vendors: References to the return of street vending 5. Cultural factors • Culture: References to cultural or psychological factors, such as "Clients prefer street"; "Think goods more expensive" • Occupancy: References to low occupancy of markets, such as "Stalls closed in market"; "Merchants left to go outside" • Merchants: References to problems with merchants themselves, such as lack of training, setting prices too high Except for the last area of concern, which appears to place the blame for the failure of the new plazas on the cultural characteristics of clients or merchants, all of these categories reflect explicit or implicit critiques of the government, local officials, or leaders. The economic problems were, in the eyes of the vendors, largely caused by the policy failures of the national government. The construction, design, and location problems of the plazas were clearly caused by the city government's haste and, many vendors argued, lack of concern for the vendor's well-being. Administrative problems revealed more specific accounts of this same unconcern, as well as in some cases the greed or incompetence of officials and/or leaders in defending their interests. Finally, the renewal of street vending was blamed largely on the connivance of both officials and leaders in failing to live up to the promise of keeping the Historical Center clear of vendors. Clearly, most of the reasons given by the vendors for the failure of the plaza project appear to be indictments of the government: Only I 9 percent of the reasons mentioned fell into the last, politically neutral, category. At the same time, 20 percent of the reasons

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9. Loyalty to the PRI before and after plaza project: four criteria

Organizationally, now that the vendors were owners with formal rights, the leaders no longer directly controlled their access to space, although they maintained control in other ways. In the same survey, we asked four sets of questions about vendors' political participation before and after the plaza project: (1) Were they required to be members of some political party? (2) Were they required to support a political party? (3) Whom did they vote for in the last elections, and whom would they vote for at the time of the survey? and, (4) Which party most supports their interests? Respondents were given nine options-six listing political parties, a "None" box, and an "Other" box. A "Don't know" box was coded as a missing value. As we expected, there was a marked shift away from the PRJ as a result of the plaza project. To simplify the presentation of the data, we reduced each question to binomial variables. To illustrate the shift away from the PRJ, all valid responses other than "PRJ" were counted as "nonPRJ." As can be seen in Figure 9, the resulting data show a significant movement away from the PRI over the course of the plaza project. The first two sets of questions measure the degree of organizational pressure put on vendors to support the PRJ. The first set asked specifically if vendors were required to be members of a political party both before and after the plaza project, while the

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second asked whether they were required to support a political party during elections. Almost half (42 percent) said they were required to be members of the PRJ, and almost two-thirds (6r percent) were required to support the PRJ during elections before the plaza project. These responses demonstrate the important role street vendor organizations carried out for the PRJ. And the fact that both these figures drop substantially after the plaza project (to 28 percent and 33 percent respectively) indicates that the street vendor organizations are either less able or less willing to require their vendors to support the PRJ to the same degree. 18 The second two sets of questions were designed to measure individual support for the PRJ before and after the plaza project in terms of their voting behavior and preferences and the degree to which they believed the PRJ or some other party best represented their interests as vendors. As expected by a clientalist argument, we found that levels of individual support for the PRI were lower than the levels of organizational pressure both before and after the plaza project. But we also found, as above, that those levels dropped dramatically during the interval. While 44 percent reported voting for the PRI in the 1994 elections, only 27 percent said they would do so at the time of the survey. In terms of their general political orientation, 50 percent reported that the PRI had been the most helpful political party before the plaza project, but only 23 percent felt this was still true at the time of the survey. Taken together, these four time indicators suggest that the plaza project was instrumental in weakening both individual and organizational support for the ruling political party among precisely those groups that were supposed to benefit from it-the vendors themselves. These political shifts among the vendors required the associations to take forceful steps to reaffirm their role with respect to their members. On the one hand, they did so by protecting vendors who were unable to continue paying the mortgages on their 18 ln a paired t-test of these sets of questions, the difference between the questions in all the sets was significant at the p =