Making It at Any Cost: Aspirations and Politics in a Counterfeit Clothing Marketplace 9781477321072

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MAKING IT AT ANY COST

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making it at any cost ASPIRATIONS AND POLITICS IN A COUNTERFEIT CLOTHING MARKETPLACE

Matías Dewey

University of Texas Press      Austin

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Copyright © 2020 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2020 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713–7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dewey, Matías, 1975– author. Title: Making it at any cost : aspirations and politics in a counterfeit clothing marketplace / Matías Dewey. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019042723 | ISBN 978-1-4773-2105-8 (cloth) | ISBN 978-1-4773-2108-9 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-4773-2107-2 (library ebook) Subjects: LCSH: La Salada (Buenos Aires, Argentina) | Black market—Argentina— Buenos Aires. | Informal sector (Economics)—Argentina—Buenos Aires. | Clothing trade—Argentina—Buenos Aires. | Product counterfeiting—Economic aspects—Argentina—Buenos Aires. Classification: LCC HF5482.65.A7 D48 2020 | DDC 381/.45687098211—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042723 doi:10.7560/321058

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To María Eugenia, my wife, for this adventure. To my parents, María Ester and Jorge, in gratitude.

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Contents

Mapsviii The Structure of La Salada Marketplace

x

List of La Salada Characters

xi

Acknowledgmentsxv INTRODUCTION: Aspirations amid Distrust

1



PART I. History, Place, and Politics

CHAPTER 1. The Garment Market and the Marketplace

25

CHAPTER 2. Governing La Salada

49



CHAPTER 3. With God and the Devil



PART II. Prisoners of Aspirations

CHAPTER 4. All I Want Is a Sweatshop



69



CHAPTER 5. The Garment Entrepreneur at La Salada CHAPTER 6. Dynamics of Aspirations

PART III. Aspirations in Action

87 115 127



CHAPTER 7. Narratives of Sacrifice and Autonomy

CHAPTER 8. Taste, Credit, and Bullets

CHAPTER 9. Squatters, Cart-Pullers, and Demolition

155 171 207

CONCLUSION227 EPILOGUE239 Methodological Appendix

243

Notes247 Works Cited

251

Index270

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MAP 1. Location of La Salada marketplace, Ingeniero Budge, Buenos Aires. Design by Valeria Kriletich, based on an 3/9/20 1:34 PM

open-source map from the Instituto Geográfico Nacional de Argentina; courtesy of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

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MAP 2. La Salada marketplace, Ingeniero Budge, Buenos Aires. Design by Valeria Kriletich; courtesy of the Max Planck 3/9/20 1:34 PM

Institute for the Study of Societies.

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CHART 1. The structure of La Salada marketplace. Design by Valeria Kriletich; courtesy of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of

Societies.

La Salada Characters

IN LA SALADA Bolivian Family PABLO: older son and manager of the family business. He has also

opened up a stall in Mendoza selling “Adidas” jackets. BEATRIZ: migrant, Pablo’s mother. She plays an active role, always sug-

gesting ideas for fabrics and accessories, especially when the new season is approaching and new products have to be developed. EUSEBIO: migrant, Pablo’s father. Together with Pablo, he migrated first

in order to learn how to manufacture clothing. MARTÍN: Pablo’s younger brother. He is usually at the stall and helps out

during the production process. MARIELA: Pablo’s younger sister. Matías taught her field hockey at the

very beginning of the fieldwork.

Manufacturers and Stallholders LEO: stallholder neighbor of Pablo. He manufactures children’s caps. MATILDE and NORBERTO : husband-and-wife team that manufacture at

home and sell aprons at La Salada. JULIETA: makes women’s underwear. Starting with no capital, she took

leftover scraps of material from other Bolivian producers.

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xii   LA SALADA CHARACTERS

FELIPE: previously owned a car business that he lost in the 2001 finan-

cial crash. His stall is positioned at the main entrance of a leading shed market. He manufactures and sells children’s clothing. JUAN MANUEL : one of Felipe’s sons. Felipe wants to open a further stall

for him. OSVALDO: together with his wife, he manufactures and sells “Gap”

clothing in one leading shed market. BETINA: manufactures and sells jackets for security staff.

Cart-Pullers, Warehouse Owners, Squatters, and Money Collectors MICKY: flamboyant warehouse owner who answers in metaphors. Likes

to sit on the bench outside his warehouse watching the passersby. GRACIELA: single mother who “owns” several stalls mounted on the

streets. VALERIA: used to be a shed-market collector. She is now an influential

political broker. EMILIO: a former “owner” of street stalls. ESPERANZA: used to “own” several street stalls and defend her property

armed. ALEJO: experienced cart-puller working for the Urkupiña shed market.

Used to fight for payment in cash or bags of vegetables at Central Market. Later sold flowers and spent the money on drugs before becoming a cart-puller. SILVINA: Alejo’s wife. DANIEL: cart-puller and former gang member with a history of commit-

ting armed robbery and using the money to fund a serious drug habit. Now a born-again Christian.

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LA SALADA CHARACTERS   xiii

ÁLVARO: chief of security at one of the shed markets. He previ-

ously worked for Argentina’s secret service during the military dictatorship.

Sweatshop Workers (Only) JAVI: migrant from the Argentine province Jujuy. He sells his skills as a

buttonhole maker and ironer. CÉSAR: Peruvian immigrant specialized in cutting fabrics. CHEPITA: Bolivian migrant. She has a sweatshop and provides sewing

services for La Salada garment manufacturers. MÓNICA: Bolivian migrant. She was recruited in Bolivia through kin-

ship networks and exploited in sweatshops. She no longer works in the garment industry.

BETWEEN LA SALADA AND POLITICS HORACIO: influential local politician whose father was mayor of the

district. JORGE PALACIO : manager of one of La Salada’s three shed markets. ADRIÁN: Palacio’s right-hand man. CHARLIE: ex-chief of the National Gendarmerie. He is now in charge of

the security of one shed market. SEBASTIÁN: personal advisor to Moreno, Argentina’s secretary of

commerce. MORENO: Argentine secretary of commerce. WILSON: was the right-hand man of a shed-market manager. He now

works as the mayor’s advisor and a political broker.

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xiv   LA SALADA CHARACTERS

OUTSIDE LA SALADA ARMANDO: “legal” garment manufacturer with financial troubles. He

manufactured Argentina’s 1986 World Cup shirt.

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Acknowledgments

I first visited La Salada marketplace in 2008, and I remember thinking that I would never go back. Five years later, however, I was there again. I would spend a great deal of time there every day, initially for several months in a row, and now every time I go to Argentina I find myself visiting La Salada. This change of plan was down to the unparalleled opportunity that Jens Beckert gave me. Through all these years, we have discussed at length my fieldwork observations and how to understand hope and aspirations, both crucial features of La Salada’s economy, in such an adverse social context. It has been an exciting journey that ends with this book and that would not have been possible without Jens’s support, trust, and guidance. Several arguments contained in this book are the result of exchanges with my colleagues in the research group on illegal markets at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG): Annette Hübschle, Arjan Reurink, and Nina Engwicht. I am grateful to them for the countless meetings, observations, and comments on texts. I also thank Renate Mayntz for her sharp and encouraging comments on matters in the book or in conversations that always reminded me of a game of chess. The conception of this book and several ideas contained in it greatly benefited from my research stay at the Department of Sociology and the Urban Ethnography Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. I am very grateful to Daniel Fridman, Marcos Perez, Nino Bariola, and Katherine Sobering for their positive comments. On a separate note, I want to express my gratitude to Javier Auyero, who not only contributed during this process in ways without which this book would not have been published but also played a crucial role in my professional career. With his characteristic sense of humor and extraordinary

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xvi  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

generosity, Javier has conveyed to me his experience in numerous aspects concerning the research process and publication of the book, such as commenting on the research project, putting together the proposal for the publisher, and suggesting book titles. I had the good fortune to work with his texts on the Conurbano in my student days, and these stories served as good guides to build mine. Thanks, O’Sheer! If readers feel inspired by this book and the vivid images it evokes, or if they find the pages passing quickly without even noticing, they can be sure that this is thanks to Katherine Walker. She made my writing, that of a scholar who learned to write in English as an adult, sound English. I was fortunate that Katherine could accompany me throughout the writing process, a time during which she came to accurately understand how La Salada worked without ever having been there. She read, edited, and suggested decisive changes to the book. To her goes my heartfelt gratitude for this friendship and professionalism. I would also like to thank Mia Nasic for assisting me with the last revisions of the manuscript and to the staff of the Editorial and Public Relations Unit of the MPIfG for helping me with professionalism and kindness in many aspects related to the production of the book. I would like to express my gratitude to Christel Schommertz, Cynthia Lehmann, Astrid Dünkelmann, Sharon Adams, Amanda Dixon, and Thomas Pott. As I mention in the methodological appendix, entry to La Salada marketplace required a specific strategy. Martín Almaraz, Josefina Chouhy, and Bernardo Dewey opened the doors of the NGO El Puente Posible and let me work there for several months as a field hockey instructor. The work in the NGO was fundamental in granting me access to La Salada. In the western part of the Conurbano, Rodrigo Zarazaga gave me access to the Fundación Protagonizar, an institution that offers microcredits to entrepreneurs who manufacture garments in their homes and sell them regularly in La Salada. To Rodrigo and the economist and friend María Silvia Ávalos, who generously helped me to make all kinds of calculations of entrepreneurs’ turnover, I am extremely grateful. I am grateful also to my brother Bernardo, with whom I share a profession and who assisted me during long periods of the fieldwork. With him, usually on the bus on the way back home, I elaborated many of the arguments about the economy of La Salada now present in the

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  xvii

book. I also want to express my gratitude to all my interviewees, who were many and whose names I will not reveal because I promised them I would not do so. Entrepreneurs, cart-pullers, warehouse owners, vendors, security guards, buyers, seamsters, commercial intermediaries, politicians, brokers, police officers, and the shed-market managers Jorge Castillo and Enrique Antequera offered me many hours of their time, which were crucial to my understanding of La Salada’s social dynamics and people’s practices. I do not want to forget Isabel, Alicia, and Laura for welcoming me into their homes and for generously giving me access to information that is hard to find. For similar reasons I want to thank Cristian, who kindly opened a window for me to observe “the kitchen” of local politics. The interviews conducted during the seven months of fieldwork were meticulously transcribed by Milagros Pacco Aitara, whose work on what was an enormous task I deeply appreciate. During the fieldwork, Ariel Wilkis gave me the possibility to be a visiting professor at the Centro de Estudios Sociales de la Economía at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín, a stimulating academic environment in which I was able to assess the data gathered. It was the beginning of a rich professional relationship, and this book owes a lot to the conversations with you, Ariel. Another person, a sociologist and remarkable intellectual, who has been fundamental to the process is Raúl Bisio. At home or in cafés, his knowledge on the sociology of work and social theory enriched our conversations and illuminated the extremely complex phenomenon called La Salada. In collaboration with Sarah Pabst, I developed a photography project whose objective has been to portray the fierce dynamism of La Salada’s economy. I thank her for the photos that, together with the interviews and fieldwork notes, have allowed me to write about La Salada. The result can be seen on the La Salada Project website and on several pages in this book. Several of my colleagues read and commented on parts of this book. I want to thank Daniel Míguez, Andrés Malamud, Patrik Aspers, Ted Fischer, Javier Auyero, Jens Beckert, Marcin Serafin, and Jerónimo Montero for all their comments, criticisms, and suggestions. I would also like to mention four colleagues who have evaluated my project on La Salada and whose valuable opinions on the methodology and the theoretical approach have influenced the final result: Nicole Woolsey Biggart, Philippe Steiner, Monica Prasad, and Javier Auyero. During

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xviii  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

several presentations of the project, I benefited from conversations with Donato Di Carlo, Luis Costa, Kedron Thomas, Lucas Ronconi, Felipe González, Aldo Madariaga, André Vereta-Nahoum, Mariana Llanos, Ignacio Aguiló, Cornelia Woll, Olivier Godechot, Guadalupe Moreno, Wolfgang Streeck, Alejandro Katz, and Teddy Karagozian. I would like to express my gratitude to the administrative staff of the MPIfG, especially Jürgen Lautwein and Ursula Trappe, who helped me with the logistics of the fieldwork. Finally, I want to thank the two anonymous readers and University of Texas Press, especially my editor, Kerry Webb, for her trust in this project before the final manuscript existed. It is not possible to write without the emotional tranquility that certain people offer. My parents, each in their own way, have given me strong support. My brothers Santiago, Juan Ignacio, and Bernardo and my grandparents Rosita and Atilio were happy that the project on La Salada brought me back to my country of origin. They, together with Graciela, Rubén, and Valeria, have been and are a great support and source of joy. To Florencia Prini go my deepest thanks for her generosity. In Cologne, Dirk and Maik have open-heartedly accompanied me in complicated and happy moments. And to María Eugenia, who had no choice but to listen to me talk about La Salada on a daily basis, I want to express my deepest thanks for her daily support, her insightful contributions, and her beautiful smile. This book would not have been possible without her.

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MAKING IT AT ANY COST

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Introduction ASPIRATIONS AMID DISTRUST

I had to learn how to live there. It was not a “no-man’s-land,” as so many stallholders described it time and again; it was just that La Salada, Latin America’s largest low-cost garment marketplace, operated on a set of rules completely different from those prevalent elsewhere. This became clear to me on a cool evening in May 2013, as I helped Pablo in his market stall. Having migrated to Argentina from Bolivia as a child, twenty-four-year-old Pablo was now manufacturing “Adidas” skirts, jackets, and pants at home in the family sweatshop with his parents and three siblings. They then sold the items from a rented stall at La Salada, one of around eight thousand rudimentary wire-mesh structures populating the vast marketplace located in a poverty-stricken neighborhood just beyond the city limits of Buenos Aires. That evening, the decisive moment came as we were finishing the workday. Pablo and I were folding jackets with the telltale three stripes down each sleeve and placing them into giant black trash bags, where they would be stored until the next market day. As we worked, we were deep in conversation—a serious mistake in this environment. Sure enough, in the few moments our guard was down, a meter-high bag filled with around fifty jackets disappeared. A bag containing two weeks of full-time family work and at least two thousand pesos’ worth of fabric. In a matter of seconds, the huge bag was gone without a trace. “What do we do?” I asked, confused. Pablo, trying to reconstruct what could have happened to the bag in such a short time, concluded that it had, doubtless, been stolen. Clearly agitated, his first reaction was to approach a neighboring stallholder, a woman standing no more than five meters away from us. The woman simply added to the confusion, at first denying having seen anything, but then, a few minutes later, claiming to have seen a shoplifting mechera stealing the

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2   MAKING IT AT ANY COST

bag. Along with innumerable gangs demanding “tolls,” drug dealers, hooligans, thieves, and con artists, the all-female shoplifting mechera gangs are a permanent fixture at La Salada. In the following days, Pablo made phone calls and talked to acquaintances, collecting details about the incident and making a list of suspects and potential witnesses. At the end of his investigations, he was almost certain who was responsible for the robbery and where he would find them. Yet to my astonishment, he did nothing. Whereas in legal environments victims would go to the next police station or approach some other authority, this is unthinkable in a place where doing things legally is the exception. There are many reasons why Pablo did nothing. He knew the police would not react—even though the police are in the marketplace every day, it is not to ensure that the law is upheld but for an entirely different purpose: collecting bribes in exchange for allowing illegal businesses to run. After all, Pablo, like the majority of La Salada stallholders, runs a sweatshop that contravenes all kinds of labor laws, and his “Adidas” products are anything but. Nor would he take the matter into his own hands by acting against the thieves himself, or even criticizing the woman who saw the robbery and did nothing. Pablo simply cannot allow himself to generate any trouble; he cannot foresee what potentially violent reactions might arise from any action he takes, and his life depends on keeping his business running. For me, the lesson was one of isolation and lack of protection, the experience of social relations shaped by a pervasive and profound interpersonal distrust. Pablo was alone; he could not react. Or rather, he could react in only one way: to develop his own strategies to survive in this environment if he wanted to continue running his business: “It’s like I’m telling you, Mati: here, no one stands up and tries to defend you. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one will defend you. That woman saw everything; she’s there, look, right in front of us! What can I say to her? She’s not guilty; she’s got nothing to lose by speaking up. Things could be different if we were united.” I soon gained firsthand experience of one of these strategies to cope with potential dangers. A few weeks after the robbery, Pablo offered to show me his home-cum-sweatshop, giving me his address—1924 Arana Goiri Street—and telling me to come on Saturday, between market days. The address seemed to be in Ingeniero Budge, the same neighborhood as La Salada. I vividly remember walking through the dilapidated streets, but I could not find number 1924. It seemed I had

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INTRODUCTION  3

unwittingly joined a treasure hunt: Pablo had given me a false address. If I followed his clues, I would prove to him that I was not a cop— though Pablo welcomed me at his stall and told me all about how he manufactures clothing, letting me visit his workshop turned out to be a different matter entirely. As I was about to give up the search, I received a call indicating the next destination, a bus stop a short distance away. I got off the bus to find Pablo waiting for me, ready to escort me the final hundred meters or so. Inside, completely invisible from the street, was his sweatshop, the miniature “Adidas” factory that provided him and his family with their sole source of income. I was less surprised by my roundabout journey to get to the sweatshop than I was by what I found there: an atmosphere that immediately recalled Loïc Wacquant’s (2004) words about the boxing club in Chicago—“an island of stability and order where social relations forbidden on the outside become possible again.” It was not that Pablo’s family sweatshop was so well equipped, with industrial sewing machines and modern workbenches laid out with neatly organized threads, scissors, needles, and racks of clothing patterns hung along the peeling, damp-stained walls; rather, it was that Pablo and the rest of his family were able to forget for a moment the immediate dangers of the outside world and start enthusiastically planning their new, upcoming product. I was in the main room, which I imagined to be the scene of brainstorming and decision-making about new products and colors, most recently for their latest creation, Adidas hockey skirts. Standing in front of an immense cloth-cutting table and surrounded by jackets piled in their hundreds, Pablo’s father, Eusebio, would describe with sudden emotion how they design their “creations,” why they use certain colors, and just how much effort the whole process consumed. Eusebio, a thickset man on whom the years seemed to have taken a heavy toll, would say that “green fluorescent stripes on pants inspire emotion”; that they “love to sell stuff,” and “let themselves be guided by customers’ ideas.” And it was at that same cutting table that Eusebio pronounced the words that I heard repeated like a mantra during my fieldwork: “La Salada is a place that offers opportunities for those who want to make sacrifices.” As absurd as it sounds, sweatshop owners like Pablo and the thousands of others who make their living at the marketplace, from food vendors, warehouse owners, and private security staff right up to the market managers, spoke about La Salada as an entity able to provide jobs, business opportunities, and a reliable way to make

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4   MAKING IT AT ANY COST

a living. They were, on some occasions, possessed by an extraordinary energy that suddenly radiated from them as they began to explain their current projects, future businesses, and ultimate dreams. La Salada appeared to be an Argentine version of the American Dream. Hidden somewhere in the marketplace, waiting to be discovered, was a wealth of possibilities ready for the taking. This collective aspiration in the face of danger was summed up by Micky, a middle-aged power player who liked to observe people walking through the market from the entrance of the warehouse he owned. Just one month earlier, he had told me: You know, La Salada is like the goose that laid the golden eggs: the eggs never end. If you don’t like chicken, you can say La Salada is like a dairy cow: the milk never ends. It’s like that. It depends on you! The only problem here is that people have a lot of fear, constant fear that you’ll get robbed; that you’ll buy stuff and get robbed. You can imagine: you spend seventeen thousand [pesos] on setting up your whole business, you get to this corner and some dudes on a motorcycle rob you. There are people who take all your capital! They destroy you forever.

THE GARMENT BUSINESS AT LA SALADA These experiences at the marketplace and in Pablo’s sweatshop served as inspiration for this book because they forced me to reflect upon what kind of sociological case I had before me. The most evident question concerned the apparent contradiction between a consistently high level of aspiration throughout the entire marketplace and an equally widespread interpersonal distrust. How was it possible that people like Pablo hold strong positive feelings about their economic future in a hostile environment that is so full of distrust? What motivates garment entrepreneurs to work in an environment where it is supposed to be difficult for businesses to prosper? These questions cannot be answered by pointing to cultural traits or to the membership of a particular ethnic group. Entrepreneurs working in the context of La Salada’s economy belong to different national groups and, although Bolivians are prevalent, there is no evidence indicating that Bolivian entrepreneurs exhibit business-relevant values that other entrepreneurs do not.

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INTRODUCTION  5

Critically, as Waldinger (1986) points out in relation to cultural explanations of entrepreneurship in the garment industry, if we take the value system as a predictor of ethnic business success, it remains unexplained why the values of a group such as Bolivians offer rewards in one society and not in the society of origin. Equally true in La Salada’s case is that motivations to conduct business in a hostile environment cannot be explained by the economic opportunity provided by legally constituted garment companies continuously outsourcing production to sweatshops. As I show throughout the book, La Salada marketplace reveals a garment industry constellation completely different from the classic picture of branded retail companies outsourcing production to low-wage countries. Having witnessed the type of business conducted by several entrepreneurs like Pablo, I was able to unearth a constellation developed in the shadows of global value chains in which multinationals play a marginal role, if any. Contrary to what the literature almost unanimously suggests, Pablo’s sweatshop, as well as those of all the entrepreneurs I interviewed, was not located upstream in the market; that is, focused on offering sewing services to garment companies located downstream. Instead, Pablo’s business, in which he is in permanent contact with customers in the marketplace, is the production of garment items that are in fashion: the production of pieces inspired by fashion trends that Pablo himself tries to interpret and translate into new designs in partnership with his customers. “Emotion,” “inspiration,” and “love,” all words I heard that evening at Pablo’s sweatshop, were not incidental, but a true reflection of what he does. Entrepreneurs at La Salada, I soon realized, are not at the end but at the beginning of subcontracting chains, a position in the market demanding that they attempt to address buyers’ symbolic representations and be attentive to frequently changing product ranges. By spending long hours in the marketplace with garment entrepreneurs and later comparing the evidence collected with various data sources—secondary literature, reports, interviews with experts—I was able to document that the contours of this economic sector are structurally determined. Thus, if thousands of entrepreneurs like Pablo are willing to manufacture garments in their facilities and then bring the production to sell at La Salada marketplace, it is not because of a culturally induced propensity to do business in complex environments, but because of overarching structural determinants that create specific

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6   MAKING IT AT ANY COST

business opportunities. This book highlights two structural aspects that create windows of opportunity for the type of garment business we find at La Salada: (1) a growing lack of access to clothing for a significant portion of the population, and (2) tolerance exercised by government, which is expressed in the nonenforcement of labor, fiscal, and security regulations as well as in a clear political legitimization of this sweatshop-based economic sector. In his work on the conditions underlying ethnic entrepreneurs’ success in doing business, Waldinger (1984, 1986; Waldinger and Lapp 1993) points to existing opportunity structures within the clothing market as explanatory factors for its expansion.1 Similarly, in the case of La Salada, a series of factors— business strategies, real estate speculation, market liberalization—left the mass-consumption garment market up for grabs, a substantial segment that was progressively co-opted by those producing and distributing garments informally. Meanwhile, the business of branded clothing items, manufactured in units infringing a large number of regulations and unlawfully commercialized through La Salada marketplace, needed state tolerance at various levels and a systematic nonenforcement of the law performed by police and inspectors in order to thrive. Perceived as permission, the behavior of the government fostered a type of production that was completely informal and illegal. The clearest evidence of how these structural factors fostered La Salada’s commercial success is found not inside but outside the marketplace. According to the Confederación Argentina de la Mediana Empresa (Argentine Confederation of Medium-Sized Enterprises) (CAME 2014), in 2014 there were already more than 520 so-called Saladitas, informal resale centers distributed throughout 111 Argentine cities. Three years later, however, the number of Saladitas reached 660 in 115 cities. The hundreds of buses I saw arriving on La Salada’s three market days per week were not transporting tourists, but wholesale buyers: traders who travel long distances in order to purchase large quantities of clothing items for resale at their local Saladita. These resellers noticed that, even with the cost of their trip to La Salada, the wholesale prices were low enough to allow them to reproduce the business in their home provinces and still make a profit. And the reason why garment prices in La Salada are so low is not hard to fathom: a combination of the generalized evasion of regulations (fiscal, labor, safety, authorization) committed by stallholder-producers, and the bypassing of intermediaries. After all, La Salada functions as a shopping mall

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INTRODUCTION  7

offering a platform and a meeting point for entrepreneurs and wholesale buyers. This landscape of informal and illegal production alongside the commercialization of garments did not fall from the sky but is the result of what Bair and Werner (2011) aptly describe as a “disarticulation” process that tends to be downplayed by the commodity chain approach. Deindustrialization, devaluation, and disinvestment all played crucial roles in shaping what became an extremely uneven geography in the field of garment production.2 La Salada’s economy—both the marketplace and the sweatshops linked to it—emerged during the course of the 1990s when the garment market was liberalized. The marketplace itself, located in the Conurbano, the urban agglomeration adjacent to the city of Buenos Aires, was constructed on land that in previous generations was used as health resorts and recreational centers. Toward the end of the 1990s, the eighteen-hectare plot was subdivided and three “shed markets”—Urkupiña, Ocean, and Punta Mogote—were constructed. Each large, warehouse-like building hosted thousands of stalls managed by powerful brokers. This way, La Salada marketplace and the whole economy began as a marginal economic phenomenon amid the general process of deindustrialization in Argentina, growing in importance as standards of living declined and the demand for lowcost clothing increased. In 2001, while the country’s entire formal economy was falling apart, La Salada’s economy was booming and continued to grow, profiting from protective sectoral policies. As a sign of its success, the huge numbers of buyers arriving on long-distance buses from remote places increased the demand for stalls to such an extent that the marketplace spilled out of the sheds and into the surrounding streets, inaugurating La Salada’s “street markets.” Additionally, the growth of the sweatshop-based economy is explained by the fact that Argentina did not become an export processing zone, partly due to the high standards demanded by Argentine labor laws and the still-powerful labor unions. From the very inception of this economy, at the local level the behavior of police and the interests of politicians aligned to take advantage of different “resources” that could be extracted from it. While the former set up an immense system of illegal protection rackets targeting stallholders, the latter adapted to a series of constraints affecting governance and thus took advantage of less tangible benefits: the creation of informal jobs, the increase in consumption, and the countrywide provision of access to garments.

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Stallholders, therefore, as well as the multitude of others who depend on the marketplace economically, have good reason to hold aspirations: year-round three times per week, hundreds of thousands of wholesale buyers arrive from all corners of the country to shop at La Salada. The rise of this sweatshop-based economic phenomenon and the sudden emergence of higher aspirations among those who work there need to be understood in the context of the macro transformations that propelled a major increase in demand for low-cost garments.

THE AIMS OF THE BOOK In this book, I aim to contribute to two fields of research. The first is economic sociology. The events that I witnessed when spending time with Pablo at his stall and in his sweatshop point to a problem that is as fundamental as it is unexplored in a discipline that has remained silent in relation to the “dark side of capitalism” (Zelizer 2007). Pablo’s story, like those of the rest of my interviewees, is one of conducting business in a social space where the state cannot guarantee the fulfillment of any type of contract. But not only that. As I show in detail, state agencies and governments at different levels play an ambiguous role. On the one hand, by granting informal “permission,” they create the conditions for the outlawed economy to expand. On the other hand, they reproduce high levels of interpersonal distrust and stimulate opportunistic behaviors. The first discussion to which this book seeks to contribute, then, asks how an economy is socially organized when it is detached from the legal architecture (Fligstein 2001) and beyond state agencies enforcing the law. The aspirations of thousands of garment entrepreneurs like Pablo, an impressive phenomenon given the challenging social environment in which they flourish, provide clues as to where to find the answers. These aspirations, for the most part related to accessing goods or services, similar to those of more well-off social segments, are a source of daily inspiration and provide La Salada workers with the necessary energy to overcome coordination problems in such a hostile environment. Pablo’s story is one of economic progress that is only partially facilitated by tolerance and nonenforcement that secure the fulfillment of certain informal agreements. In fact, a large number of situations vital to the success of the business, such as agreements between entrepreneurs and suppliers

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INTRODUCTION  9

or customers, competition regulations, repayment of credit, or just meeting buyers’ expectations with new collections, completely escape the control of mafia-like formations or shed-market managers. The result of almost a year of ethnographic fieldwork, this book examines workers’ aspirations in the context of an informal garment economy whose epicenter is La Salada marketplace. I suggest that aspirations and visions of the future play a key role in generating a bottom-up social order. In daring to imagine a future for themselves and their families, which means nothing more than access to goods, services, and social recognition, La Salada workers must devise strategies to realize that future. It is these aspirations that give shape to a series of practices and strategies meant to secure business opportunities. Anyone whose future rests on success in La Salada must avoid conflict, monitor competitors’ prices, keep up with fashion trends, and establish social ties with providers and clients. The argument I present in this book is drawn from the experiences of entrepreneurs like Pablo, but also from cart-pullers (employed by stallholders to transport their heavy garment bags), warehouse owners like Micky, sellers, seamsters, private security staff, and shed-market managers. These actors are attracted by the promise of a regular cash income and making long-term wishes come true. They then learn in situ not only how to deal with the type of dangers presented in Pablo’s story but also, and more significantly, how to find a niche, an economic opportunity that fits their needs and capabilities. By investing a great deal of psychological and physical effort, mostly aimed at securing agreements, avoiding conflicts, and creating frictionless relationships, these workers react to the possibilities they perceive. In terms of a set of practices and personal strategies, this reaction is aimed at facilitating commerce in an atmosphere extremely hostile to conducting business and fulfilling aspirations. In this book I also aim to contribute to the field of research on the garment industry. Observing this industrial sector through the lens of an informal marketplace functioning as a low-cost garment supplier to a large part of the country allows us to account for a constellation that is remarkably different from the one described in classic studies on this sector. We can take Pablo and other entrepreneurs as an example: manufacturing in their own facilities and going to La Salada marketplace to sell their production, they do not limit themselves to performing sewing jobs outsourced by legally constituted companies. Unlike

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the type of sweatshops mentioned in the extant literature (Bender and Greenwald 2003; Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000; Buechler 2004; Collins 2003; Esbenshade 2004; Green 1997; Montero 2018a; Phizacklea 1990; Ross 2004; Waldinger 1986; Waldinger and Lapp 1993), sweatshops like Pablo’s are detached from the global value chain system, instead taking responsibility for the entire production process. The fundamental difference is that the great quantities of low-cost garments are also commercialized informally through well-rooted trade routes crossing the whole country and reaching neighboring territories. This phenomenon points to the existence of two parallel markets, each with its own production sector and distribution channels, and highlights a serious problem of access to garments faced by a significant portion of the population. As I show, Pablo’s sweatshop, because it is located downstream in the market, is different from sweatshops that produce only standard pieces of clothing and predominantly require repetitive mechanical procedures and techniques. Instead, direct encounters with clients and the need to attract passersby with collections and creations force La Salada entrepreneurs to organize work flows in a way that differs from how the literature usually describes sweatshop practices. In fact, the La Salada way of working is similar to that of formal garment retailers: they start from their creations, often conceived with specific buyers in mind, and work backward. Two aspects differentiate La Salada entrepreneurs’ work from the classic descriptions of sweatshops in the literature. As the evidence provided shows, entrepreneurs’ work requires creativity, even during the process of copying brands. Exhibiting a constellation commonly overlooked in the literature (Aspers 2010b; Fernandez-Stark, Frederick, and Gereffi 2011; Gereffi and Memedovic 2003; Tokatli 2007, 2013), sweatshops linked to La Salada put different upgrading strategies into practice. And subcontracting chains in La Salada start with entrepreneurs like Pablo who, similar to branded garment retailers, outsource part of their work to workshops located upstream in the market. Overall, in this book I bring to the fore a garment industry constellation that has not yet aroused the same interest as offshore production, violation of labor standards, and exploitation in sweatshops. Therefore, the research I present provides a unique contribution to the literature on sweatshops and global value chains, which otherwise focuses mainly on exporters and international scrutiny and has little to say about the politics of domestic garment production (Gereffi 1999; Locke 2013). The story told in this book, centered on the expansion of

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INTRODUCTION  11

a garment industry completely submerged in informality and illegality from production to retail, may be different from the stories told elsewhere in the field, but it is by no means more benign and reveals intricate forms of capitalist reproduction. In fact, by outsourcing and reproducing bad labor conditions, the garment enterprises analyzed in this book tend to behave in the same way as the legal garment retailers usually examined in the literature. Overall, by taking the case of Buenos Aires, this book demonstrates that studying domestic producers sheds light on the often neglected contingent of garment suppliers producing items for informal markets, a magnet for constant flows of migrant labor destined to work in sweatshops.

SOCIAL ORDER IN THE SHADOWS OF THE STATE A crucial point of departure in economic sociology studies about markets, already present in Polanyi’s well-known phrase “laissez-faire was planned” (Polanyi 2007:147), is that such arenas of exchange emerge neither spontaneously nor as a result of balancing supply and demand. On the contrary, markets themselves are institutions created by governments, private actors, or individuals. As shown by a large number of studies in this field, these actors play a decisive role in the social organization of markets (Beckert 2002, 2009; Dobbin 2004; Fligstein 1996, 2001; Swedberg 2005), for example, indicating to market actors specific ways to overcome specific problems such as questions of value, competition, and cooperation (Beckert 2009:247). The notion of the “architecture of markets” introduced by Neil Fligstein (2001:32) neatly captures this conception of markets as social constructions: he proposes that markets do not just consist of technologies and rational actors, but also entail a set of rules crucial for their development and reproduction. The rules structuring markets, according to Fligstein, are property rights, governance structures, rules of exchange, and conceptions of control. These types of approaches, however, in which rules as institutions play such a crucial role in governing market exchanges, are based on the presumption of the legality of the exchanges taking place in such arenas. What is not always explicitly recognized is that the state plays an essential role in creating and maintaining “stable worlds” in markets by securing property rights, developing standards, regulating competition, and structuring perceptions of how a particular market works. In sum, market exchanges are governed by rules, standards,

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specific practices, and personal relationships, all underpinned by the rule of law (Vogel 2018:3). Cases such as La Salada’s, however, present an opposing scenario in which the state performs a completely different role and forces actors to overcome coordination problems in different ways (Beckert and Dewey 2017; Beckert and Wehinger 2013). In marketplaces such as La Salada, dominated by informal processes and illegal behaviors, people are confronted with the fact that the state cannot uphold property rights, regulate competition, or mediate in cases of conflict. Taking this problem as a point of departure, existing economic and sociological research recognizes the role of alternative formations aiming to fulfill statelike functions in economies outside the law; for instance, as providers of trust and protection, both of which are needed for economic exchanges. Paradigmatic cases here are the mafia (Campana 2011; Dixit 2004; Fiorentini and Peltzman 1997; Gambetta 1993; Paoli 2003; Varese 2001; Volkov 2002; Wittek, Snijders, and Nee 2013:311) and extralegal armed forces (Davis 2009; Leeds 1996), instances that are able to gain social adherence in environments characterized by distrust through the sale of protection, which serves to lubricate economic transactions. By hiring mafia protection, market actors are able to purchase and sell goods safely, to dissuade or remove potential competitors, to secure clients, and to avoid being swindled. In these studies there is a tendency, however, to portray mafia groups as entities separated from state actors, a picture in which there is a zero-sum conflict of power between state and social actors: an increasing ability of mafia groups to sell protection indicates the weakening of the state.3 In the case of La Salada’s economy, it would be misleading to postulate a zero-sum conflict of power based on a clear division between state and nonstate actors, between mafia groups controlling the business of protection and a state that is absent. As both my empirical evidence and secondary literature (Auyero 2007; Auyero and Berti 2015; Merklen 2005; Sain 2008) suggest, it is precisely the informal presence of official authorities that poses practical and emotional challenges to entrepreneurs. It is also what makes the garment business profitable. Throughout the book, I show two modalities of this presence. On the one hand, I provide incontestable evidence for the government legitimization of this sweatshop-based garment economy. Faced with growing social inequality that impedes access to clothing for large sectors of the population—a structural problem whose solution appears difficult and uncertain—high-ranking politicians publicly

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INTRODUCTION  13

support this economy and offer La Salada workers what could be defined as off-the-books permission. Supporting this economy, according to their political calculations, also means obtaining politically useful benefits such as the creation of informal jobs, the reduction of unemployment-related protests, and the increase of consumption. On the other hand, the second mode of official presence takes the form of an extensive informal system of money collection that targets entrepreneurs selling counterfeit garment items. Firsthand data indicates that this informal tax system works in the same way as statesponsored protection rackets (Dewey 2017): the money, which ends up in various state agencies, is collected in exchange for the nonenforcement of the law, a “corrupt exchange” (Della Porta and Vannucci 1999) that makes it possible to continuously manufacture counterfeit garments. Overall, the information gathered during the interviews with entrepreneurs and other workers at La Salada marketplace shows that both government legitimation and the aforementioned illegal taxlike system set the necessary conditions for the expansion of the informal and illegal garment business and for the diffusion of aspirations and positive expectations about the future of the economy. Governance structures such as those observed in La Salada, in which state and nonstate actors hold differing power quotas, are dissected in various studies and discussed in relation to different degrees of control over economic resources, political connections, and state agencies’ decisions (Arias 2006a, 2006b; Baker 2015; Baker and Milne 2015; Darden 2008; Dewey 2018b; Dewey, Míguez, and Sain 2017; Leeds 1996; Milne 2015; Schuppert 2011; Stephenson 2016; To 2015; Verbrugge 2015). However, despite the divergent forms such hybrid governance structures adopt in different social contexts, most of the studies seem to share what Easterly (2008) calls a top-down perspective of governance, in which organizations, networks, or groups are in charge of enforcing informal rules. Or, put differently, the validity of such informal rules is dependent on these social formations acting as enforcers of penalties in the form of ostracism, group exclusion, shame, or even death. This is a conception of extralegal governance structures that aptly captures situations in which long-term relationships and trade opportunities do not expand beyond the boundaries of such formations. The trade of goods that are illegal and morally rejected—such as hard drugs, human beings, or endangered species—is well suited to this model because both illegality and lack of legitimacy clearly define the contours of the business (members, activities, roles,

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etc.). However, in cases such as La Salada, where the trade of goods is illegal but nevertheless enjoys broad social legitimacy, the propensity for short-term relationships increases and business possibilities beyond the core group proliferate. Thus, it is easy to conclude that, in cases like La Salada’s, the expansion of trade escapes the control of top-down enforcement of informal norms. The understanding of informal rules as embedded in groups, networks, or organizations cannot fully account for the case of La Salada and others like it, in which myriad transactions escape the reach of these social formations. As I show, a top-down governance structure, rather remarkably expressed in the aforementioned taxlike system and a web of political, criminal, and police linkages, plays a crucial role in strengthening expectations and guiding behavior in certain spheres. However, social order conceived as a top-down process can hardly account for a great number of economic agreements—for instance, among entrepreneurs, suppliers, and buyers—that anyone can easily break without major consequences. As I mentioned above, stallholders, cart-pullers, warehouse owners, seamsters, and vendors are confronted with an environment traditionally considered deeply inhospitable to economic exchanges—acute interpersonal distrust, pervasive personal insecurity, rampant violence; a “no-man’s-land” where “anything goes” (Auyero and Berti 2015:63). When confronted with the paradox of a social space riddled with interpersonal distrust, fear, and moral ambivalence but where economic exchanges flourish, we need an alternative framework, one that makes the bottom-up manufacture of a market’s social organization the center of the analysis. In La Salada, what needs to be explained is less the imposition—by mafia-like macro structures—of a certain kind of topdown social order by way of hiring armies of private security guards or pulling the strings of key actors and more the adherence to agreements, the coordination of work processes, the avoidance of conflict, and capital investments that all take place without legal protection.

ASPIRATIONS, POSSIBILITIES, AND BOTTOM-UP NORMATIVITY I am not the first to recognize the relevance of visions of the future expressed through aspirations and hope in economic domains. Perceptions of the future in the economy and as key components of

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INTRODUCTION  15

capitalist dynamics have increasingly been the object of empirical research and theoretical reflection. Although they focus on distinct aspects of economic life such as consumption, the development of market niches, or the organization of production, these studies insist on analyzing perceptions of the future as explanatory phenomena of actual behaviors in the form of labor demands, strategies to increase income, or the realization of certain lifestyles (Appadurai 2013; Beckert 2016; Beckert and Bronk 2018; Beckert and Suckert 2018; Fischer 2014; Miyazaki and Swedberg 2017). As Beckert asserts in this respect, “actors use imaginaries of future situations and of causal relations as well as the symbolically ascribed qualities of goods as interpretative frames to orient decision-making” (2016:9). Through participant observation and in-depth interviews focused on the aspirational dimension of La Salada’s economy, I intend to go a step further by advancing an unexplored line of inquiry: to conceive of aspirations as a source of normativity. This concept becomes crucial in contexts such as La Salada’s economy, where interpersonal distrust prevents cooperation, and mafia-like groups, even shed-market managers, are unable to create the necessary conditions to enable cooperation. Aspirations are key components when it comes to explaining how individuals deal with high levels of uncertainty, especially in cases where it cannot be reduced by extralegal enforcers like mafias. Entrepreneurs who sell their production at La Salada marketplace develop aspirations that can be characterized in the same way as the aspirations highlighted by authors referring to other social constellations. In all cases, aspirations appear as goal orientations or futureoriented expectations (Haller 1968; Hart 2016; Morgan 2007) related to access to goods or services, as well as to obtaining peer recognition. Likewise, La Salada workers exhibit what Appadurai (2013:126) and Fischer (2014:6) have defined as navigational capacity, or the ability to map various scenarios by imagining causal relationships and possible consequences. The fieldwork I conducted at La Salada, however, also highlights a dimension of aspirations that has rarely been scrutinized: the capacity of such aspirations to discipline behaviors. Aspirations as distinct perceptions of the future produce feelings of obligation in relation to certain behaviors. The repayment of credit, the large number of agreements with suppliers, and the fulfillment of various commitments to customers, all involving people with whom there has been little prior contact, constitute a web of norms that cannot be understood without referring to the aspirations of individuals. These aspirations, as the

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empirical evidence gathered at La Salada shows, inject normativity into everyday practices and strategies. While an understanding of the obligatory nature of certain behaviors as linked to future-oriented expectations is anything but new, as Luhmann’s (1993) definition of norms as normative expectations attests, the evidence collected at La Salada suggests a rather different way of looking at the relationship between perceptions of the future and normativity. Unlike Luhmann’s observation, according to which the reestablishment of expectations after an event of disappointment occurs in line with the script of preexistent, broadly accepted definitions (often established by the legal system), the norms I observed at the marketplace are enforced by actors according to standards of behavior that they themselves set. But more importantly, as I show throughout the book, social norms emerge that are conditioned by the social context—in this case, it is the informal governance that is particularly relevant to this conditioning. Here, a pivotal structural factor that allows us to understand the strength of aspirations is the perception of permission introduced by authorities through exercising tolerance and the implementation of the informal taxlike system. Through political legitimation and the nonenforcement of official regulations, authorities give shape to a particular social space; they introduce an exception that has as a consequence, at the level of individuals, the certainty that progress is achievable in the context of the marketplace and nowhere else. In the same way, given the scarce or absent opportunities for La Salada workers to participate in the formal economy, political tolerance and nonenforcement definitively shape an economic arena perceived as offering the chance to fulfill long-held wishes. In this sense, it becomes easy to understand what I observed during the interviews: that the future appears as a one-shot possibility. The future, in the singular, is what imprints the distinctive character of urgency and impels entrepreneurs and other La Salada workers to individually introduce normative standards of behavior that facilitate market coordination. We could also observe this phenomenon from a sociostructural point of view: if the future does not exist, and what we have are only perceptions of it, the pressure of aspirations is none other than the pressure exerted by the social structure, since it offers a single point of access to a better life. A similar observation is made by Hamilton (1978:1477) in his analysis of the structural sources of adventurism during the California Gold Rush. He indicates that motivational factors—those

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INTRODUCTION  17

that distinguish aspirations from simple expectations—are directly related to the social structure: “Motivational factors are not so much ideas in the minds of individuals as structural arrangements in society that give salience to ideas and instill in them a force beyond the content of the ideas themselves. In this sense, ideas are socially grounded in the circumstances of people’s lives; individuals act on the basis of the world they see before them; they espouse and manipulate those ideas that make sense to them—the same ideas that, at times, consume them.” Extant literature on informal norms reveals that there are few attempts to problematize the usual ways of thinking about the sources of normativity. The most recent attempt is Möllers’s (2015) proposal for a broad concept of social norms, which shows affinity with the evidence collected at La Salada. According to Möllers, normative practices should be understood as positively signaled (perceived) possibilities. Not every perceived possibility constitutes a norm, only those valued positively. Such positive valuation, also understood as a “realization marker,” is what indicates that this perceived possibility must be concretized. The realization marker transforms the perceived possibility into a norm. Meanwhile, Möllers asserts, what signalizes that a particular possibility is feasible in practical terms is the context of “pertinence,” a practical knowledge that seems to be a variation of Bourdieu’s “sense of the game,” described as “practical anticipations of the immanent tendencies of the field” (2000:212). As I will show in this book, although entrepreneurs’ aspirations differ in scope and content, they emerge from positive valuations regarding the realization of specific perceived possibilities. This, however, does not result from an exercise of imagination, but from the experience of working in the marketplace, a process by which people learn step-by-step how pertinent certain aspirations might be. An illustration of this process can be found in chapter 5, in which entrepreneurs’ experiences and aspirations are traced from their origins in an entrepreneur’s first contact with the garment economy, until they become shared and wellestablished knowledge about the “sense of the game.” Throughout the chapters, the reader will find that entrepreneurs and other La Salada workers operate with two major visualizations in terms of perceived possibilities that imbue practices with a sense of obligation. First, as best demonstrated by the cases of Osvaldo and Leo—manufacturers of sweatshop-produced Gap items and children’s

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caps, respectively, introduced in chapter 6—entrepreneurs visualize a causal relationship between working hard and improving production methods with being successful. Effort and sacrifice are the measures of success. Dilemmas such as commercial fairness with one-off buyers, the number of hours worked, or the improvement of products are directly associated with the degree of business success. Second, as Pablo’s father said when I visited the family sweatshop (described in detail in chapter 5), people visualize La Salada’s economy as a “chain” of roles that will bring good results for everyone involved. In a similar vein as in studies in the interactionist tradition (Benford and Snow 2000; Shibutani 1955, 1966; Strauss 2008), the interviews conducted in La Salada reveal visions of the future in which a shared definition of the situation (“La Salada is a chain”) is seen as producing real effects (“we all benefit from it”). In recognizing causal relationships contained in certain visions of the future, all of which emerge in close connection with people’s experience of work at the marketplace, we are able to grasp the obligatory nature of particular practices. In understanding social norms as possibilities, we are led to conclude that the enforcement of norms plays a secondary role. If we follow Möllers’s (2015) suggestion and connect it with the empirical evidence collected, the crucial question is less about whether rules can be fully implemented, but whether they convey a definition of a perceived possibility. In the context of La Salada, possibilities become norms insofar as they indicate that potential economic gains, access to certain goods, and peer recognition are real possibilities. In none of these cases is the enforcement of norms carried out externally. On the contrary, norms are enforced almost without personal interaction, a phenomenon that is compatible with high levels of interpersonal distrust. To be clear: not pursuing what is perceived as a pertinent possibility entails negative consequences such as the loss of money, damaged social status, or reduced possibilities. This structurally determined enforcement of norms, then, is an essential bottom-up mechanism that secures the coordination of activities under high levels of uncertainty.

ON THE CONCEPT OF THE SWEATSHOP Legal and moral definitions need to be explained in the context of the society in which they arise. This assertion, obvious to sociologists, is also valid for the Argentine sweatshops described in this book. My

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INTRODUCTION  19

motivation for choosing the concept of sweatshop rather than “workshop,” “family workshop,” or “home work,” all terms found in the literature, originates in the fieldwork I conducted in Buenos Aires. After two months of daily visits to the marketplace and being in contact with La Salada entrepreneurs like Pablo, I started interviewing entrepreneurs working in the formal clothing market. This decision was a reaction to the provisional results I was getting: many of my interviewees had worked for formal garment manufacturers or under exploitative conditions in sweatshops that provided sewing services to legally constituted garment companies. If the objective was to understand the garment economy centered on La Salada, I should follow my interviewees’ indications and also look closely at formal entrepreneurs to learn about their trajectories—these are described in chapter 4. After interviewing several garment entrepreneurs, the turning point came the day I visited the workshop of Armando, a manufacturer whose biography summarized the industry he belonged to. The crowning glory of the business, he proudly remembered, had been manufacturing the official shirt for the Argentine soccer team that won the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. After that stellar moment, the collapse began. The facilities at Armando’s workshop and the economic situation he found himself in contrasted sharply with the business conducted by Pablo, Leo, and other La Salada entrepreneurs that I was witnessing almost daily. Although they were not new, the set of overlock, overstitch, and lockstitch machines, as well as a big dye-sublimation thermal printer, revealed that Armando had invested significantly in capital equipment. Also, the three long workbenches located in a room equipped with specialized lighting and all kinds of materials and tools indicated Armando’s capacity to manage the production of large quantities of garments. Yet Armando’s business situation could hardly be worse. Pushed into a corner by all kinds of taxes, high labor costs, and, as he put it, the “unfair competition from clandestine workshops,” Armando had serious difficulties running the business. Then there was the commercial success I witnessed among La Salada entrepreneurs. Pablo, who worked together with his three siblings and their parents in a precarious sweatshop in the family home, manufactured and sold hundreds of “Adidas” jackets each week at a rate that left him scrambling to replenish his stock. In this book I refer to production units like Pablo’s, Leo’s, and other interviewees’ as sweatshops with the intention of highlighting a difference that is essential if we want to understand the phenomenon at

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stake: it is the circumvention and infringement of a significant set of formal regulations that provides economic advantages. The English notion of the sweatshop, which emerged in the United States toward the end of the nineteenth century and would be the equivalent of the Spanish term taller clandestino (clandestine workshop), is used here to identify a type of production unit that is completely submerged in informality and illegality, a condition investigated in this book from different angles. From the point of view of the generation of sociological knowledge, this strategy is certainly more productive than, for example, using indistinct terms such as “workshop.” Taking legal definitions into account, as I argue in this book, is relevant for the sociological analysis of markets such as La Salada: state definitions draw a line in society that forces actors to make decisions, to hide, to corrupt state agents, to seek alternative sources of credit. In addition, the very existence of legal definitions offers incentives to authorities to manipulate them; for instance, to conduct other unlawful businesses or to illegally sell the nonenforcement of the law. Thus, circumvention and infringement of official regulations must be observed in relation to both political and social causes and consequences. More specifically, the definition of sweatshop used in this study refers to the circumvention and infringement of a series of formal regulations that indicate the requirements for legal garment manufacturing. Thus, for the purposes of this study, what defines a unit like Pablo’s as a sweatshop is the action of bypassing or violating fiscal regulations regarding the production and sale of garments; regulations referring to health and safety standards in the workplace; Law 12.713 on Home Work (Ley de Trabajo a Domicilio) and Law 20.744 on Work Contracts (Ley de Contrato de Trabajo); and municipal authorizations referring to the establishment of productive units (Goldberg 2009, 2010b, 2011; Lieutier 2009). In addition to noncompliance with these regulations, a large number of sweatshop owners manage to illegally access services such as electricity. The noncompliance with all these regulations and laws makes workplaces unsafe and precarious and creates optimal conditions for the exploitation of workers. The universe of sweatshops linked to La Salada is diverse: it features family units set up by selfemployed people, like the majority of my interviewees, and larger, nonfamily units where undocumented workers and children are exploited. Chapter 5 provides a glimpse into this diversity of sweatshop types. A similar strategy of adhering to legal definitions and standards is adopted by Ross (2004) in his analysis of sweatshops in the United

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INTRODUCTION  21

States. The difference compared with the case described in this book, however, is that Argentine laws, especially labor laws, set high standards and thus prevent a legalistic definition from conferring moral dignity on bad pay.4 On the contrary, one possible line of criticism to the conceptual strategy employed in this book is its tendency to exclusivity: given the high standards of existing legal provisions, the analysis tends to define more productive units as sweatshops. Such a critique is certainly appropriate, not so much because it increases the number of sweatshops, but because it strikes at the heart of a political economy dilemma. Indeed, as I explain later, one of the macro determinants explaining the emergence of La Salada’s economy is that—unlike countries that created export processing zones—Argentina’s labor, social, fiscal, and environmental laws have not been “adapted” in order to attract foreign investors. Finally, this definition, based on formal regulations, would seem to be convenient in order to extend reflection beyond the norm takers, such as informal garment entrepreneurs, and to also consider the rule givers, such as politicians, police officers, and inspectors. In fact, an equally or perhaps even more important dimension is that these formal regulations that draw the line between legality and illegality can be manipulated by state agents, who can informally authorize their violation, selectively enforce them, or purposefully decline to modify them. Seen from this perspective, which is analyzed in detail in chapter 2, the definition of “sweatshop” used here seeks to connect the workings of a particular economic sector with the power of state actors, whether it is the power to define what is legal and what is not or to selectively enforce the very laws they have made.

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CHAPTER 1

The Garment Market and the Marketplace

Jorge Palacio, co-owner of Punta Mogote, La Salada’s flagship shed market, has a problem. About a hundred garment entrepreneurs have surrounded him and his business partner, Antonio, to voice furious complaints about Punta Mogote’s constantly changing opening times. It is summer and the improvised meeting room is full and hot. The atmosphere is tense. The entrepreneurs insist that the frequent changes—from midnight one day to two a.m. the next—lead to coordination problems, loss of profit, and wasted time. Jorge and Antonio try to calm the situation. Such changes are part of a strategy, they say: they might appear to be strong enough in the low-cost garment market—“the goose that lays the golden eggs,” as it would be described to me later—but they nevertheless have to compete for buyers. “I know how this business works,” Jorge insists, beginning to raise his voice. “We have to work in the small hours of the night because buyers [arriving in buses] have to first come here and then go to other places [the competition].” The audience continues to gripe, unconvinced by Jorge’s explanation. He tries again: “Why do we have problems with the opening time? Because we don’t want to work retail. We want to do wholesale!” It works like a charm. The complainants, so angry moments ago, unanimously break into riotous applause to signal their approval. Jorge has finally met their expectations. The wholesale garment business is at the core of understanding the nature of La Salada marketplace and its current success in the Southern Cone. Yet the few existing depictions of La Salada are silent on the topic, instead blithely privileging the most common views—in various combinations—of Latin American marketplaces. By adopting the view that marketplaces are, for instance, “picturesque features of Latin American commercial activity” (Bromley and Symanski 1974:3), some scholars conclude that La Salada is a relatively homogeneous

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ethnic enclave in which Bolivian migrants re-create traditional ways of organizing economic and social life as well as overcoming different forms of discrimination (Benencia and Canevaro 2017; Sassen 2011). In this vision, the marketplace is depicted as more than a purely economic sector. Social relations, economic arrangements, political ideas, and cultural practices are parts of a holistic way of life. In the second prevailing view of La Salada, the marketplace is seen to be a hub of informal economic activity. Characteristic of this view is the more or less explicit assumption that the emergence of a self-organized sector, or even a postneoliberal subjectivity, at the margins of society and beyond state reach is a direct result of the impact of global capitalist dynamics (D’Angiolillo et al. 2010; Forment 2015; Gago 2012; Hu 2012; Pogliaghi 2008; Sassen 2011). Having conducted seven months of ethnographic immersion and more than a hundred interviews with actors both within and outside the marketplace, I contest that the case of La Salada escapes a one-dimensional explanation appealing exclusively to either supposedly shared cultural features or the formal-informal dichotomy. As Keshavarzian (2007:73) asserts in his discussion of the term “bazaar,” scholars’ emphasis on cultural features and tradition, or on the globally determined informal character of the economy, leads to portraying the bazaar or marketplace “as an undifferentiated, static, and collective entity.” The accent on traditions or ethnic features “freezes interactions” among actors, risking making them “cultural dopes” (Garfinkel 1967), whereas the focus on global dynamics as the chief source of social change brackets out politics, despite the fact that state institutions and policies usually filter, translate, and re-create such overarching forces into new, local forms of domination, informal institutions, and economic practices. By observing La Salada as a bastion of traditional Bolivian culture, scholarship on the marketplace “over-explains continuities and under-explains discontinuities” (Keshavarzian 2007:51). As I show throughout the book, La Salada’s economy can be only partially explained by referring to the Bolivian community or a supposedly Andean culture. In fact, there are other elements playing an equally important role, such as the organizational form of the Buenos Aires Central Wholesale Market (Mercado Central de Buenos Aires) and the widespread land tenure insecurity throughout the area where La Salada is located. Additionally, by explaining La Salada as an informal economy and linking it with overarching social phenomena such as

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“global capitalism” or “globalization,” analyses overlook crucial intervening explanatory factors, such as the current configuration of the national garment industry, the established tradition of unlawful behavior by police forces, and political decisions at the municipal level. In this chapter, I provide an initial characterization of La Salada marketplace, embedding it in a specific political-economic configuration. My aim is to show that the marketplace cannot be understood without taking the bigger picture into account. The national garment industry, the lack of access to clothing, and the state and political authorities all play a major role in shaping the spatially localized sociomaterial infrastructure that is La Salada, as well as people’s practices and aspirations. At the same time, the opposite is also true. Given the nationwide reach of La Salada’s economy, we cannot explain the garment market or access to clothing without considering La Salada as the main supplier of low-cost garments in Argentina. The research conducted at La Salada shows us a marketplace that is in fact deeply entrenched in the history of the local garment industry and conditioned by a host of structural shifts. In a nutshell, what sets La Salada apart from most of the other Latin American marketplaces (Babb 1998; Bromley and Symanski 1974; Goldstein 2016; Konove 2015; Seligmann 2004; Zanoni 2018) is the combination of three characteristics: La Salada is a one-product, informal and illegal, and wholesale marketplace. A brief revision of the literature on marketplaces in the Latin American context suggests that ferias, plazas, and mercados are organized gatherings offering a quite different landscape oriented toward the retail sale of highly diverse commodities. In turn, each of these three characteristics is linked to historical macro processes that have unquestionably shaped La Salada marketplace, revealing the embeddedness of La Salada’s economy. The specialization of La Salada as a supply center for one product— garments—originates in a series of structural changes and decisions that ended up leaving the market for mass-consumption garments completely up for grabs. In the second half of the 1990s and during the first years of the new century, several Argentine companies were able to survive economic liberalization by reorienting the business toward segments with high purchasing power. Reorientation in this industrial sector meant both a withdrawal from the mass-consumption segment and the dismissal of thousands of workers with specialist know-how. Accompanying these shifts, a general impoverishment of the population hindered access to legally produced garments and provided strong

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incentives to opt for items manufactured in the emerging sweatshopbased garment economy. Once constituted as the first link in the commercialization chain for low-cost items, a new layer of informality and illegality appeared in La Salada marketplace. The huge, sustained demand acted as a powerful incentive for different social groups—former formal workers, migrants, informal sweatshop workers, unemployed people—to decide to become informal garment entrepreneurs. These newcomers strengthened and increased the already high levels of informality in the industry. After all, there was already a multitude of local sweatshops (Montero 2018a; Montero and Ferradás Abalo 2015; Morokvasic 1987) manufacturing for well-known local or international brands. However, the new business opportunities fostered the emergence of a new type of production unit that was completely detached from the formal circuit of production and, more importantly, was linked solely to informal commercialization channels. In fact, the novel feature of this emerging type of unit is that the position of entrepreneurs is downstream in the market and close to buyers. As I show, this new degree of disconnection from formal processes meant that access to credit was very limited, which affected the acquisition of necessary capital goods and led to even lower levels of qualification among the labor force.1 The wholesale nature of La Salada can be explained only if we take the unprecedented demand for garments into account. This market constellation is closely related to a broader sociostructural configuration, one that goes beyond this industrial sector and suggests a fracture in society. A great portion of the population cannot afford the garment items sold in official stores, shopping malls, and other legally constituted shops. From this perspective, the marketplace and the sweatshop-based economy it represents can be viewed as adaptive responses to the prevailing macro social configuration. Finally, the divide between a more or less formal industry on the one hand and a completely informal and illegal one on the other is reflected in the way the state reacted to the changes in the sector. While several state agencies have provided incentives to garment companies to comply with production standards, as well as supporting innovation and commercialization, other state agencies, as I show in the next chapter, have tolerated and even fostered La Salada’s economy. The next chapter shows how this unlawful tutelage from the state came to reproduce and reinforce illegality in this economy.

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FIGURE 1.1. Long-distance buses in the parking lots of La Salada ready to depart

with wholesale buyers. Photograph by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

In the following sections I describe the forces that shaped La Salada and, closely connected with these, the actions of those who work there. I first address the macro shifts, such as political-economic decisions (e.g., economic liberalization and import policies), the generalization of strategies and mechanisms (e.g., subcontracting, informalization, and withdrawal from the mass-market), and new commercialization formats (e.g., shopping malls or outlets) that limited access to clothing for a great portion of the population. All these macro structures, shifts, and mechanisms are significant, since they crucially shaped the micro world (Burawoy 1998:282), the best expression of which is the mushrooming of sweatshops connected with La Salada marketplace. Second, I focus on the development of the marketplace, addressing several dimensions that should help answer the following questions: Why did La Salada emerge in its particular location as the main supplier of low-cost garments? How is the macro constellation mentioned above connected with the political, economic, and social situation at the local level? To respond to these questions, I will consider issues such as land tenure, local politics, and the role of the Buenos Aires Central Wholesale Market. By the end of this chapter, I hope that the reader will have a better idea of the series of complex structural

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elements that molded an entire economic sector, which includes Latin America’s largest marketplace for low-cost garments, along with the aspirations of those who work there.

THE MACRO METAMORPHOSIS OF THE GARMENT INDUSTRY Armando owns a small business; his career high was manufacturing the official Argentine national soccer shirt, which the team wore to victory in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Argentina has not won the World Cup since, and for Armando’s business the good times are also long gone. “It’s difficult; it’s increasingly difficult to sell these shirts. And I’m one of the few who has a workshop especially set up for doing the sublimation [a technique for transferring images to fabric]!” he worries, walking me through the facilities. One month later, just ten kilometers away from Armando’s fully equipped workshop, Pablo tells me that he is exhausted because of his high workload. His whole batch of fake Adidas jackets (around fifteen hundred pieces) had sold in just four hours. Unlike Armando with his worried demeanor, Pablo, despite his physical exhaustion, is overjoyed. One of La Salada’s managers, replicating the market’s business model, has opened a new marketplace in the city of Mendoza, and Pablo has managed to set up a stall there to sell his jackets. I encountered such contrasting experiences repeatedly. They point to the simultaneous existence of contradictory landscapes and to the profound metamorphosis of the garment industry and of society as a whole. Armando’s shirts are elaborate, colorful pieces manufactured by experienced seamsters in the southern part of the city of Buenos Aires. They are destined to be sold in the galerías and shopping malls located just a few kilometers away in the city’s most exclusive districts. Even though he admits to traces of informality in the business, Armando’s production costs are high. He cannot avoid reflecting his costs in his prices. Pablo’s “Adidas” jackets, meanwhile, are manufactured in his family home in conditions that contravene a whole raft of safety and labor regulations, which usually apply obligatorily to these kinds of enterprises. However, by combining family work and circumventing regulations, Pablo is able to undercut Armando’s prices and meet consumers’ price orientation. This tendency toward price-oriented consumption, paradigmatically exemplified by Armando’s hardship and Pablo’s success, was by

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no means a novelty at the time I interviewed each of them. In fact, this orientation toward consumption, mostly the consequence of a violent and generalized contraction of purchasing power, can be traced back to the mid-1970s, when radical free-market-oriented policies were introduced by the military authorities after 1976 (Azpiazu and Schorr 2010; Gerchunoff and Llach 2018; Katz and Kosacoff 1989). The economic reforms introduced by the dictatorship paved the way for a textile industry characterized by internal heterogeneity and increasing informality. By the time Armando delivered Argentina’s official shirts for the 1986 World Cup, the garment industry’s peak performance was already behind it and the first stage of the metamorphosis had begun: between 1974 and 1985, 40 percent of Argentine textile companies closed, and thirty-six thousand wageworkers were dismissed (Tavosnanska et al. 2010:70). Meanwhile, the annual consumption of fibers per habitant dropped dramatically: from twelve kilos in 1970 to four kilos in 1986 (Saulquin 2008:189). The 1990s provided no respite to the beleaguered sector.2 On the contrary, the expansion of liberalizing policies followed patterns similar to those introduced by the military regime: political measures were characterized by their lack of gradualism, and an overvalued currency resulted in a drop in import duties (Azpiazu and Schorr 2010:145). This led to an increase in imports, which dramatically lowered the participation of local production in the domestic garment market and limited price fixing. The textile companies’ cost structures were soon affected and profit margins reduced. Quickly, this combination of factors left companies facing several limitations regarding the introduction of new fixed capital and new technology. The industry had to reduce costs, which it achieved through massive job cuts: employment fell by 51 percent, hours worked by 45 percent, and real wages by 20 percent (Kosacoff et al. 2004:3). Many of the La Salada workers I interviewed had been personally affected by the cuts. Leo, for instance, now a sweatshop producer at La Salada, was fired shortly after starting work at a legal garment company, although his brother was kept on because of his seniority. But laying off workers was not enough to stave off disaster, and large numbers of companies collapsed. The general economic turmoil in Argentina accentuated the sector’s informality and strengthened institutionalized smuggling practices, commonly known as aduana paralela, which became pervasive in the garment industry (Saulquin 2008:210). The division between formal and shadow garment production had begun to take hold.

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From 2002 onward, Armando saw a reinforcement of this dual pattern: the new policies aimed at protecting the textile industry in general—and the garment sector in particular—proved beneficial to established legal companies. Indirectly, these policies also benefited the already sizable informal sweatshop economy, because barriers were set up to impede garment imports from Asia. It is true that this new phase can be best defined as a countermovement characterized by expansion and growth: the creation of new companies, growing employment, increasing sector GDP, and a rise in demand for garments (Kosacoff et al. 2004:19; Tavosnanska et al. 2010:72). In fact, Armando partially benefited from protectionist policies, which made it more difficult to import the type of shirts he was manufacturing. However, in practice these favorable economic prospects for businesses in the garment industry largely led to the strategies adopted during the previous decade— outsourcing and informalization—becoming more deeply entrenched.

Outsourcing and Informalization In the late 1990s, garment companies like Armando’s were facing the effects of a dramatic fall in demand and an increase in production costs. They saw the outsourcing of certain production processes as a mechanism to reorient the business. Outsourcing enabled companies to focus on the more profitable parts of the production chain over those that no longer offered comparative advantages. This facilitated a “flight to quality”: companies abandoned the less-profitable mass-consumption segment and reoriented the business toward high-end products. This flight to quality meant that companies differentiated their goods from the standard Asian imports in order to attract a public for whom price plays a secondary role. The brands that applied this strategy invested heavily in branding and marketing, along with carefully curated stores in exclusive commercial spots, typically in the upmarket neighborhoods of Recoleta, Palermo, and Barrio Norte in Buenos Aires City. But behind the glamorous façade, there was a long chain of subcontracted sweatshops in which workers were subjected to appalling conditions. In the years after 2002, the new business strategies continued to rely heavily on outsourcing and informalization as a result of the emergence of a new wave of sweatshops. In fact, the new macroeconomic conditions—a high exchange rate discouraged imports from Asia—fostered the emergence of the local sweatshop (Montero 2018a),

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which focused on the mass-consumption segment. However, these new sweatshops emerged not only upstream in the market (that is, providing sewing services to multinational companies in the way that sweatshops described in the literature usually do) but also downstream in the market (that is, close to buyers). In other words, the massconsumption portion of the market left up for grabs by the garment companies was seized by a new entrepreneur, one attentive to buyers’ preferences.3 Entrepreneurs of this new kind channel their production through informal trade networks, and their sweatshops enter into direct competition with companies like Armando’s. Due to outsourcing, informal employment along the entire garment production process exploded (Coatz 2010; Coatz, García Díaz, and Woyecheszen 2010; INTI Textiles 2010): the number of people working as informal seamsters skyrocketed from 42,000 in 2002 to 177,000 in 2010. In 2002, the proportion of seamsters working informally was 59.15 percent; in 2010 the equivalent figure was 77.6 percent (Choren 2012:36; González 2006:6–7; INTI Textiles 2010). Other scholars point to a similar trend.4 The myriad illegal enterprises that started working entirely in the shadows took responsibility for all stages of garment production, from the purchase of fabric to the final step of commercialization. Pablo’s sweatshop was born out of this profound informalization process: his job was no longer delivering sewing services to formal garment companies, but the production and distribution of finished pieces of clothing (Coatz 2010:22). Pablo and thousands of other up-andcoming sweatshop owners saw a business opportunity in organizing the business closer to the buyer; that is, manufacturing low-cost garments according to new fashion trends and buyers’ specific preferences. After 2001, sweatshops stopped being the informal extension of legally established companies and became instead the center of a shadow economy completely detached from its legal counterpart.

New Commercialization Patterns and Access to Clothing If outsourcing and informalization shaped the supply side of the garment market by modeling patterns of business and forms of production, two elements played a decisive role in shaping the general consumer’s access to garments: new commercialization patterns and the generalized lack of technology and skilled labor. Crucially, during the 1990s,

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shopping malls increased real estate costs (partly due to real estate speculation) to such an extent that by 2012 these costs accounted for 40 percent of the final price of a premium item of clothing. In combination with the aforementioned rising costs of brand development—marketing, pattern-making, design, and advertising—such elevated costs for store space provoked a rise in clothing prices, a situation in which an ever-growing share of the population experienced serious restrictions in accessing legally produced garments.5 However, an additional element is required to complete the picture. The sustained process of informalization in the last stage of the production chain also led to a chronic shortage of investment in technology and professional skills. The consequences of the lack of investment in technology and a skilled workforce were twofold. First, outsourcing and widespread informalization meant that companies had more limited access to workshops with adequate technology. Secondly, although outsourcing and informalization unquestionably led to a decline in technology and a reduction in skilled labor, the aforementioned figures point to an increase in the informal labor force. Skilled workers— former employees in garment companies—made up much of this labor force. Leo’s brother, for instance, was not fired from the garment company during the mass layoffs in the 1990s but opted to leave of his own accord. Where Leo started working informally through necessity, his brother set up his own sweatshop by choice for the simple reason that the shadow economy promised higher earnings. Overall, the economic program followed by successive governments made thousands of skilled workers redundant. And, though it may have stimulated self-employment and the emergence of sweatshops, the generalized deterioration of wages led to a lack of access to legally produced garments, which sparked increasing demand for low-cost items. The key feature of this entire process was the formation of a second, underground garment economy that consisted of myriad sweatshops producing clothing downstream in the market for huge numbers of impoverished garment consumers. In this context, La Salada became the first link of the commercialization chain.

Downstream Sweatshops: A Worldwide Tendency Neither La Salada marketplace nor the mushrooming of sweatshops in the suburban areas of populous cities are exclusively Argentine

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phenomena, as a vast body of research on this industry has documented (Bao 2002; Bender and Greenwald 2003; Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000; Buechler 2004; Camacho Reyes 2008; Collins 2003; Esbenshade 2004; Montero and Arcos 2017; Morokvasic 1987; Phizacklea 1990; Rothstein 2007; Smyth and French 2009; Waldinger 1986; Vidal 2012). However, the changing patterns of international trade along with the transformations implied by increasingly globalized commerce have created a differentiated landscape of informality and illegality in the garment industry. In fact, the relocation of production to export-led countries, particularly to Asian and Central American nations, has severely dislocated (Bair and Werner 2011) well-established national industrial complexes. The prime destinations in the global outsourcing of the industry included Bangladesh, Nepal, China, and Turkey; for other countries, the mutation of global trade meant the progressive decline and dismantling of national industrial networks. As explained in relation to the Argentine case, the consequences of such macro shifts were a loss of know-how, a massive dismissal of workers, and a reorientation of local companies’ business strategies. At the national level, however, in several cases the consequence has been the emergence of what we may call downstream sweatshops. Disconnected from multinationals or well-known national companies, they are responsible for the whole production process and position themselves close to the marketplace. Places as widely dispersed as São Paulo in Brazil (Buechler 2004; Pinto and Souza 2013; Vidal 2012), Prato in Italy (Ceccagno 2007, 2015, 2017; Lan and Zhu 2014; see also Baldassar et al. 2015; Chen 2011; Dunford 2006; Guercini, Milanesi, and Ottati 2017; Montero 2011; Smyth and French 2009), or Mazatecochco in Mexico (Rothstein 2005, 2007) are good examples of this constellation. In these countries, there has been a proliferation of sweatshops located downstream. Migrants run these units, which locally allocate their production meant for mass consumption, often in urban marketplaces, and target the segment of the population that struggles to afford (branded) clothing. In general, these production units feed well-rooted networks of informal trade and coexist with global commodity chains in the garment industry. This emerging type of sweatshop, nevertheless, does not refer to production units unlawfully connected with multinationals, but to others that, by lacking this connection, are not subject to private regulations aimed at improving labor standards. La Salada in Buenos Aires, Macrolotto Zero in Prato, Feira da Madrugada in São Paulo, and the

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open-air fairs in Mazatecochco are all immense marketplaces in which the downstream sweatshops allocate their production. They constitute nodes of commerce that informally nourish extended routes of trade. The emergence of downstream sweatshops in the Italian province of Prato, Ceccagno (2017) asserts, was motivated by several factors, including industrial decline that provoked the loss of more than thirty thousand jobs between 1996 and 2007, the liberalization of trade in the context of the European Union, traditionally high levels of informality, the large-scale migration usually associated with human trafficking networks, and weak labor unions. In addition to these elements, the state played a crucial role in tolerating massive violations of labor and security regulations (Ceccagno 2017; Dunford 2006; Montero and Ferradás Abalo 2015; Montero and Arcos 2017). Similar to La Salada, the shadow garment economy in Prato is essentially run by migrants, the great majority of which are Chinese entrepreneurs (Ceccagno 2003; Guercini, Milanesi, and Ottati 2017; Lombardi and Sforzi 2016; Wu and Sheehan 2011) who channel their production through a marketplace-like collection of stores known as Macrolotto 1. In the Latin American context, sweatshops have also mushroomed as a result of a series of macro shifts. Sweatshops that orient their production to the internal market and are disconnected from large, transnational brands are also to be found in Brazil and Mexico. Parallels can be drawn between Buenos Aires and, for instance, São Paulo, where sweatshops channel their production through wholesale marketplaces like Feira da Madrugada. And the similarities do not stop there: as is still the case in some sectors of the Argentine sweatshop economy (Mera 2012), Brazilian sweatshops are run mainly by Korean entrepreneurs who employ Bolivian migrants (Buechler 2004). According to Le Blanc (2016), these sweatshops are strongly oriented toward the Brazilian market, in which consumption of clothing has increased significantly over the last ten years.

Migration and the Downstream Sweatshop Economy in Buenos Aires Though La Salada cannot be considered an ethnic economic enclave, the relevance of the Korean and Bolivian communities in the business of garment manufacturing cannot be denied. Korean migrants arrived

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in the early 1980s and settled in the district of Once, where much of the Jewish community resided (Mera 2012; Sassone and Mera 2007). Coinciding with the economic decline of garment businesses described above and the exponential increase in informality in the sector, the decisive moment arrives in 2001, the year of the great economic crisis (Sassone and Mera 2007:12). The Bolivian community, having already built up a significant presence in the garment business, displaces the Korean community both quantitatively and territorially, running more sweatshops and expanding beyond the limits of the city of Buenos Aires. For the first time, the circuit of garment production in sweatshops begins to be completed exclusively by members of the Bolivian community. Especially in the Conurbano, sweatshops are no longer run by Koreans hiring Bolivian labor, but by Bolivians, former laborers turned independent entrepreneurs. They set up their own sweatshops and start hiring other members of their own community, often directly from various Bolivian cities and frequently through kinship networks or friendships (Sassone 2009:393). In geographical terms, the myriad new garment manufacturing units are established in the south of the city of Buenos Aires. However, they are also founded—with particular intensity—in disadvantaged neighborhoods and in the suburbs of Buenos Aires beyond the city, especially in the districts of Lomas de Zamora, La Matanza, Moreno, and Merlo. These geographies (which are close to La Salada, the first link of the commercialization chain) cover most of the neighborhoods that are migrants’ point of arrival and are where they start their careers as sweatshop workers or entrepreneurs. As Sassone (2009:399) asserts, many of these enclaves have brought vitality back to neighborhoods or sectors that have been economically depressed for decades, offering opportunities of informal work to immigrants of other nationalities. For example, Salvia and De Angelis (2015) note that various informal fairs in the south of the city of Buenos Aires offer informal employment to migrants from Africa, other South American countries—Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay—and from within Argentina. As I will describe later in detail, the commercial activities, as well as the community associations, present in these enclaves guarantee the circulation of information about work and business opportunities. Managing a garment business has been adapted to take advantage of family relationships. In this regard (as I will show in chapter 5 in detail), the difference between Pablo’s and Armando’s situations

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can be taken as an example. Unlike Armando, Pablo has been able to overcome many difficulties thanks to the family management of the business. For instance, the instability of order volume does not translate into a dismissal of workers but is buffered by the family, and the difficulties in planning and managing work in the chain of suppliers are resolved through informal contracts between workshops owned by other members of the family or friends. Armando, on the other hand, could barely keep two specialist employees “en blanco” (registered). The day I visited his workshop facilities, his change in fortunes was starkly evident: surrounded by empty workbenches, his two remaining employees worked in a room designed for a workforce ten times the size.

THE MAKING OF LA SALADA MARKETPLACE If readers were transported back three decades to the 1980s and visited the site currently occupied by La Salada, they would find no trace of a marketplace. Nor even of bricks-and-mortar retailers selling clothing. Instead, they would find only a former workers’ neighborhood, devastated by unemployment and infrastructural deprivation. The scarce vegetation that had managed to take root in the cracks in walls and sidewalks would be sickly; the area is also ravaged by serious environmental problems. Turn back the clock another thirty years, however, to the 1950s, and things would look radically different. Then, Ingeniero Budge was part of an expanse of countryside that was punctuated at wide intervals by the trickle of urbanization that had reached this far from the city of Buenos Aires, and recreation centers intended for the emerging middle class. Ingeniero Budge, just like the entire region surrounding the Federal District of Buenos Aires, has echoed far-reaching social transformations in Argentina from the very beginning. This section is something of a journey through time, tracing the disparate forces that gathered strength over the decades before colliding in a perfect storm that set the conditions for the emergence of La Salada marketplace. We therefore need to keep in mind events in the garment industry leading up to 1985, the crisis decade in which La Salada emerged, and the years following in which La Salada was consolidated as the center of a national supply chain of sweatshopproduced garments. Only by dissecting these events can we understand

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certain constellations in La Salada—why did Pablo’s family move to Buenos Aires, specifically to Ingeniero Budge? Why did they start manufacturing garments at home? Why do the authorities not stop them? Why did the marketplace become the main supply center for low-cost garments? How did the internal organization of the marketplace arise? Sources of information are few and far between, but where they do exist they agree that the area where La Salada is currently located has been exposed to sudden changes throughout its history, even as far back as 1900. At that time, growing industrial activity encouraged immigration, mostly from Europe, and stimulated profitable real estate businesses, as well as the division of land in less-valued sectors (Grassi 2011:110). In 1909, after two years of construction as part of a strategy intended to valorize land lots, the British-owned Buenos Aires Midland Railway inaugurated a rail service in Ingeniero Budge. Real estate businesses, however, did not yet mean dense urbanization. Through oral histories transmitted by older residents, we hear of just a few country houses and extensive green areas, and historians point to a lack of infrastructure and administrative difficulties (Grassi 2011:90). For several decades, this suburban area was primarily characterized by its distinctive attractiveness. However, it was also characterized—and supported economically—by what went on below the surface: mineral springs. In 1914, the Chemical Institute of the National Hygiene Department (Instituto Químico del Departamento Nacional de Higiene) declared the water “hydrothermal,” a category that required a temperature of at least 21 degrees Celsius and the presence of therapeutic minerals (El Federal 2012). The era of mass tourism was a long way off; at the time, the Buenos Aires aristocracy was the only social sector able to enjoy free time in recently developed touristic centers like Mar del Plata or Córdoba. Nevertheless, this did not impede the development of a nascent tourism industry. A number of businesspeople began to see the mineral springs as a promising opportunity. Recreational centers were established and rapidly proliferated throughout the metropolitan area: first in the east (Quilmes), then in the north of the Conurbano (San Isidro and Vicente López) and, finally, at the beginning of the 1940s, in the west, with the opening of the Health Resort and Park La Salada (Balneario y Parque La Salada). The foundation of the health resort stimulated economic activity in the whole area for several decades. It coincided with the approval of laws

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granting paid vacation to workers, which proved a crucial turn since it fostered new forms of consumption and ways of enjoying this new free time. This democratization of well-being (Pastoriza 2008; Pastoriza and Piglia 2012) opened up access to experiences formerly reserved for the upper classes, such as visiting centers with thermal waters containing “properties beneficial for the body,” of which La Salada was one (Ospital 2005:67–68). Similar centers could be found throughout the whole metropolitan area and were furnished with resources and departments created exclusively to provide touristic services to workers. Many such establishments belonged to unions—institutions with increasing power. In 1961, however, inspectors from the Ministry for Public Health found high levels of microbial activity in La Salada’s pipelines and closed down the center. Although it was later reopened, La Salada as a tourist attraction had entered its final phase. The rise and decline of La Salada as a recreational center coincided with the rise and decline of a society structured by work that was protected by both unions and state institutions. During the 1960s, workers employed in industries located in the districts where La Salada is now situated and where a great portion of the sweatshops are found (La Matanza) suffered from relocation of firms, a policy introduced and followed by successive governments (Rougier and Pampin 2015:209). However, it was the radical economic liberalization introduced by the military after 1976 that saw this general decline really pick up momentum. According to the National Economic Census of 1985, the district in which La Salada is located saw its population double but experienced no economic growth. In 1985, it still had 1,974 industrial establishments that employed 17,868 workers—the same number as thirty years earlier. But if we zoom out and observe the whole metropolitan area, the landscape is not much different. Between the coup d’état in 1976 and the beginning of the 1990s, as the trade of garments in and around the former mineralwater pools began to emerge, workers from the whole region suffered as a result of the massive process of job destruction and increasing impoverishment. As Vio and Cabrera (2015:257) point out, the phenomenon not only concerned a social segment submerged in structural poverty but also involved a vast impoverishment of the middle classes that deepened during hyperinflation in the 1980s. In 1995, the proportion of unemployed people in the Conurbano reached 22 percent, and the inhabitants registered as poor reached 34 percent (Vio and Cabrera

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2015:260). As I argued before, the preconditions for the emergence of a garment economy in the shadows were already set: there were large numbers of unemployed workers, many of them formerly active in textile industries, ready to manufacture garments in their homes; a suburban area suffering economic and infrastructural deprivation; and a large proportion of society demanding a very essential good but finding itself increasingly excluded from access to garments through impoverishment. All this paved the way for the transformation of La Salada from mineral-water pools to a marketplace for garments.

Land Politics and Infrastructural Precariousness I have already mentioned that economic decline—expressed in a dramatic contraction of the domestic clothing market, deindustrialization, and increasing unemployment—has been a powerful force in stimulating economic decisions to move outside the law. However, another series of elements explains the transformation of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (primer cordón del conurbano) into a large informal and illegal industrial cluster, which includes thousands of productive units, or sweatshops, and has La Salada marketplace as the main distribution hub. Current perspectives cannot sufficiently explain the emergence of eighteen hectares of marketplace devoted to distributing the production of more than thirty thousand workshops located in its vicinity. That is, the phenomenon in question must be seen as the crystallization of even more specific processes: new political configurations, the influence of the Central Market of Buenos Aires, and increasing numbers of migrants from Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru who are established in informal settlements (asentamientos). According to Ossona (2014, 2017), since the 1960s there has been a constant influx of immigrants into the area where La Salada is located today. Paraguayans, Bolivians, and Argentines escaping regional economic crises have settled in the nearby neighborhoods of Villa Fiorito, Ingeniero Budge, and Santa Catalina. Over time, these communities, especially the Bolivian one, formed a dense social fabric in which associations and cooperatives played an important role (Ossona 2010b:8). Likewise, the arrival of immigrants coincided with a profound transformation in the social segments and groups supporting political parties in the Conurbano. This was especially the case for Peronism,

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which had the strongest roots in the population. Toward the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the political-organizational fragmentation of trade unionism, traditionally allied with the Peronist party, forced political leaders to forge new electoral strategies heavily based on clientelistic logics (Levitsky 2005:170). The growing unemployment and deindustrialization mentioned previously had diminished union power, which in turn weakened the electoral power of the Peronist party. Finally, during the 1990s, the leaders of the Peronist party, the renovación, ended up neutralizing union influence and looked for new sources of political support. One new source of political support was found in organizing land invasions. This was the preferred mechanism in the districts of Lomas de Zamora and La Matanza, the territory where La Salada marketplace and a significant portion of the workshops are currently located, and it was promoted by community leaders and political activists alike. Votes and political support could be arranged through alliances with local neighborhood leaders, known as caudillos, who would organize large groups of several families, many of them recent migrants or impoverished workers, to occupy private or state-owned territories. In exchange for leaders and newcomers’ political support, municipal authorities would accept the occupation and commit themselves to regularization, in many cases through expropriation. It is worth mentioning that this electoral strategy was the only official response to the problem of access to housing, an issue that was by no means new in these geographies. Since the 1960s, housing options for the working class have noticeably decreased in the city of Buenos Aires, and this segment of society has been pushed toward the urban periphery. Later, in the 1980s, the problem became still more acute as military authorities ordered the clearance of slums and Provincial Land Use Law 8,912 was sanctioned (Van Gelder, Cravino, and Ostuni 2016). Officially, the provincial government promoted planned settlements in rural areas close to the urban area, aiming to transform them into urban centers by way of legislative arrangements; in practice, these intentions were carried out by brokers and neighborhood leaders who ensured both the organization of the settlement and electoral and political support. This occupied land was problematic for a number of reasons. It was located on floodplains and lacked any infrastructure, and the process of occupation, either unorganized (slum) or planned (settlement), violated property rights of unknown owners—in many

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cases legal issues with the land dated back to the colonial period.6 This form of occupation has resulted in the characteristic urban grid that today houses most of the sweatshops supplying La Salada: many rectangular lots of similar dimensions, all lacking infrastructure, sit side by side, the dwellings built on them starting out as precarious units that have gradually improved over time. In general terms, successive occupations defined diverse modalities of political and social organization, each centered on slumlords, local power brokers, and community leaders with specific links to municipal officials. As has already been pointed out (Auyero 2001; Zarazaga 2017), these brokers, or punteros, were the visible face of state assistance, the “politics of the poor” (Auyero 2001), and were crucial characters when it came to solving residents’ specific problems in such a socially and infrastructurally precarious context. This process of land occupation resulted in the complete absence of property deeds covering the eighteen hectares of La Salada marketplace, as well as its surroundings—both in Lomas de Zamora and in La Matanza. Over time, the irregular occupation of land has shaped a precarious urban space with poor sanitation, inadequate services, and squalid living conditions resulting from sporadic state interventions, mostly carried out with electoral motivation, that dismantle any progress. For example, in the entire urban space of the neighborhoods mentioned above, there is poor public transport that excludes many settlements entirely and is brought to a complete standstill by La Salada marketplace on the days that it opens. Likewise, services such as ambulances or fire trucks do not enter any sector of Ingeniero Budge because of security fears, and there is only one small hospital for a densely populated territory extending over several square kilometers. Additionally, there is no sewage system, leading to serious health problems in cases of flooding—this occurs frequently given that much of the occupied land is on a floodplain. The picture also includes a large number of streets without asphalt, unpaved sidewalks, and waste dumps that no public service is responsible for clearing. To this must be added the deficient provision of electricity and communication services, resulting from the absence of legally constituted home addresses and residents being unable to provide legal property titles or rental contracts. This infrastructural precariousness is accompanied by a police presence that, as some authors have pointed out (Auyero, Burbano de Lara, and Berti 2014) and that I will describe in detail in

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the next chapter, exacerbates the violence among residents and intensifies interpersonal distrust.

Illegality and the Making of Social Order The most visible consequence of the aforementioned precariousness is a form of social and political organization that, to a large extent, functions without recourse to official regulations and laws. Not only have high levels of informality and illegality negatively conditioned residents—for instance, by increasing the levels of personal and labor insecurity; they have also become a useful resource that features in a broad palette of strategies established in order to survive and make money. In fact, the general lack of property deeds and official land records has been a traditional source of opportunity for conducting illegal business and eluding the authorities for several decades. As Ossona (2017:214) indicates, such irregular conditions were instrumental in the violent emergence, toward the end of the 1990s, of the cocaine and freebase paste manufacturing and distribution business. Similarly, Ingeniero Budge became an important territory for the business of dismantling stolen cars and reselling the stolen units. Also during the 1990s, a number of Paraguayan and Bolivian community leaders organized garment smuggling into Argentina on a massive scale: from Paraguay and Brazil at the Triple Frontier, from Chilean and Peruvian ports, or directly from Bolivia (Hacher 2011; Ossona 2010b, 2014, 2017). Smuggling, soon joined by the manufacturing business in the newly emerging sweatshops, was the beginning of the clothing trade in Ingeniero Budge, laying the foundations for the commercial edifice of La Salada. The absence of settlement records mentioned above is also relevant for its role in attracting undocumented migrants aiming to enter the clothing manufacturing business.7 Equally important is the observation that all these businesses flourished outside the law, but not out of sight of state authorities. As I will show in the following chapter, in the paradigmatic case of La Salada marketplace, these businesses arose in partnership with state authorities and almost always with their protection. That is, informal and illegal activities were managed by a selection of slumlords, local power brokers, and community leaders continuously negotiating the terms of the businesses with local politicians, municipal bureaucrats, inspectors, and police officers.

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For the authorities, the governance of the margins through these influential brokers became a way to manufacture social peace and to obtain both electoral and political support. This form of governance would go on to reach its apex with the commercial edifice of La Salada, which would also become a constant source of material resources for political campaigns and personal enrichment for municipality inspectors and police officials. An example of the logic that prevailed during the 1990s and that later became a pattern of generalized behavior is neatly illustrated by the trajectory of “La Pantera,” described by Ossona (2010b, 2014, 2017). La Pantera was a social leader who specialized in large, organized land invasions backed by local authorities. He subdivided the land into lots, and after a few years, when the value of the occupied land increased, La Pantera and a number of other low-ranked brokers took control of a large informal real estate market. The valorization of the lots, however, was no accident, but rather the consequence of a more complex strategy that recalls the process of state formation based on taxing and selling protection described by Tilly (1985): La Pantera provided certain services to his tenants—namely, “a minimum meal and water,” and protection against invasions by other groups and arbitrary evictions. In order to secure these services, tenants paid La Pantera a compulsory “territorial tax,” a pattern of behavior that came to be replicated across the whole area. According to one of Ossona’s interviewees (2017), this collection system “became a custom” that was copied and perfected within the La Salada complex. As I will show in the next chapter, one of the cornerstones of the marketplace was—and still is—a well-oiled and complex money-collection system, the proceeds of which are used to improve facilities and provide taxlike bribes to all kinds of public servants.

The Internal Organization of La Salada Marketplace Because of the nature of the phenomenon, there are no reliable records regarding the emergence of the La Salada complex: the purchase of land upon which the Urkupiña, Ocean, and Punta Mogote shed markets were constructed and its subsequent subdivision into myriad small plots was conducted by informal means. However, several studies (Auyero and Berti 2015; Benencia and Canevaro 2017; Dewey 2018a;

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Hacher 2011) and oral testimonies corroborate to identify the initiators of the trade network as Bolivian immigrants who had been displaced from various locations in the city of Buenos Aires where they had set up street fairs. By 1991, around forty families had settled in the neighborhood of Ingeniero Budge. A year later they bought part of what is now the shed market of Urkupiña, named for the Urkupiña Virgin, the Bolivian patron saint of national integration. Two years later, in 1993, as the general economic situation worsened, a large number of families joined the wholesale clothing business, leading to the purchase of an additional property adjacent to Urkupiña. In this new location, a second shed market was established: Ocean, which still works as a cooperative today. Finally, in 1999, Jorge Palacio, who would soon become synonymous with the entire La Salada commercial complex, bought the last available former health resort and transformed it into Punta Mogote, La Salada’s third and final shed market. The transformation of the old recreational centers required filling in the swimming pools with wreckage, as well as the still-ongoing construction of facilities such as large parking lots, a church, a radio station, administrative offices, and sanitary works, among others. In all three cases, the purchase of land was the result of investment made by a large number of families and stakeholders in the plots of land informally subdivided by the respective political brokers. Later they became the administrators of the three properties, and also controlled the rental of a large proportion of the lots. Despite being situated at the margins of society, however, the organization of this business was far from unique. In the urban centers of the country, a new retail format had appeared—the shopping mall—and the commercial complex emerging in Ingeniero Budge was its informal counterpart. Ossona (2010a) regards the definition of La Salada as a shopping mall as particularly apt: the business of people like Jorge Palacio and the “small landowners,” many of whom own a large number of stalls, was and is one of real estate. That is, the business of the original buyers of the land has always been the regular rental of stalls to sweatshop producers. Approaching the pivotal year of 2001, in which the formal economy reached its deepest point of crisis while La Salada’s economy recorded its peak performance, the stalls increased in value to such an extent that the main national newspapers began comparing stall prices with prices of properties located in the most luxurious neighborhoods of the city of Buenos Aires.8

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Although the layout of the stalls and the selling dynamic within La Salada marketplace has been observed as the result of ancestral forms of organization originating in the Andean region (Benencia 2009; Rivera Cusicanqui 2011), the role played by the Central Market of Buenos Aires has been pivotal. Located less than a kilometer from La Salada and specializing in wholesale fruits and vegetables, this wholesale market has worked as an institutional template for the organization of La Salada.9 The Central Market has been enormously influential in the development of La Salada in three ways. First, in providing a business model based on the contact between the producer and the buyer, which allows a whole range of intermediaries to be bypassed. Just like the Central Market, La Salada provides a meeting point for producers and wholesale buyers. Second, the former has played a crucial role in providing a large number of workers of all nationalities, especially Argentines and Bolivians, to La Salada. Toward the end of the 1990s, as supermarkets began to demand new standards of quality and certifications from vegetable producers, Bolivian producers were sidelined and were consequently forced to find a new business. Thus began a transfer of labor toward the fledgling sector of low-cost garment production. Alternatively, it is possible that this transfer was accelerated by the tendency among second-generation Bolivian immigrants to abandon their parents’ traditional work in agriculture (Feito 1999). Finally, there is a similarity between the two markets in terms of building materials: for a long time, the metal components that form the structure of the Central Market stalls during the day were disassembled, transported to La Salada, and used as garment stalls at night. In fact, in the late 1990s, the transport, rental, and assembly of these structures became a lucrative business for a number of Argentines. Having functioned for twenty years without interruption, La Salada marketplace became a symbol of economic progress in one of the poorest and most neglected territories of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. It became an economic and social space that stimulated the constant emergence of commercial activities that were completely detached from official regulations, but that were also, paradoxically, endorsed by municipal and provincial state and political authorities. For instance, the arrival of thousands of sweatshop producers created informal work opportunities for young men willing to transport huge bags of clothing from producers’ vehicles to the stalls within the shed markets or in the street markets. These teams of cart-pullers are

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probably the segment of La Salada’s social pyramid most affected by freebase cocaine addiction and low salaries, comparable only with the private security armies hired by La Salada’s managers to protect buyers from robberies and assaults. Hundreds of private security guards work with a series of informants strategically distributed throughout the three shed markets to form a dense information network that keeps administrators updated about all relevant events. Neutralization of stall-related conflicts, capturing thieves, identifying imposters posing as money collectors or possible fraudsters, administering warnings, and controlling riots are just some of the functions of the network in a space that is chaotic only in appearance. Additionally, as a result of the high levels of insecurity and distrust within the marketplace, the business of garment warehouses emerged. The sweatshop producers’ vulnerability to theft when transporting their products to and from the marketplace led to a massive revaluation of private properties in the vicinity of La Salada. The properties were transformed with the installation of thousands of lockers, additional security was hired to protect against thieves, and ties with local law enforcement were established to guard against seizure of goods by the police. These secondary markets—warehouses, private security, and the cart-puller-based transportation system—that form three crucial infrastructures supporting the sale of garments are described in chapter 9.

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CHAPTER 2

Governing La Salada

Wilson had been a political broker, someone who knew like nobody else La Salada’s intricate web of relationships: between the marketplace and different political authorities, between neighborhood associations and the deliberative council, between soccer clubs and the marketplace. He had worked in one of the shed markets for many years and was now nothing less than private advisor to the mayor of the local municipality. His biography alone was extremely revealing. So when I was looking for interviewees to shed light on the links between La Salada and local government, Wilson’s deep involvement in politics made him one of my primary targets. “There are now more brand-new cars in Cuartel IX [the neighborhood where La Salada is located] than in the center of Lomas [de Zamora],” Wilson told me when I finally met him. He was a born politician, prone to putting a positive spin on how the marketplace had changed the local area. However, following the assurances of a mutual friend—another experienced political leader in the same district—he seemed satisfied that I was not a journalist and was quite willing to talk a little more frankly: “Maybe it’s because of the frula [cocaine],” he conceded, “but good: there’s economic progress going on anyway.” The interview with Wilson in 2013 changed my perspective on La Salada marketplace and on illegal markets in general. He had experienced firsthand how the shed-market managers regularly financed politics and provided me with reams of information that at the time seemed incredible. Over the following months, however, everything he had told me in that meeting was confirmed over and over again in subsequent interviews with business people, other political leaders, and members of the security forces. Adopting a fatherly tone, Wilson gave me my first lesson in the connections between politics and the marketplace: “The manager of the

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shed market Bristol has a direct line to Moreno [Argentina’s Secretary of Commerce]. No intermediaries; a direct line. Moreover, that’s why they [the government] took him to Angola with the president. The other manager, the manager of the Altiplano shed market, does local politics. He always did badly, but he still insists on making [political] alliances and trying to win an election.” Wilson and I talked for more than an hour and a half about the marketplace, about his experience as a political broker, and about the complex relations between La Salada’s economy, politicians, the police, and local community leaders. The following excerpt from the interview gives an unparalleled glimpse into the topic of this chapter: How is La Salada governed? This is a very politicized and very complicated area. There are a lot of mafia [groups], and what happens in the marketplaces and around them isn’t controlled from there [the marketplace] but from here [the municipality]. Every kind of clandestine business: you have it in this area. But you also have the other side—go down the road that goes to La Salada on any Saturday at seven in the morning. You’ll see a great many people working. Do you have any idea of the source of jobs that this marketplace is, that this economy is? Anyone thinking about closing this [marketplace], they set them on fire. And for you to be clear: everything that happens there doesn’t depend on the shed markets or neighborhood leaders but on decisions taken here [the municipality]. If there’s a conflict with someone, the president of the Deliberative Council makes a call and settles everything. After the Manolo government, this became a family, a mafia family. The most important thing here is cash. Wilson’s words, addressing issues that inspired The Godfather and countless other mafia movies, reflect theoretical questions central to studies on economic exchanges taking place outside the law: How do market actors coordinate their interests? What relationships do market actors establish with state agencies and politics? What kinds of rules govern market exchanges and social relationships? How are these rules enforced and by whom? La Salada marketplace, as Wilson suggests, is not part of just any informal and illegal market. Contrary to illegal markets trading in human beings, hard drugs, or child pornography, La Salada

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marketplace is part of an economy that, despite its informal and illegal nature, is associated with positive results: the demand for clothing creates informal jobs and with them the only possibility—in the absence of formal jobs and any ability to access the formal market—to have a regular income. As I will show, the capacity of La Salada to generate positive externalities, such as increasing consumption, generating employment, and satisfying the need for clothing, has not escaped the attention of political and police authorities.

THE ARGUMENT In this chapter, I unwrap and analyze the different layers of state presence in La Salada. Although occasional visitors are unlikely to spot any state servants—police officers or municipal inspectors—within the marketplace, their presence will not go unnoticed: conversations in the marketplace revolve around them, and they order the expectations and practices of La Salada’s whole workforce. Using empirical data, I describe the ways in which official authorities govern the marketplace. They are shown to establish a particular mode of governance that permits unlawful behaviors, such as counterfeiting and, to take the entrepreneurs’ perspective, other practices that are less economically functional. The evidence points to an informal governance structure based on the business of protection rackets: a constellation in which state and governmental representatives continuously sell the nonenforcement of the law in exchange for different types of resources. The fieldwork revealed two layers of such protection rackets. On the one hand, a well-functioning, taxlike structure at work throughout the marketplace ensures the penalty-free sale of counterfeit clothing items. In this system, entrepreneurs who counterfeit well-known brands buy the nonenforcement of the law in order to avoid legal repercussions such as confiscations. On the other hand, political actors protect the economy from the enforcement of the law, essentially by way of tolerating or publicly legitimizing it. This is done in exchange for politically essential resources: more informal jobs, increased garment consumption, and fewer protests. In both cases, there is an exchange: nonenforcement of the law for resources. The way people imagine future events is influenced by this governance structure. Once the government grants permission to break

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the law in exchange for either money or more abstract resources (such as the social order that comes from political support, lack of protest, increased consumption, or availability of jobs) it also creates room for business and the rise of expectations. People’s aspirations in the context of La Salada’s marketplace are directly linked to and shaped (Burawoy 1991:282) by this particular form of informal governance. That La Salada’s economy continues to thrive while legally constituted companies targeting the same consumer segment have been suffering a long-term drop in sales was exemplified in the last chapter by Armando’s and Pablo’s disparate fortunes. To find an explanation for this state of affairs, we must turn an attentive eye toward a series of well-established informal relationships that govern people’s expectations and behavior in La Salada. Only once we have dissected the form and nature of the shadow presence of the state in the marketplace will we be able to understand the remarkable emergence of aspirations among La Salada’s actors. Three interrelated arguments allow us to understand the governance structure at La Salada. First, as the taxlike system clearly shows, the very nature of this governance structure lies in permitting illegal actions. The suspension of the enforcement of the law—as expressed, for instance, in not confiscating goods infringing official rules—does not impose prohibitions, but rather creates a sphere in which unlawful behaviors are permitted. Moreover, the expectation of permission is associated with the generalized expectation that the law will not be enforced. Second, because the governance structure is based on granting permission rather than on prohibition, the sanctions it imposes are essentially the economic costs of not taking advantage of extralegal opportunities. For instance, counterfeiting is permitted in exchange for an illegal fee called marca, and the consequence of not following the general rule—that is, not producing counterfeit goods—would be the economic cost of not taking advantage of this lucrative possibility. Third, both enforcing and not enforcing the law are possibilities that only state servants are capable of managing. In that sense, the suspension of the enforcement of the law establishes a relationship of social domination, within which state and governmental authorities permit certain unlawful behavior until, for whatever reason, they decide to cancel the permission and enforce the law properly. We might conclude, then, that manipulation of the enforcement of the law is at the core of La Salada’s governance structure: it is the mechanism through

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which authorities grant permission to infringe the law, which imposes economic costs on those who do not take advantage of such extralegal opportunities, and it establishes asymmetrical relationships. The ways in which entrepreneurs, vendors, cart-pullers, and buyers in La Salada talk about their future plans and wishes are closely intertwined with these three characteristics of the governance structure. An ethnographic examination of their aspirations and imaginaries of the future—from their inception through their development to their fulfillment or disappointment—should therefore be an ethnography of how official authorities channel people’s interests that collide with the law and how they manufacture obedience in the shadows. A thick description of the governance structure teaches us that aspirations in La Salada do not emerge in a vacuum; they are structurally coproduced by political and state authorities. We need to understand that a core feature of the governance structure at play in La Salada consists of granting permission by way of instilling the perception that some illegal acts will not be subject to the enforcement of the law. Once we have done so, we are able to grasp what I describe in the following chapters: the spread of powerful aspirations among entrepreneurs. Permission, seen as increasing possibilities of action, sets the conditions for the emergence of aspirations.

OBSERVATIONS OF THE LEGALITY-ILLEGALITY INTERFACE Sociological and political science scholarship addresses two interrelated but analytically different forms of “protection rackets”: protection provided either by the state or by mafia groups. In both cases, protection is delivered in exchange for resources. The first type of protection is identified with Charles Tilly (1985), the second with Diego Gambetta (1993). Tilly’s well-known argument refers to the historical interdependence between war-making and state-making. In Europe, powerholders offered to protect citizens from local and external violence in exchange for resources needed for war-making. This dynamic, consisting of manufacturing threats, offering protection, and extracting resources from the population, increased governments’ power and served to give them the monopoly on violence. While Tilly’s is a historical analysis of the origins of the state, Gambetta’s approach was

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developed in relation to states that are already more or less consolidated. In Gambetta’s understanding, protection is not primarily related to processes of state-making but to the formation of extralegal powers that usually confront the state. The latter happens when the state is unable to protect its citizens effectively or provide the trust needed for economic exchanges. In such cases, an extralegal player such as a mafia may assume the role of provider of protection. In an environment featuring widespread interpersonal distrust—southern Italy in Gambetta’s study—the fact of being protected acts as a lubricant for economic transactions. Overall, while protection in the literature on state-making is a mechanism that serves to increase shares of state power, protection in the literature inspired by Gambetta’s study indicates the weakness of the state: if the business of private protection is successful, it is at the expense of the state’s power to impose itself as a legitimate force (Chu 2000; Gambetta 1993:1; Varese 2001). Although most extant literature in this specific domain understands state protection of extralegal actors as corruption and a sign of increasing mafia power, there is a growing body of studies (Dewey 2017, 2018a, 2018b; Holland 2017; Snyder and Duran-Martinez 2009) pointing to a less-studied constellation: governments and state agencies capturing economic and other types of resources by way of trading the nonenforcement of the law as a particular form of protecting nonstate actors. Without neglecting the presence of corruption, these studies take the differentials of power and enforcement mechanisms seriously in order to better understand constellations of widespread illegality and the associated relations and alliances between politics, state agents, and nonstate actors (Dewey, Míguez, and Sain 2017). With the crucial and rather empirical question about whether these informal alliances undermine or strengthen state capacity as a backdrop, the studies mentioned above have started to dissect the varied ways in which state agencies enter into contact with actors operating outside the law.1 These studies mostly observe state practices and decisions at the local level and assume a disaggregated view of the state apparatus—that is, not as a monolithic entity (Migdal 1994). They examine how government actors and state agencies capture different types of resources through illegality. In his study on China, Alan Smart (1988) showed that corruption money does not necessarily mean benefits only for individual officials but also, in fact predominantly, for collective interests. Recent ethnographies on the state in Asian countries

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such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam (Baker and Milne 2015; Milne 2015; To 2015:244; Verbrugge 2015) point to similar relationships between state and extralegal actors. In these countries, monies extracted in ways that contradict state law are used to finance armed forces and civil servants; build offices; construct roads, schools, and wells; finance various farmers’ and women’s organizations; and cover the costs of communicating government policies on crime control, cultivation techniques, and health care, among other purposes. Finally, Holland (2015, 2017) has recently made the case that forbearance, or intentional nonenforcement of the law, for unlicensed street vendors in Bogotá, Colombia, and Santiago de Chile is strongly influenced by the expectation of political support, a situation that bears similarities to La Salada’s case.2 If we acknowledge the complexity of the relationships at play in La Salada, we cannot reduce it to a case of mere corruption. La Salada’s role in society suggests that this would be a rather narrow way to define it. The strength of this sweatshop-based economy, which continuously creates informal jobs, supplies low-cost garments, and keeps the economy moving, needs to be considered as a crucial component in politicians’ and other state agents’ calculations. At the same time, the interests of a host of market actors whose economic activities break official regulations cannot be overlooked. Entrepreneurs, for instance, may be more or less aware of which rules they are breaking, but they certainly know how to overcome particular obstacles and that certain actions do not incur punishment. In extant literature on informal or illegal marketplaces, this interface is clearly under-researched. With the notable exceptions of Goldstein (2016) and Erami and Keshavarzian (2015), scholars do not afford illegal state behaviors any significant role; they are seen to affect neither social relationships nor economic exchanges within the marketplace. As such, the interface between marketplaces operating outside the law and the state is often seen as a matter of police officers “turning a blind eye” (Humphrey and Skvirskaja 2009:65; Polese 2013) or as a “symbiotic alliance” (Alff 2015; Crăciun 2012; Czakó and Sik 1999; Gupta 1995; Nasritdinov 2006; Sik and Wallace 1999; Yükseker 2007). Overall, scholarship on marketplaces operating outside the law has not sufficiently examined the interfaces between market actors, the state, and politics, leaving unexplained cases such as La Salada and its role as the provider of a variety of politically useful resources.

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A closer examination of the governance structure in place at La Salada marketplace and in its economy at large reveals different interests at play at different levels of government (subnational and national). At the subnational level, the workings of La Salada’s economy are shaped by the clandestine connections between the market managers and municipal authorities on the one hand and various police agencies on the other. Internally, the governance is secured by the market managers, who hire a large private security staff and maintain their own personal—and quite extensive—informal networks of informants. At the national level, meanwhile, La Salada’s skyrocketing economic growth is fostered and shaped by shadowy connections with the national government. The types of exchanges facilitated by these clandestine connections are multiple, varying according to the interests of actors in key positions at the marketplace. At the subnational level, for instance, the linkages between police agencies, bodies of inspectors, and political authorities are nourished by a transfer of resources, for the most part hard cash, in exchange for a suspension of the enforcement of the law (Dewey 2017). At the same time, at the national level, state and nonstate actors are only partly linked by the transfer of financial resources, with the dominant links overwhelmingly provided by intangible, or nonmonetary, benefits. That is, what La Salada’s economy offers to political authorities are the invaluable possibilities of governing without major unemployment-related protests, of guaranteeing a constant supply of informal jobs, and of overseeing an ongoing increase in the consumption of clothing throughout the country. In return, La Salada’s economy has been able to fulfill its potential without major difficulties and with the explicit endorsement of the national authorities. Paraphrasing Fligstein (2001), we could assert that all these complex and entrenched relations and interests give shape to the architecture of the marketplace. Meanwhile, the impact of such informal institutional architecture on individuals is direct and powerful: it instills and fixes the perception that some illegal acts will not be subject to the enforcement of the law, opening a space for aspirations and projects. In that sense, state and political authorities perform in the exact opposite manner than that suggested by conceptualizations in terms of “weak state” or “brown areas” (O’Donnell 1993), in which a state is supposedly absent from or indifferent to people’s lives and economic activities. In Ingeniero Budge and in vast areas of the Conurbano, the state may be weak in terms of upholding the rule of law, but this state

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does not lack the ability to send vivid signals of its presence and provoke profound changes in people’s lives and visions of the future.

SECURITY FORCES AND THE TAXLIKE MARCA It was the Buenos Aires police who, unintentionally, gave me the idea to start a project on La Salada marketplace. While conducting research on stolen vehicles in Buenos Aires Province, I frequently heard them mention the marketplace. Time and time again, police officers, investigators, chiefs of internal affairs, and public servants in general would refer to La Salada when making allusions to its closest police station, just one kilometer away from where the marketplace facilities are located. But La Noria Bridge police station was not famous for the law-abiding behavior of its officers or their efforts in serving the community: instead, everyone was talking about its “goodwill.” Just like many other police stations spread throughout the Conurbano, the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Buenos Aires, La Noria Bridge had a price. This informal price was calculated on the basis of the illegal businesses managed by the station staff and, particularly, by the chief inspector. For instance, some police stations earn money from cocaine kitchens in exchange for illegal protection. Other police inspectors have particular moral sensitivities, refusing to take money from drug dealers and instead offering illegal protection to car lifters or chop shops. The types of illegal businesses controlled by police stations may vary, but in general the higher the number of obscure deals tied to the station, the higher the goodwill: the amount police inspectors have to informally pay in order to be officially appointed as head of the station. In some cases, the price of the station is low because the location, or even the surrounding population, does not allow dirty arrangements to be made. But many stations offer promising sources of income to the inspectors who want to access them. One such example is La Noria Bridge. This station, my interviewees repeated, was a gold mine: as well as the protection sold to paco (freebase cocaine) dealers, the proximity of the station to La Salada meant that it was perfectly placed to exploit sweatshop owners and producers infringing a variety of regulations. At the beginning of 2013 as I started the fieldwork, La Salada’s three biggest shed markets were already working as the main supply center to provide the whole country with low-cost garments. For fifteen

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years, the police, following a classic pattern of institutional behavior in Argentina (Dewey and Míguez 2017; Sain 2008, 2013), had been lucratively “taxing” the illegal production of garments. As the interviews with key informants show, a well-rooted and well-oiled system of resource extraction furnished at least ten official offices with hard cash. Through different means that I will describe later, illegal producers and consumers of garments, along with other market actors, would systematically pay cash to escape sanction for their illegal behavior. These payments, I would discover, were key to understanding a vital component of La Salada’s workings. Early on in my fieldwork, I became aware of a strange word that kept cropping up in conversations. In everyday encounters, stallholders, cart-pullers, sellers, warehouse owners, and other La Salada workers casually referred to marca, which translates literally as “brand.” Pablo, for instance, would say that he had to pay “the marca guy” (el de marca) and that this was a regular duty. Other sellers would tell me about daily encounters with “the marca guy” at their stalls, and producers would refer to marca as one of the costs of production. For months, however, I believed that marca was just another form of predatory behavior at work in La Salada, that it was simply one more out of thousands of tricks and scams people use on each other every day in this corner of the Conurbano. Finally, my eyes were opened to the reality of marca by Alejo, an experienced cart-puller. On a cold Saturday evening, I got him talking as he waited for La Salada to close so that he could transport garments back to the storage warehouses: “You have twelve ferias [market days] per month [three each week]. Sometimes you have nine, but basically twelve ferias. During these twelve ferias, all stalls [selling branded clothing] have to pay marca money. The money’s collected and shared: one part of the total goes to El Quico [a manager] and the other part goes to the marca guys. So, then, this money’s collected, shared, and no one messes with you [nadie te jode].” The word “marca,” it transpired, is used in several ways. Its more concrete meaning alludes to a brand logo: Adidas’s three stripes, for example, or the Nike swoosh. Moreover, marca is what some sweatshop producers “do”; that is, a synonym for counterfeiting. Putting a brand logo such as Adidas, Puma, Nike, or Disney on a piece of clothing produced in a sweatshop is “doing marca.” Marca, however, has also taken on an additional meaning: the informal fee Alejo referred to. Those

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who “do marca” are forced to regularly pay the marca fee. Finally, those who illegally collect the money are identified as marca collectors or, colloquially, the marca guys. On receipt of this information, and in light of a complete absence of reliable figures, I decided to count the stalls occupying the eighteen hectares of La Salada marketplace: if I was going to investigate this enormous informal tax system, I would first need to produce some reliable data. After months of calculations, I arrived at a figure of 7,822 stalls that were supplied by, according to a conservative estimate, 31,288 sweatshops.3 All the stalls share several key characteristics: they are open three times per week, they exclusively sell garments, and they are rented by entrepreneurs who run their own sweatshops spread throughout Greater Buenos Aires and the south of the city of Buenos Aires. The number of sweatshops is higher than the number of stalls because specialist sweatshops are required for different processes— those who rent stalls may have their own sweatshops, but these are rarely equipped to complete all stages of production in-house. Most of the stalls, around 5,000, are housed in so-called shed markets: large, purpose-built warehouses supplied with electricity and other services. The approximately 3,000 remaining stalls—basic wire-mesh structures with corrugated tin roofs—line the public streets around the sheds. My investigation also included gathering information about the distribution of the stalls selling marca and those selling noncounterfeit garments. Both inside and outside the sheds, between 40 percent and 60 percent of the stalls sell clothing with logos of well-known brands such as Adidas, Nike, Puma, and Disney. This means that around half the stalls at La Salada must pay marca, the fixed sum of money gathered by marca collectors as compensation for the illegal use of a brand logo. The system is such that each stall exhibiting merchandise with brand logos, regardless of the quality of the copy, must pay the taxlike marca money. Those selling unbranded garments are exempt from such payments. The tax is as flexible as the prevailing working relationships in the marketplace, with marca paid neither weekly nor monthly, but rather each time the stallholder exhibits branded garments on their rented stall. If on any occasion a stallholder fails to pay, they are entered into a list of debtors. According to my calculations, the total sum collected from both the shed and street markets together is US $771,955 each month.

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TABLE 2.1. Number of stalls and taxes collected at the market (sheds and streets) in

La Salada Number of stalls

Number of stalls selling “brands”

Amount of tax (ARSa)

Monthly tax collection (ARSa)

Monthly tax collection (USDa)

Red

1,102

440

150

793,440

145,578

Yellow

2,210

875

150

1,575,360

289,042

Green

1,254

512

200

1,228,800

225,456

Blue

171

69

100

82,800

15,191

Violet

170

72

100

86,400

15,852

Street

2,915

1,049

35

440,580

80,836

Total

7,822

3,017

–

4,207,380

771,955

Location Sheds

Source: author’s calculation based on an individual stall count and interviews conducted with stallholders from each market. a

ARS = Argentine pesos; USD = US dollars (calculated at the exchange rate of July 13, 2013)

While I was conducting fieldwork, I witnessed the marca collectors on their rounds. In the shed markets, the managers employ teams of dedicated collectors to patrol the aisles and return the money to them, whereas in the street markets the police collect money directly. This is an important difference between shed collectors and street collectors: whereas the money collected in the shed markets is centralized before it is allocated to different pockets outside the marketplace, street collectors are individual police officers from different stations who make a personal decision to take advantage of the illegality committed by sweatshop producers. I recall vividly my own experience of meeting a street collector. I was working at Pablo’s stall; his brother, Martín, was arranging the jackets hanging from the roof when he suddenly stopped. “Here comes the marca guy [el de marca],” he told me in a low voice and started looking for money in the belt around his waist. Seconds later, with a notebook in his hand, the collector greeted each of us. Martín had already prepared the fee that motivated the collector’s visit and, once the money had changed hands, the collector moved on to the next stall. Those few short moments were dominated by a vacuum that Pablo tried to fill with jokes and greetings. As the money was handed over,

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the only words exchanged were a quiet “thanks” followed by a hasty “bye.” All the bitter complaints that Pablo frequently voiced in our conversations disappeared. There were neither questions about why marca had to be paid, nor a warning regarding the offense (Martín and Pablo selling fake Adidas jackets). Nothing. Pablo knew that collecting money in this way was not appropriate, but he also knew that he should not be using brand logos. The collector, I could perfectly well imagine, knew that imposing a fee as a penalty for infringing trademark law was illegal. Both Pablo and the street collector were cheating, although the balance of power was heavily weighted in favor of the police officer: if Pablo complained or refused to pay, the officer could enforce the trademark law. In such a case, Pablo’s loss would be much higher than the sum of the marca fee. As the collector moved away, I noticed how easy they are to identify on account of their highly groomed appearance, something that was probably intentional in order to signal their presence. Inside the shed markets the situation is little different, although the appointed collectors are not police officers but trusted second-in-command brokers who report to the managers. Valeria used to be one such shed-market collector—we talked at length about her experiences. MATÍAS: Was the job difficult? VALERIA: No, we went and collected inside. Going through the

aisles, gathering the money. Kind of an easy job. MATÍAS: And . . . who are the people doing this job? VALERIA: Mostly women, there were a lot, we went and collected

for . . . say, Delitos y Estafas [the Crime and Fraud Agency], la Brigada de Mitre [the Mitre Police Service], Narcotráfico [the Antinarcotics Agency], la Distrital and the Departamental [District and Departmental Offices]. The [shed] market also gives money to the coach drivers, around twenty pesos, and pays for their breakfast. The managers of the shed markets always firmly denied the collection of money inside their facilities and put the blame on police officers “who come into the feria and collect.” When I told Valeria that shedmarket managers deny such practices, she immediately contradicted their version of events: “I don’t know what it’s like now, but Pepe [the manager] went to have lunch with Ordaz [a police chief ] every market

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day. You have no idea! Sometimes we had plastic bags full of cash, and then the members of the Police Service came to collect the money, and I joked with them, telling them that we were recording them. I didn’t like them because they took advantage of people.” The huge sums of money collected on market days pollinate other sectors of the local state; they are primarily used to finance political campaigns. “I remember it perfectly: with my brother we went to see Palacio [a manager in La Salada] and asked him for money for the campaign,” said Horacio, an influential politician who had previously collected money for political campaigns in the municipality bordering La Salada marketplace, Lomas de Zamora. His confession recalls Valeria’s list of the numerous official bodies that collected the money she had gathered while working as a marca collector at the marketplace. It is the same pattern of state behavior observed by Eaton when he explains that mayors in Buenos Aires Province are able to “derive substantial funds from the illicit conduct of police officers, funds that are useful in hard-fought and increasingly expensive political campaigns” (2008:19). Finally, it is worth mentioning that security forces other than the Police of Buenos Aires Province also capture resources, this time from buyers on their way to or from the marketplace. As explained above, La Salada marketplace nourishes extensive routes of commerce, serviced by more than two hundred long-distance buses arriving at the marketplace every week. The following excerpt is part of an interview with Charlie, a former chief of the National Gendarmerie and now chief of security at one of the shed markets. But it isn’t in anyone’s interest [that the security forces stop buses from accessing La Salada]! Nobody would agree. Because otherwise the circus is over. Look, it wouldn’t be convenient for any authority if buses didn’t come anymore . . . because they regularly leave an ovule [euphemism for a regular bribe]. If the business is over, we’re fucked. I take you and call you, “Stupid! [He imitates a senior police officer speaking with a junior officer who has stopped a bus] What are you doing? I told you, stop the buses from time to time; for every twenty, you stop one. If you take one hundred pesos from each passenger . . . with fifty passengers . . . you do the math!” It isn’t that they don’t check; they make arrangements for everything. Do you think that if I see a bus on the highway I don’t know it’s coming from La Salada?

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They even have the money ready! The passengers themselves say, “Guys, we should put the money there.”

THE POLITICS OF LA SALADA La Salada’s skyrocketing growth and expansion as a business model throughout the country also needs to be understood in terms of the tolerance and legitimation provided by political actors. The heavy involvement of politics was made plain to me—somewhat by accident—by Palacio, the shed-market manager who was asked for political donations. I had already met him several times before he invited me to his new office and knew what a difficult person he was to interview. Like Wilson, introduced at the beginning of this chapter, Palacio is a born politician, a master of rhetorical gymnastics who produces long, stylish answers that are conspicuously light on substance. I wondered if this invitation meant that he was finally ready to drop all the smoke and mirrors. It was not to be. I entered his new office on the otherwise unfinished second floor of the shed to find him, as usual, holding court, chatting animatedly with three other people I had never seen before. My disappointment, however, was short-lived when I found out their identities: Charlie, the ex-chief of the National Gendarmerie; Adrián, Palacio’s right-hand man; and Sebastián, personal advisor to Argentina’s powerful secretary of commerce. I soon grasped that this small group of people represented the pillars holding up La Salada’s economy and supporting the aspirations of those working there. Charlie, for instance, confirmed in a separate meeting that the police of Buenos Aires Province—as shown in the interview above—collect an illegal “tax” within the marketplace, and that the gendarmes stationed along the routes identify buses on their way to and from La Salada. Charlie was a valuable piece of the puzzle for Palacio as manager of a shed market, being one of those responsible for regulating the delicate relationships between different security forces. Adrián, meanwhile, was able to navigate the interface between La Salada’s economy and politics: despite openly working in an informal and illegal marketplace, he had been part of the retinue accompanying Argentina’s former president on an official visit to Angola aimed at promoting business between the two countries. Adrián wanted to sell illegally produced garments to Angolan companies. His inclusion in the delegation captured well Zolo’s “symbolic protection,” delivered by

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the political system in order to “satisfy a latent need for social protection and spread a gratifying sensation of order and security” (1992:43; cited by Loader 1997:1). In fact, the government’s stated intention at the time was to bring down the percentage of informal labor, yet here it was providing political legitimation to an economy submerged in illegality and informality. All this came about as part of an exchange facilitated through personal and clientelistic ties. The role of Sebastián, however, seemed even more intriguing. What could possibly be of interest to a secretary of commerce in an economic sector that contravenes all kinds of official regulations? “Do you know what the most important things are?” he asked me some time later. “First, as Moreno [Argentina’s former secretary of commerce] usually says, if it wasn’t for La Salada our people would walk around naked [nuestra gente andaría en pelotas]. That’s the first thing: that people can get dressed, that they don’t pay high prices. And second, to take care of this value chain. Have you seen such a great value chain?” Unlike the police forces, whose collection of bribes in the marketplace means that their illegal presence is both visible and clearly oriented toward the capture of economic resources, Sebastián’s interest was not in material resources, but rather in alternative, though no less important benefits. That the most disadvantaged segment of the population should gain access to clothing was his target: supporting a system to facilitate this end, illegal or not, meant garnering political support, enhancing governability, and winning elections. And this was one of the reasons why he found La Salada’s value chain so fascinating. At the local level, however, profiting from this economy adopted a more concrete shape. Wilson, the former high-ranking broker in one shed market and current advisor to the mayor of the municipality in which La Salada is located, recognized the value of the market for local politics. “In this district there are three hundred social organizations. All of them received bags with thirty pairs of shoes [from the government]. Brand new. Nike, Adidas, and so forth,” he said, and went on to explain: “Do you know where they came from? From La Salada. It’s called ‘Ropa para Todos’ [clothes for all].” This was the name given to a social program introduced by the national government aimed at providing emergency help to citizens, which was administered by community-based organizations. What Wilson told me shows the intricate market-political relationships: an official social program provided the population with clothing manufactured in sweatshops.

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As these interviewees suggest, the survival of La Salada is not the consequence only of corruption. The marketplace and surrounding economic activity also offer a wealth of invaluable resources facilitating political control, the strengthening of patronage networks, and help with addressing issues regarding administration of social programs. Political tolerance and legitimation, which in concrete terms means not enforcing labor and safety standards, ensure a certain level of informal job creation, as well as access to low-cost garments.

PERMISSION, ASPIRATION, AND DOMINATION A crucial advantage of ethnographic work lies in the possibility to see beyond the interview. In most of my encounters with entrepreneurs manufacturing counterfeit clothing, they complained about the taxlike marca payment and the collectors. Claims about the unjust character of such payments were commonplace. However, paradoxically, it was also the subject of complaints by the collectors and shed-market managers themselves. Valeria, the former marca collector, spoke unfavorably about her bosses and complained about police officers because they took advantage of entrepreneurs. An uncritical reading of these statements would lead us to a commonplace assumption: governance in La Salada should be understood as sheer extortion or as police misbehavior, a situation in which the entrepreneur’s agency is reduced to a minimum. Many hours spent with entrepreneurs at their stalls and in their homes allowed me to get a glimpse of their worlds beyond their words. A closer look at the ethnographic evidence presented above confirms that the complex and multifaceted governance structure present in La Salada entails forms of social domination that are without doubt beneficial to state and political authorities. However, we should not forget that domination is a social relationship—in this case, one in which law enforcement authorities decide not to enforce official regulations and by doing so create an informal space for negotiation. In such a relationship, authorities’ informal permission plays a key role. Therefore, if we are going to fully understand relationships of domination in La Salada, defined as “the probability that certain specific commands (or all commands) will be obeyed by a given group of persons” (Weber 1956), we must acknowledge entrepreneurs’ acceptance of commands and their

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motivations for doing so. All this does not mean excluding extortion or threats of violence as mechanisms for creating obedience; it points, however, to what we have seen in Pablo’s case: the source of accepting the rules of the game lies in the built-in mechanism of permission contained in the taxlike collection structure. The disposition to accept a set of informal rules originates in the advantageous aspect of such rules: acceptance of the rules of the game is generated by the expansion of possibilities for action, which is also the result of not perceiving law-enforcement-related consequences. As I show in the following chapters, this sui generis social space, where informal rules prevent the enforcement of the law, stimulates a generalized emergence of aspirations. Ultimately, acceptance and the related growth of aspirations are a bottom-up response that complements top-down governance structures in producing social order. Aspirations proliferate throughout the whole economy, expressed predominantly in seeing earnings, client numbers, and production increase, and in accessing new living standards. Such aspirations rely on the shared perception that the law will not be enforced, that actions contravening certain laws, such as labor regulations or trademark law, can be negotiated. On the street, this is not perceived as an individual but an institutional—and therefore generalized—state response to illegality. For sweatshop producers, clients, and managers, this perception has far-reaching effects: the certainty, gained from day-to-day experience and mutually constructed, that some laws play no decisive role opens fertile ground for creativity and means that projects involving unlawful actions are normalized and morally neutralized. Suddenly, in a social space riddled with hardship, personal projects become possible. We might also go so far as to say that this social space, liberated from the enforcement of certain laws, is the catalyst for aspirations that increasingly legitimize a whole range of activities, informal institutions, and practices. In La Salada, therefore, illegal behavior is not an individual feature resulting from poverty but the consequence of widespread aspirations that validate informal rules as guidelines for behavior. Aspirations in La Salada are coproduced and shaped by a series of informal institutions that constantly neutralize the rule of law. Thus, in the context of the marketplace, the events that endanger people’s lives—robberies, assaults, swindles, even contaminated food—are also what keep them alive: a complicated bundle of interests that keep the law at bay and create room for renewed aspiration.

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The emergence of aspirations in the context of this economy does not alter the terms of this social domination­—which clearly benefits state and political institutions—but actually strengthens it. Arising at the bottom of the social structure with the support of a set of informal institutions, such as the aforementioned taxlike marca system, these aspirations must be grasped as subjective beliefs that grant legitimacy to those performing as informal authorities. Future plans involving unlawful behaviors may be enacted in exchange for certain resources, financial or otherwise. It is an asymmetrical relationship, a constellation based on a concession made by the more powerful that unlawfully benefits the legally constituted authorities. Such asymmetry becomes evident in cases of conflict, or when the terms of the informal agreement change. On these occasions, the power gap becomes clear: if extralegal actors do not comply with the informal pact, police officers and political authorities might demand compliance with the agreement by way of informally signaling punishment, or even deciding that the law will be properly enforced (Dewey 2012, 2015, 2017). In other words, the asymmetry consists in the official authorities’ additional leeway for making decisions that benefit them: authorities have several options available through which to demand compliance with the illegal agreements, while those acting outside the law have only a few.

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CHAPTER 3

With God and the Devil

Sunset in La Salada. Three little girls, entrepreneurs’ daughters, are playing a game on top of a meter-high concrete platform. The workday is almost over. La Salada was open during the day and now, around five p.m., many cart-pullers are parking up their carts on the side of the main street, close to the river. The girls walk in line, going around in circles over the concrete platform. The game is simple: they sing “La-la-la-la” while walking one behind the other, until one shouts “Police!” Then all three quickly jump into one of the carts parked next to the platform and hide. Author’s field note

“In this marketplace you can work in two ways,” Micky explains, delighted as always to offer me his rather colorful analysis of the state of things at La Salada. You can, he says, “work on the right side or work on the bad side. Or you can work on the ‘intermediate’ side. Intermediate means that you work in the middle; you work with God and with the Devil. You know the bad guys and you know the good guys. So you can walk down the street calm as you like, ’cause no one’s gonna touch you.” To illustrate his point, he continues with a more concrete example: The other day I went to the sector where La Rivera [one of the shed markers] is, and I stood there for a while. In less than, let’s say, twenty-five minutes, I saw the same group of people robbing seven times in the same place! They went, robbed, went home, dropped off the stuff, and again, and again. Why do they do that? Because they’re the same guys: I know them, they get

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[i.e., pay to get] the zone liberated [from police surveillance] so they can steal in peace. It was half past seven [p.m.]. This is noman’s-land. Don’t go out, ’cause they’ll kill you. Micky glides through La Salada like a fish through water. He seems to know everyone, and everyone seems to know—and be pleased to see—him. We first met when he attended a meeting organized by the NGO that gave me access to the world of La Salada. Over time, I learned that Micky had good relationships to the shed-market managers and even closer ties to the Foros de Seguridad (Security Forums), a sort of civil society group whose stated aim was to provide information to the local police about public security concerns. In practice, these security forums work in the opposite direction: its members use their connections to police officers for private purposes. Micky also has daily contact with stallholders and cart-pullers, since his work is to keep stallholders’ bags of garments safe between market days. His warehouse enterprise offers the additional service of transporting the bags to the storage facilities and back to the stalls, a backbreaking task carried out by a small team of cart-pullers he keeps informally employed. Micky’s work exemplifies the significant impact of state presence in daily life at La Salada. He guards huge numbers of bags, many of them containing counterfeit garments. In order to avoid illegal police searches, which would lead to his clients’ bags being confiscated and essentially held to ransom, he regularly pays the police for nonenforcement. This demonstrates the complexity of the case: by paying rackets he is trying to avoid not a legal police search but an illegal one that in fact amounts to ransom, the situation that sweatshop producers usually experience. At the same time, Micky’s business relies on the police’s legal performance: if his clients cannot arrive safely at the marketplace, or their goods are stolen by thieves on the way to the warehouse, he loses money. The consequence of this is that Micky stimulates the sale of illegal police protection and, at the same time, he blames the police for security failures, pays for private security, and espouses a strong discourse about the need for legal order. Before concentrating on the phenomenon of aspirations in subsequent chapters, I first want to focus on the negative effects of the governance structure introduced in the previous chapter. If the norm is permission, whereby authorities allow the law to be broken in exchange for certain resources and thus encourage the expectation that

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FIGURE 3.1. Pamphlet distributed among residents living close to La Salada. Photo

by the author.

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the law will be not enforced, it not only benefits entrepreneurs with an interest in counterfeiting but also represents an opportunity for all kinds of illegal enterprises, many in direct opposition to entrepreneurs’ interests. As a result of these contradictory dynamics and interests, it is not surprising that the widespread perception of La Salada—as so vividly illustrated by Micky’s account—is of a “no-man’s-land,” a zone liberated from police surveillance where those enjoying some kind of illegal protection can kill you. Acknowledging the effects of state and politics’ presence in daily life at La Salada is crucial for two interrelated reasons. First, it calls into question a fundamental assumption underlying general analyses of the economy; namely, that in order for markets to function, a climate of confidence, optimism, and/or interpersonal trust that facilitates coordination is necessary. Second, by acknowledging the negative consequences of such governance structures, we can understand people’s practices and strategies to cope with, for instance, fear and uncertainty. In fact, only by observing such practices and strategies will we be able to grasp how, despite such an inhospitable environment for businesses, La Salada’s economy thrives. In what follows I describe the everyday social climate at La Salada, while in later chapters I examine how entrepreneurs and other workers overcome the social obstacles to achieving their aspirations. What the particular case of La Salada shows us is that the negative performance of the security forces and political authorities at different levels—municipal, provincial, national—creates an emotional climate of insecurity and lack of protection, the best expression of which is probably the description of the market as a “no-man’s-land.” Drawing on insightful scholarship on emotional climates (Barbalet 1995, 1998; Kemper and Collins 1990; Rivera 1992), I argue that this generalized social climate of insecurity, fear, and lack of protection is structurally conditioned by the way state and political authorities mediate social relationships in La Salada. An emotional atmosphere like the one we can observe in La Salada is not the result of developing a sudden collective attitude or a mob-like excitement but is a more lasting state, an atmosphere that “has to be understood in terms of the structure of the relations in which fear arises” (Barbalet 1995:18). In La Salada, it is clear that the dominant emotions of everyday life stem from social relationships that are structured by principles other than official laws and regulations. What Micky’s dirty connections with the police

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reveal, alongside other cases described in this chapter, is that selective enforcement, illegal protection, and authorities’ arbitrary behaviors establish an emotional climate marked by feelings of fear, insecurity, and distrust. To a certain extent, the fieldwork I conducted in La Salada supports recent social science accounts (Frevert 2017; Pasquetti 2013) demonstrating that law enforcement practices, far from being emotionally neutral acts, also markedly shape long-term emotional climates in society and foster their reproduction. In a socially fragmented environment in which incentives for collective action are continuously neutralized, La Salada workers experience a pervasive feeling of lack of protection, which is reaffirmed rather than alleviated every time they find their own solutions to deal with their hostile surroundings. As we shall see, the varied ways in which people make sense of others’ misfortune in the context of the marketplace and the widespread ideas about ensuring wider profit margins tend to reproduce indifference, isolation, and ambiguity (Rivera 1992:3). During the fieldwork, I was able to identify three cases that accurately describe three dimensions of the emotional climate that entrepreneurs, cart-pullers, warehouse owners, vendors, and others experience every day. First is victim blaming, a common strategy used by La Salada workers and visitors to make sense of thefts, frauds, and further misfortunes suffered by others in the marketplace. Interpreting a crime as being the fault of the victim is based on a logic that transforms the general problem of personal security into a problem that has to be solved individually. However, although La Salada workers might appear indifferent toward victims of crimes, it does not absolve the authorities—the police, the state, politicians—of responsibility for the general situation. The second dimension of La Salada’s emotional climate is illustrated by the frequency of fraudulent behaviors, even in the context of close relationships, which is derived from the simple fact that expecting nonenforcement stimulates illegal businesses and freerider behaviors. In the long run, the dynamic trust-fraud-disappointment that pervades social relationships becomes a significant source of interpersonal distrust. Finally, the third dimension is a moral ambiguity crystallized in the multiple definitions of counterfeiting practices and especially in marca, the brand tax described in the previous chapter. Taken together, these three elements—indifference, distrust, and ambiguity—are “experienced as external to the actor (as part of the

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environment), although the actor may feel he or she contributes to its [the environment’s] nature” (Rivera 1992:5). Overall, this emotional climate involves a series of interpersonal feelings that, as Barbalet (1995) asserts in cases of widespread fear, are significant in the formation and maintenance of political control. In view of the fact that market transactions nevertheless do take place in La Salada, chapter 8 examines a variety of personal strategies and self-taught practices developed by entrepreneurs through which they seek to manage aspirations in this hostile emotional climate.

THE MAKING OF INDIFFERENCE This week, La Salada is open on a Thursday, and I have just arrived at the marketplace. It is extraordinarily crowded; walking along the busy street, reduced to a narrow strip between long rows of stalls on each side, my progress is slow. It is a paradise for pickpockets. I am here to talk with Álvaro, a former spy and now chief of security at one of the shed markets. After a few minutes, I hear a woman’s desperate cry. Shouts, screams, and demands for money to be returned. Several men who had been gathered around a huge man taking bets from behind a small table take the woman by the arms, and she screams louder still. They move away. ÁLVARO: This is the game copita. Understand? It has nothing

to do with us. [Copita is the shell game; often, some audience members are shills, inciting the marks to place bets and then protecting the performer, even with violence, from anyone who loses.] MATÍAS: Would it be possible to stop them coming here? ÁLVARO: We, the people of the marketplace, can’t do anything. These guys [in the middle of the street] work for the police. You can’t stick your nose in there! I’m very sorry, but I can’t intervene. MATÍAS: Yes, I feel sorry; she seems to have lost a lot . . . ÁLVARO: Forty [people] fall into the trap every day. They lose six, seven, ten thousand [pesos]! There are about ten guys around the one with the ball. And you can’t do anything. Actually, you could do something, but you have to go to the top, to the very, very, very top.

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MATÍAS: It’s also surprising that people don’t know what this

thing is about. ÁLVARO: I get mad. How could they not know that, brother [qué no van a saber, papá]? You’ve got to be kidding me! Here, people fall into the trap forty times a day, and they’re not in the marketplace for the first time. They see easy money. MATÍAS: And what happens if you win some money by chance and you want to leave . . . ? ÁLVARO: They don’t let you go. Sometimes they get removed for two, three market days, but they come back. This is unstoppable, brother. Try to stop the paco [the circulation of freebase cocaine]—well, this is the same, you can’t stop it. People at the top could stop it. You get it? There’s a lot of money at play! MATÍAS: And you’re in charge of . . . the sidewalk . . . right? ÁLVARO: Yeah, the sidewalk. The street belongs to the police. You can’t stick your nose in there. Álvaro points to an imaginary line, one that only he knows, between the police-owned streets and the sidewalks under his control: “Here is the Gaza strip,” he says, laughing. In different ways, this event and Álvaro’s answers reveal the source of interpersonal indifference, and, finally, the vulnerability experienced by stallholders and other La Salada workers. Under these conditions, raising the issue of personal safety and continuously referencing the sacrifice made by stallholders comes as no surprise. The event exposes the totally changed role of the police and reveals that those who are actually protected are not the stallholders, buyers, and passersby, but the people committed to cheating them. The social constellation structured by police behavior is even more complex if we try to contemplate the bigger picture: stallholders and buyers also benefit from, or take advantage of, the nonenforcement of different laws and regulations. However, equally crucial for an understanding of people’s experiences in this environment is Álvaro’s allusion to who is responsible for the fraud. Once he makes clear that the police are illegally protecting fraudsters and criminal businesses, such as the paco trade in the whole area, he makes the victim responsible. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” replies Álvaro when I suggest that the victim might not know that the “game” was actually a scam. He points out that the victims are not new here, so they should know what goes on. In many interviews and informal conversations in which stallholders and other La Salada

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workers share their experiences and perceptions of insecurity, they provide answers similar to Álvaro’s. Without hesitation, they blame the authorities, especially the police forces, first. Nevertheless, a more subtle reference to the victim, or even to themselves as victims, is also always present: victims should know where they are. In other words, individuals in La Salada bear sole responsibility for their own safety. If a top-down perspective suggests that police forces are selectively enforcing the law, a bottom-up perspective lets us observe a profound privatization of public security that obliges stallholders and workers in general to know what goes on and to take care of themselves. In the course of the fieldwork, this idea that people in La Salada should be aware of the workings of the marketplace appeared in various ways. Valeria, the former marca collector who now “owns” several stalls mounted on the streets, says that stallholders should know that they have to pay the marca tax if they want to sell counterfeit goods. Emilio, a former “owner” of street stalls, maintains that everyone in the three shed markets should know that La Salada is full of shoplifting mechera gangs, that everyone sees these groups of women moving freely around the marketplace, and that no one does anything to stop them. Alejo, an experienced cart-puller working for the Urkupiña shed market, meanwhile, says that everyone should know that some cart-pullers might have a shadowy agreement with other criminals in which they allow the bags they are transporting to be stolen and afterward take a share of the loot. And Beatriz, Pablo’s mother, who is responsible for manufacturing and selling fake Adidas jackets, says that buyers should know that the pieces she sells are fakes. Because of the price, she asserts, “people should realize” that the jackets are not originals. We might come to think that, under these circumstances, fraud does not exist: there are only bad decisions made by fools, by people who do not know where they are. This shift, which consists in marking the victim as guilty, ultimately leads to indifference toward the misfortune of others. The aforementioned event, in which a woman takes the bait set by fraudsters and openly cries and shouts, is similar to Pablo’s robbery experience described in the introduction: in both cases, the many witnesses to the event do not react. No one says or does anything. However, interpersonal indifference, according to the cart-puller Alejo, usually goes hand in hand with an additional calculation that, in such a context, seems to be rational. Alluding to robberies targeting Bolivian stallholders, he asserts: “The thieves usually stole the fanny packs of Bolivians [buyers

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or stallholders] and then they run into the neighborhood. We don’t say anything. We know each other; they know who we are, and we know who they are. Everyone does their job. I don’t want them to kill me later because I said or did something.” Despite the specifics of Alejo’s case—that he knows who the thieves are because they live in the same neighborhood—he addresses an important general issue: he cannot foresee the consequences of reacting and perceives retaliation by the thieves to be a real possibility. In chapter 8, I examine how entrepreneurs deal with the fear of retaliation.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AND THE MAKING OF DISTRUST In a context of ambivalent expectations and moral ambiguity, actors do not simply take a passive role. If one side of the coin is represented by the completely changed role of the state and by political authorities producing a social atmosphere characterized by ambiguity, distrust, and lack of cooperation, then the other side of the coin is represented by a state that illegally permits lawbreaking behaviors and creates opportunities for illegal businesses. We can take the example of the informal money-collection system provided in the previous chapter as a form of shadow-state intervention that exhibits both sides of the coin. Although the replacement of laws against counterfeiting with the marca system creates a social climate of distrust and confusion, it also creates the robust perception that a wide range of illegal behaviors, usually deemed risky in other places, are possible and will not be penalized. Over time—as I was able to corroborate through everyday observations and conversations—behaviors in conflict with the law are naturalized: specific justifications neutralize moral concerns (Mackenzie 2014; Sykes and Matza 1957) and a variety of lawbreaking behaviors go unquestioned. In other words, insofar as the state and political authorities do not (legally) enforce the law, they create a social terrain that, based on the possibility of consequence-free lawbreaking, constantly stimulates creativity and innovation. In a social environment of this kind, illegality feeds the development of aspirations. In several interviews with sources ranging from a grassroots leader to the director of a Bolivian microcredit company, a dimension was brought to my attention that I had not yet considered: stallholders, sweatshop owners, vendors, warehouse owners, cart-pullers, and other

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workers are victims of police forces, inspectors, and politicians because they are forced to live in an environment permeated by danger and distrust; at the same time, they experience permanent tension between remaining trustworthy or taking advantage of situations at the expense of others. Because there are no formal contracts, there is a clear tendency toward victimizing other people working in the same economy. Soon after these interviews, I started observing people’s moral struggles—their reasons and strategies for how and why they knowingly and frequently take advantage of others—and noted situations characterized by distrust. As mentioned before, this social climate enables individuals to expect that laws will not be enforced and, therefore, to consider additional (illegal) possibilities of action. Overall, the fieldwork showed that governing La Salada’s economy means submerging individuals in a climate of distrust and personal insecurity (Pasquetti 2013, 2015), along with allowing them to infringe certain regulations. It is the permission of legal infractions that explains the robustness of the social expectations governing this economy: they are legitimate because they provide benefits to a wide range of actors. We can observe this dynamic by studying the cases of two cartpullers, who belong to the segment of workers at the very bottom of La Salada’s economy. Most of the cart-pullers I met during the fieldwork would recall tough stories from their pasts. When Alejo was around fifteen years old, he used to fight for money or bags of vegetables at the Central Market (Mercado Central Frutos de Buenos Aires). Later, he became a street vendor selling flowers and a drug user. “I used to get some money, but I spent it all on drugs. I was stoned all day long,” he told me one night while I worked alongside him pulling the cart. Daniel’s life, however, was more extreme: “I used to be involved in crime. Ten years ago, I was involved in crime. We used to be a gang, and we were armed: 9 mm, 38 mm, machine guns, everything. We robbed; we robbed stallholders from their trucks, and we took their goods. We didn’t take the vehicle, so we didn’t take their tool. We took it all; we sold it and everything was for drugs, for fun. You know?” Now, Alejo talks about his fights as though they were part of a remote past. La Salada, as he likes to say, changed him. The job is tough but stable, granting him access to goods and services that would have previously been unthinkable: flat-screen TVs, a new car, private school for his daughter, birthday celebrations in special locations, and so forth. In his everyday routine, he no longer needs to fight for money. His life changed again the day he got another job in La Salada as a shopper.

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The client is a businessperson who lives three hundred kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires in Rosario, the capital of Santa Fe Province. “The guy resells items in Rosario. He’s got something like a Saladita [a miniature La Salada],” explains Alejo. His boss sends descriptions of what he wants, and it is Alejo’s job to source it, scouring the stalls for the best match—an easy job for someone who knows every corner of the marketplace. Once he finds something interesting, he calls the boss, describes the garments, and confirms the purchase. The final stage of the operation is to pack the items into bags and load them onto a bus heading to Santa Fe. For his efforts, Alejo gets paid a good fixed sum of money that he receives regularly. One night, I was waiting with Alejo for another round with the cart when he made a significant confession. We were talking about inflation and the debts he had, and he commented: “When my contact in Rosario orders something, I go to the stallholders and try to bargain down the price. If they lower it, I promise to buy more. It depends on my boss, but I’ll keep buying if they offer me a good price. But, at the same time, I add one peso or two per item, so the price for my boss isn’t the stallholder’s price. I make the difference that way. And it’s impossible for my boss to find out.” Alejo takes advantage of the situation that his boss is far away and that all economic operations are unregistered. Daniel’s story is different. He does not have a second job; he is a cart-puller only. After years of serious involvement in criminal activities and drug addiction, he is now an active member of an evangelical church. He is happy, he says, because he is now equipped to resist the temptations present in the marketplace. One morning, after the cart-puller rush hour during which all the stallholders need their bags taken into the sheds ready for opening time, we sat down to rest on the street. Daniel pointed people out as they passed and serenely described their illicit activities as well as commenting on the strained social atmosphere at the marketplace. DANIEL: No one intervenes here if something happens. MATÍAS: And they [robbers, drug dealers] . . . do they know if

the police are coming? Daniel, who has some experience of giving money to the police in exchange for their inaction, says, “Everything is already settled.” And he adds, “For instance, the girls [in mechera gangs] come from the other

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side [of the marketplace] with stolen bags. They come with the bag and here you see a plain-clothed officer who says ‘Let me know what you’ve brought me.’ And they work together.” Daniel pauses. He looks first in one direction, then the other. He seems to want to say something. He has been talking about Jesus for the last three hours, trying to uncover the bad sides of La Salada. Finally, after two minutes of silence, he begins speaking in the hushed tones of a confession: “I won’t tell you that I’m not sometimes tempted to get involved again in that stuff. You know; to take a cart full of garments. Because the temptation’s there. I know, when I’ve got the cart, let’s say, I have thirty thousand pesos . . . and sometimes I’m very short of money. Temptation is always there!” MATÍAS: Who would you sell it to? DANIEL: Ok, let’s say I steal a cart of stuff that costs thirty-five

thousand pesos. Perhaps I make thirty out of it, perhaps twenty. I look for another marketplace a bit further away and sell the stuff there. Or you go to another stallholder. A lot of people do that. They look for a stallholder. MATÍAS: But I guess a lot of stallholders won’t accept it . . . Daniel shakes his head. He tries to explain again: “I rob a stallholder and no one knows who the stuff belongs to. The stallholder looks at the items, looks at the quality, that there’s nothing to know. He basically doesn’t know. And he buys it. Because he [the stallholder who was robbed] isn’t a family member or a friend.” MATÍAS: But he takes a risk . . . DANIEL: Yes, he takes a risk. He takes a risk. And?

Together with a lack of regulations—codes of conduct, customer service, consumer protection laws—this kind of statement also shows a surprising absence of state law enforcement in the horizon of possibilities: Daniel can imagine every detail of committing a robbery, with the exception of any state reaction to it. Moral dilemmas like the one facing Daniel are not unique to La Salada. In this marketplace, however, the way police forces and politics mediate in social relationships structures an emotional climate according to which theft or fraud acquire a particular meaning. This is because behaviors aiming to take advantage of

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opportunity at the expense of others tend to elicit no, or perhaps very weak, social condemnation. To cheat or steal, in other words, provokes a conflict only when the consequences of this behavior affect the business—for instance, if Alejo perceives that his boss is going to find out that he is cheating.

MORAL AMBIGUITY AND MARCA The moral dilemmas that characterize La Salada’s social climate are probably best exemplified by the phenomenon of marca described in the previous chapter. Around half the garment manufacturers in La Salada practice marca in their sweatshops (see table 2.1); that is, they reproduce—with more or less accuracy—logos of famous garment brands (Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Disney, etc.) and use them on their own items. The final product, as I will describe in more detail in chapter 8, is usually far from identical to the original version or, as is most often the case, has no equivalent at all among the collections produced by the labels themselves. What they usually share, nevertheless, is the reference to a brand. The manufacture of marca is relevant to three groups of actors. First, as I demonstrated earlier, it is subject to police officers’ interest. It motivates police intervention aimed not at enforcing the law but at performing something similar to extortion: producers who exhibit branded items on their stalls have to pay a fee if they want to avoid the illegal confiscation of their goods (that is, a punishment detached from any formal legal procedure). Moreover, it is important to recall that the taxlike system at play in La Salada reproduces the production of marca items instead of discouraging it. Secondly, sweatshop manufacturers are inclined to counterfeit branded items because their experience shows that they can increase sales. Beatriz, Pablo’s mother, confirmed this to me one evening at the family’s stall: “[A branded garment] is what you sell best, because if you sell plain [liso, without brand logos], you can’t shift anything [no se mueve nada],” she explained. Thirdly, there are the wholesale buyers. Such buyers ask Pablo for the price of the “Adidas” skirts and Pablo answers, adding that they are “the same ones worn by Las Leonas [the Lionesses, Argentina’s national women’s field hockey team].” The particularity of this phenomenon lies in its ambiguity. In general, both sellers and buyers ask

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for, observe, describe, and buy counterfeit products “as if ” the “Adidas” or “Gap” clothing manufactured at home by Pablo and others were genuine products. Sometimes, however, such as when Beatriz claims that her clients “should know that they [the ‘Adidas’ items] aren’t original ’cause of the price,” the illusion of trading original items seems to evaporate. This ambiguity, the lack of distinction between what is original and what is counterfeit, appears even in the course of a single statement. “For me,” declares Pablo assuredly, to manufacture “Adidas” isn’t wrong. I always say that it’s a source of income and, plus, there are people who can’t afford the [original jacket from] Adidas that costs 850 [pesos]. Some guy [chabón] with a basic salary, let’s say 15,000 or 12,000 [pesos], can’t buy anything. He’s got two kids, a home to support, food, and all the rest, but this guy also wants to wear something. Right? So, this guy comes to La Salada and buys his Adidas jacket. The paradox resides in Pablo, like his mother, assuming that buyers should know that the jackets are not original items, yet at the same time working with the idea that clients arrive at the marketplace looking for original products.1 These contradictions, ambiguities, laxities, or even confusions do not generate questions, arguments, or conflicts regarding the items’ degree of authenticity. The phenomenon operates at two levels at the same time, with actors operating “as if,” while admitting that the items are not genuine. During their interactions, however, buyers and manufacturers seem to agree that acting as if the items were original guarantees a shared imaginary: that the “Adidas” jackets or the Las Leonas skirts will allow them to be part of discourses restricted to those who possess original branded items—for instance, in the context of school or among soccer fans. Talking and exchanging opinions about counterfeit items as if they were genuine grants buyers and sellers an imaginary participation in future scenarios (Beckert 2016); that is, powerful fictions in which there is no distinction between original and counterfeit products and everyone has access to branded items. An illuminating example of acting as if certain products were original came about when I visited Alejo’s home. After telling me about some issues related to his job as a cart-puller, he eventually switched

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back to one of his favorite topics: soccer. It was during this conversation that he enthusiastically asked if I wanted to see his collection of Boca Juniors soccer shirts. Barely waiting for my response, he left me in the kitchen to chat with his wife and daughter before returning minutes later carrying a pile of shirts. “Look,” he announced to the three of us, “with this one we won the Libertadores [cup]!” Holding another shirt in the air, he continued: “And this is the one from the tourney last year. Do you see the number on the back? This is Riquelme’s shirt.” Alejo delighted in showing me his collection of soccer shirts, every one of which was counterfeit. Yet this fact did not feature at all in our conversation, and certainly did nothing to dim Alejo’s enjoyment of his hobby. It was difficult not to think that these counterfeit Boca Juniors soccer shirts allowed Alejo to participate in a broader web of meaning. These cheap versions of the otherwise very expensive shirts granted him access to new conversation topics and possibilities of sharing experiences with his interlocutors. That evening, the “problem” of counterfeiting was bracketed out and instead offered Alejo new possibilities of interaction. Overall, throughout these pages I have shown that the preconditions for commerce in La Salada are far removed from those described in the literature on legal markets. Fear, ambiguity, and distrust are deep-rooted features of everyday sociability in La Salada, elements that are ever-present and force individuals to engineer strategies that allow them to take advantage of commercial opportunities. Likewise, it is crucial to acknowledge that in addition to experiences such as fear, distrust, or confusion, the varied strategies employed to move forward also end up having significant emotional, physical, and material costs. In part III of the book, I provide a thorough examination of these strategies, which are developed by those who work at La Salada in response to their environment.

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CHAPTER 4

All I Want Is a Sweatshop

If modern economic rationalism is like the mechanism of a clock, someone must be there to wind it up. Werner Sombart

Jorge Palacio, the powerful co-owner of Punta Mogote shed market, swivels gently back and forth in his chair under the studio lights. The glamorous woman at his side is Marixa Balli, a former cumbia dancer turned fashion entrepreneur selling clothing in Palacio’s market. Across the desk is the popular host Chiche Gelblung, who has devoted a whole episode of his primetime television show to La Salada. He opens with an overview of the marketplace: “Before,” he says, “it was a place riddled with marginality and illegality, but now it is a serious place, and from an economic point of view, interesting.” After a few minutes, the presenter asks about the origins of the marketplace and Palacio replies that “the inventors [los inventores] of La Salada were forty-five Bolivian women twenty-five years ago, who started [selling] with a piece of cloth on the floor. In the middle of nowhere. . . . Today, they own the whole marketplace.” The presenter is swift in his response: “And now [the Bolivian women] are multimillionaires,” he states, seeking confirmation from his interviewee. Palacio continues to swivel in his chair. He smiles: “Yes, I believe they are millionaires.”1 The narrative—of rags-to-riches heroes in the vein of Horatio Alger—is everywhere; it is the recurring element underpinning the entire interview. From the very beginning of the show, Palacio sets in motion the myth of La Salada’s origin—a myth that, as I will show, seeks to represent the victorious trajectory of both the marketplace

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and the people working there. The journey begins by alluding to a supposed fragility—poor migrant women struggling to survive “in the middle of nowhere”—and culminates in the triumph of the will to work. These Bolivian women—a stigmatized group in Argentina— simply begin trading garments “with a piece of cloth on the floor.” Some years later, these same women became shareholders (Palacio uses financial terminology) and ultimately millionaires. The myth, perpetuated by Palacio and many others (Benencia and Canevaro 2017; Forment 2015; Gago 2012; Girón 2017; Hacher 2011), also says that these women fought and won against the powerful police force of Buenos Aires Province. Twenty-five years after the Bolivian women started what was to become La Salada, the TV camera pans over pieces from Balli’s clothing range. Meanwhile, the presenter asks his famous guest, now ostensibly a fashion entrepreneur, what her rather strange brand name means. Balli’s answer is clear: “a person with iron mettle who hates losing.” The rest of the interview with Palacio and Balli combines a string of exorbitant figures—the number of stalls available in La Salada, for instance, or the length of entrepreneurs’ workdays in their sweatshops—with a remarkable emphasis on success as something accessible to everyone on the condition that they work hard and accept competition. It does not matter that the figures mentioned are as unbelievable as they are untrue: everything serves to construct an imaginary world of abundance, a world far removed from scarcity, impossibility, and abjection. Palacio feels at ease in the interview because for once the presenter neglects to ask about the counterfeiting of famous brands, usually a favored topic when journalists come to talk about La Salada. The ever-smiling Palacio is then free to explain the secret of the Conurbano model of capitalism: Here [in Argentina] we need a system of rewards and punishments, work paid by the piece. This is the only way to compete successfully. It’s what people do in La Salada. I myself am a product of this. I was able to get my shoe factory by working eighteen hours per day. I worked this way [he pretends to eat]. I ate and worked at the same time. Because we had to rush, not lose time. I was a slave of my own ambition. I wanted a shoe factory. And that’s what everyone does in La Salada. We’re a true productive revolution. We have a solution for the question about how to produce, compete, and make money.

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A few days after the television program I interviewed Palacio in his office. He was overjoyed at the public reaction to his appearance. Holding a tablet computer, he told me to come closer to read the messages that were being posted incessantly to his Facebook account. For about half an hour, I simply sat and listened to Palacio reading out people’s messages: “Hello Jorge, I’d like to have an interview with you to start selling [in La Salada].” “Hi Jorge, I saw you on the TV show, I’d like to have a stall at La Salada. I don’t know how to do that.” “Hello Jorge, I congratulate you on the television program. I need to talk with you.” “Hello Jorge, I congratulate you for what you said in the program. I would need to talk to you. I’m sixty years old and I haven’t had a job since last year. I can work in many ways with the garments. Thank you.” “Hi Jorge, good morning. I’d like to sell and have a stall in La Salada. How should I proceed? Thank you very much.” “Hello Jorge, I’m Eusebio from Santa Fe. I congratulate you for that tenacious spirit. Not only because you did it, but because you keep trying every day with the spirit of a fighter. Keep going and God bless you.” To hear Palacio reading these messages was to verify that the narrative he was disseminating had concrete effects: hundreds of would-be entrepreneurs wrote to him seeking information or help in order to become businesspeople in the garment industry. Of course, Palacio’s performances on radio or television programs do not explain the massive proliferation of “petty capitalists” (Smart and Smart 2005) devoted to the garment business in the Conurbano. No one would suggest that thousands of people make up their minds to become entrepreneurs overnight because of Palacio. But he constantly disseminates, through the press (see, for example, La Nación 2007, 2009, 2011; Revista Anfibia n.d.; 24con 2010), in documentaries (D’Angiolillo 2010), or by taking advantage of academic curiosity, a narrative that provides imaginary pieces of a better future for those seeking new perspectives. Palacio, who embodies the success and freedom of the entrepreneur, offers an interpretive frame that serves to “structure situations through imaginaries of future states of the world and of causal relations”

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(Beckert 2016:9). By doing what Van Lente and Rip call “expectation work” (1998:222), Palacio becomes the spokesperson for an economic sector that infringes all kinds of official regulations—one that also, rather paradoxically, appears to be an effective way to leave rags behind and enter the world of riches. Alongside other, less well-known managers in La Salada, Palacio assumes as his everyday task the public legitimization of an economy submerged in informality and illegality; the managers assume as part of their job the incessant public contestation of the formal garment market and labor laws. According to this narrative, companies abuse people by setting excessive prices and the state encourages laziness and supports those who do not want to work or compete. On the other hand, Palacio always portrays himself as active, as constantly doing something: he is a man who works and does not waste time talking, as politicians do. But along with that criticism, another narrative appears: the promise of a better future freed from obligations for all who are willing to work hard. His properties in the countryside and houses and offices in Puerto Madero, the exclusive neighborhood of waterfront skyscrapers in Buenos Aires City, are proof that being successful is only a matter of being determined, hardworking, and patient.

WAITING FOR THE FUTURE The literature on ethnic economies (Bonacich 1993; Light and Bonacich 1991) and economic enclaves (Portes and Bach 1985; Portes and Zhou 1992; Wilson and Portes 1980) have significantly expanded our knowledge about ethnic entrepreneurship—a defining feature of La Salada—as well as about the causes and consequences of becoming self-employed. While racial exclusion and discrimination act as a barrier for immigrants who want to compete with natives doing mainstream business (Bonacich 1973; Mata and Pendakur 1999), market development and access to ownership may expand consumer markets and, therefore, offer immigrants the opportunity to carve out new business niches (Aldrich and Waldinger 1990). Extant sociological research also highlights that different levels of language management may influence the decision to become self-employed (Dávila and Mora 2004) and that the social structure of ethnic communities provides mechanisms that connect associations with individuals. A good example of such connections is provided by the rotating credit

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associations, which offer assistance to entrepreneurs seeking credit. These social structures help entrepreneurs to survive economically and reinforce community ties. The “bounded solidarity” and the “enforceable trust” described by Portes and Sensenbrenner (1993) serve to signal group membership and levels of prestige in the context of social networks. Widespread aspirations as cognitions of a projected future and as powerful forces influencing decisions of would-be entrepreneurs have rarely been scrutinized in a social environment such as the economy in La Salada. In the following analysis I heed the call to incorporate the future—in the form of projects, aspirations, and hopes (Appadurai 2013; Beckert 2016; Emirbayer and Mische 1998; Fischer 2014; IslasLópez 2013; Mische 2009)—into sociological research with the aim of explaining the decision to become a garment entrepreneur in the context of La Salada. If the goal of economic success and freedom, supported by narratives of hard work, patience, and courage, acts as the ultimate goal of the garment economy, then “social networks as extending into the imagined future” (Mische 2009:698) indicate different types of potential resources, actions that need to be taken, and involvements that are necessary in relation to an entrepreneur’s role. Based on seven months of fieldwork in sweatshops, in-depth interviews with workers, and intensive engagement with secondary literature, my analysis takes as a point of departure the ambition of owning a sweatshop—that is, the aspiration to be an entrepreneur—and analyzes how different actors put this objective into practice. I examine different trajectories and argue that becoming an entrepreneur in the context of La Salada’s economy, an objective that holds the promise of supposed autonomy and economic progress, implies developing a capacity as basic as it is difficult in La Salada’s extremely hostile environment: the disposition to wait strategically. To wait strategically does not mean to have clear goals from the very beginning, but the acknowledgment that certain conditions—such as sufficient capital and specific knowledge and skills—have not yet been met and that their acquisition needs time. In the language of the interviewees, it is necessary to “pay your dues.” The evidence shows that experiencing the desire to become an entrepreneur is a goal discovered over time via the experience of working in the market. In that sense, strategic waiting is active waiting; it is time devoted to learning the tricks of the trade and acquiring specific skills related to key issues such as raising capital, navigating the rules governing subcontracting schemes, and mastering

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working techniques. It is important to note that defining the experience of the interviewees as “waiting time,” far from being an externally imposed conceptualization, results from a temporal signalization in the workers’ own discourse, efforts aimed at making clear that the current stage would sooner or later come to an end. Their inability to see themselves working indefinitely as seamsters or cutters is what turns their experience of time into waiting time. As a number of authors (Bender and Greenwald 2003; Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000; Esbenshade 2004; Green 1997; Montero and Arcos 2017) have highlighted, the production process in the garment industry, including in its informal and illegal branches, is highly complex. A way to observe such complexity is by acknowledging the different entrepreneurial profiles and types of sweatshops within the sector. In this chapter, the reader will find that the main protagonists, Javi and César—both being what the specialized literature would describe as exploited migrants working underground in the sweatshop-based garment economy—aspire to become a specific type of entrepreneur: the owner of a sweatshop devoted to supplying outsourcing services like sewing or button making to other types of sweatshops. The latter, having a different position in the market for garments, are sweatshops led by entrepreneurs who concentrate the decisions related to the production of garment pieces and outsource some tasks such as the aforementioned sewing or button making. Although both types of sweatshops need to be thoroughly connected, what sets them apart is that while Javi and César’s work is only about producing the right quality of outsourced services and delivering on time, in the second type of sweatshops entrepreneurs are close to end consumers and, therefore, are concerned with design issues. Different positions in the market for garments also mean divergent relationships with La Salada marketplace. Pablo, Leo, and Felipe, the protagonists of previous chapters, are in the marketplace three times per week selling garments, and they embody a type of garment entrepreneur concerned with decisions about the commercialization of their production. Moreover, their decisions, some of them pertaining to design, imply certain consequences in terms of the acquisition of knowledge, investment in infrastructure, and the organization of work. Meanwhile, Javi and César do not participate directly in La Salada marketplace. They work upstream in the market, in the segment composed of sweatshops specializing in the delivery of specific services to other sweatshops, like those managed by Pablo, Leo, or

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Felipe, which are located downstream. However, these segments, in which we observe distinctive types of sweatshops as well as particular entrepreneurial profiles, are not closed worlds. In fact, the trajectories of entrepreneurs managing sweatshops located downstream (i.e., those in La Salada marketplace) began upstream in the market, where they started out as simple workers like Javi and César. As such—and this is a point worth stressing—we can observe a continuity between these two types of sweatshops, both at the level of work processes and dependencies and in terms of entrepreneurs’ trajectories. That is, sweatshops located downstream in La Salada depend on upstream sweatshops specialized in delivering services on time, and sweatshop owners like Pablo and Leo originally started out as sweatshop workers, experiencing the same difficulties and strategic waiting times described by Javi and César in this chapter. Thus, the situations of these different characters represent different stages along a common trajectory among the entrepreneurs of La Salada, and this and the following chapters should therefore be seen as a continuum. Finally, an additional reason for understanding this period as strategic waiting is that it brings to the fore the agency of these workers, who belong to an industrial sector in which they are usually described as mere cogs in a capitalist machine. My analysis is not intended to downplay the serious structural constraints on action, such as subcontracting networks or pervasive informality; however, the ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted form a privileged window through which we can observe workers confronting, twisting, and recreating powerful social forces. Javi and César are representative of a segment of the garment industry—workers paid by the piece—who are hard to interview, not only because they occupy a social space riddled with interpersonal distrust, but also because they usually work long hours and do not have time for interviews. Their waiting corresponds to a period during which being an entrepreneur is the ultimate goal, an extended moment in which people like Javi or César try to arrange the means to achieve that end.

STRATEGIC WAITING Those who go to La Salada marketplace and rent a stall in order to sell garments are entrepreneurs who made the decision not only to manage the entire production process themselves but also to make

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incursions into the fashion business. In their sweatshops, they make decisions about the upcoming collections and the different tasks that need to be accomplished in order to produce them, such as purchasing fabric, bargaining with providers, and a series of operations aimed at transforming standard pieces of clothing into fashion items. However, core sections of the workflow managed by these entrepreneurs, identified in the literature as “independent” (Montero 2011), rely heavily on other types of sweatshops located upstream in the market. These are not directly present in La Salada marketplace: they are in the business of outsourcing, providing specific services such as sewing, cutting, or buttonhole-making to the independent sweatshops. Although the two types of sweatshops mainly organize work processes in two different ways, the data collected during the fieldwork reveals the common pattern of behavior mentioned earlier: entrepreneurs currently selling their production in La Salada marketplace previously worked as informal employees in sweatshops offering outsourcing services. If the trajectories of all the entrepreneurs I interviewed share something, it is that at the beginning, when they are on their way to becoming entrepreneurs, they experience a period understood as a “not yet”; a time in which the need for waiting strategically prevails as the necessary preparation for becoming an entrepreneur. It was Javi who helped me to understand what other interviewees like Pablo repeated to me again and again: that this “not yet” should be understood as strategic waiting time. My conversations with Pablo and his family often came back to the problem of disastrous working conditions in sweatshops, endless working hours, poor salaries, and abuses of power. But while I spoke of “bad working conditions” or exploitation, they downplayed the problem. Everything “depends on how you take it,” because it also “serves to learn,” and what you know now is “thanks to this time,” they argued. Or, as they often repeated, it was simply “paying your dues.” Waiting, then, is a phase that precedes the final stage of becoming an entrepreneur. When I met Javi, he already had twelve years of work in sweatshops under his belt, and I wanted to know his opinion. It was not so much about knowing whether he believed that there was exploitation in sweatshops, but whether people usually attach any specific meaning to the time spent working as employees in sweatshops—a period that some describe as pure exploitation and others, like Pablo, as a time for learning. Javi clarified: “But there are rarely people who escape [quickly]! There are people who stay because they don’t know what

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to do, so they hold on. They know that it’s very little [what they earn]; they know that they’re being exploited; it’s in their mind. And they’ll take [the job], grab a machine and only once they’ve learned, they say ciao! They learn and there’s a moment that they grab their stuff and, yes, they quit, pow! They go! Because you already learned, you understand?” This strategic waiting, in many cases experienced as the only option, is still present in cases such as Leo’s or even Felipe’s, entrepreneurs who had different types of resources available—knowledge, money, social relations—that allowed them to shorten their waiting and preparation time. Thanks to relatives who lent them machines or means of transport, to their previous experience as entrepreneurs or vendors, or to their partners who already possessed know-how about dressmaking, they were able to quickly enter the market: to organize production, rent a stall, and find buyers. However, becoming an entrepreneur is usually a project to be fulfilled in the medium or long term and a project whose contours are constantly being respecified while working in the garment market. According to interviewees’ accounts, waiting time is a period in which some social relationships are put on hold, especially relations with family left behind in their hometowns (there are usually expectations that the absence will be temporary), and a time in which those family ties are altered. There is no doubt that this “not yet” refers to the same barrier to entry found in practically any market: the acquisition of knowledge, the lack of capital, and the need to acquire certain skills can delay or directly prevent participation in many markets. Nevertheless, the particularity of this “not yet” in the context of La Salada and in other extralegal economies in general is that it is experienced in a social environment characterized by lack of transparency in a broad sense: people need to make sense of everyday life under conditions that impose significant practical problems. Thus, this “not yet” refers to a waiting time in which sweatshop workers deploy strategies and develop practices without the support of or reference to official regulations, requirements, or training programs that set up expectations. Working “outside the law” while awaiting the moment of being an independent entrepreneur is much more than a problem of breaking the law; it is an economic modality that imposes working conditions regulated by extralegal structures, high levels of vulnerability and uncertainty, and unfair forms of competition. In part, the notion of strategic waiting is based on the observation that distance from legality, a defining feature of the sweatshop-based

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economy, can paradoxically offer additional room for exploiting possibilities, for the use of extralegal business opportunities, and for carving out market niches. Javi and César’s waiting, which I will describe below, can be contrasted with Auyero’s (2011) description of Milagros, a migrant recipient of social assistance who spends long hours waiting in state agencies for the delivery of her personal identification. While she experiences a subordination that is “created and re-created through innumerable acts of waiting” (24), the result of both state agents’ decisions and compliance with formal procedures, Javi and César’s experience of subordination does not directly relate to state actions but can also transform over time: Javi and César can improve their respective rooms for decision, in the sense of less dependency and greater margins of action (Clegg 1975:49). Milagros’s waiting finds its origin in state actions, while Javi and César’s originates in their lack of knowledge, power, and skills. Milagros’s is a passive waiting—she cannot speed up the bureaucracy—while Javi and César’s represents an active form of waiting. This comparison between modes of waiting is not meant to suggest that subordination to the state always entails passive waiting—an idea that has been contradicted by scholarship on hope, aspirations, and futurity (Appadurai 2013; Beckert 2016; Fischer 2014; Hage 2016; Miyazaki 2006; Miyazaki and Swedberg 2017) and classic works on social movements (Della Porta 2006; Tarrow 2015; Tilly 2003). However, it reminds us that informality and illegality are spaces dominated by ambiguity, doubt, and uncertainty that nevertheless may stimulate innovation and lead to creative behaviors. Indeed, it is not surprising that Merton (1963) argued that innovation is a divergent mode of behavior that should be understood as the rejection of institutional means for the achievement of cultural goals. Merton’s innovation, commonly associated with criminal behavior, even acknowledges the possibility that nonconforming behaviors become socially legitimate ways of proceeding because they meet the overarching cultural goal of “being successful.” We will see that sweatshop workers like Javi and César, who have not yet become entrepreneurs, are “waiting their turn” while developing strategies in the interstices of powerful forces such as uncontrolled subcontracting or mafia networks. But we will also see that the deployment of such creative strategies eventually tends to legitimize existing structures of domination. One day, Javi or César will become entrepreneurs and, for instance, opt for subcontracting as a preferred form of managing the business. Here, Mische’s words make sense as she clarifies that “aspirations are strongly conditioned by one’s

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position in a field, which in turn is determined by the objective structure of social relations as well as by the dispositions and competences internalized during one’s early experiences” (2009:696). The active attitude of strategic waiting seems to describe well Javi and César’s approach to their work circumstances, especially if we contrast it with a more passive type of waiting. In Gabriel Marcel’s work (2010), a distinction is drawn between two forms of waiting that originate in two different dispositions or attitudes: desire and hope. While desire tends to be impatient and does not tolerate delays, hope lends itself more easily to waiting. The reasons for this difference seem to lie in the perception of future outcomes. The passive waiting associated with hope rests on a general confidence, or even indifference, regarding the outcome of certain events. As Janeja and Bandak (2018) assert, in a situation of passive waiting, “one is capable of biding time, and awaiting the anticipated outcome more or less patiently, without necessarily being particularly anxious about the outcome.” Meanwhile, the active waiting associated with desire does not rely on a general confidence but on a tension that invokes the need to act. Active waiting, in this case, is the same as strategic waiting. Because outcomes anticipated by desire are not secured, people like Javi and César are forced to try to secure them. Javi and César’s waiting time does not yet rest on confidence in the result. Their aspirations create a constant tension that leads them to continuously make calculations about potential profit and projections about future business constellations. Each of them has expectations and must make decisions under conditions of uncertainty (Beckert 2003), an unavoidable situation that forces them to develop strategies such as mobilizing social relationships and making risky decisions. But the strategic nature of waiting also refers to Javi and César’s ability to project future events, imaginative activities that they undertake in their daily interactions aimed at “surveying the future in terms of multiple possibilities” (Mische 2009:696). As I will show, this capacity also includes being able to project themselves as workers—and to make decisions—in the context of social networks, as well as the ability to visualize the consequences of imagined causal relationships (Appadurai 2013; Mische 2014). These “fictional expectations” (Beckert 2016) are an important component of this strategic modality of waiting because they not only guide today’s practices but also dictate the rhythm of the act of waiting: these imagined future constellations indicate if the aspiration to become an entrepreneur is a distant project, if it is actually

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going to materialize, or whether and which intermediate tasks need to be accomplished first.

THE JOB MARKET I first met Javi and César in a gigantic open-air informal labor market in the south of Buenos Aires City. Both men were trying to find a manufacturer interested in their skills making buttonholes and cutting fabric. I, on the other hand, was following up a piece of information I got in La Salada, according to which this market, working in broad daylight and potentially under the gaze of any state authority, appears twice a week on the sidewalks surrounding a nondescript crossroads. The market supplies the workforce for a great majority of sweatshops located in the metropolitan area, and while it is certainly not the only source of ready workers, it is certainly the most accessible. There is probably no more efficient way for entrepreneurs to contract buttonhole makers, fabric cutters, ironers, seamsters, or assistants. I had been instructed to go to Bajo Flores, almost at the jurisdictional border between the city of Buenos Aires and the Conurbano Bonaerense. I set out early—it was a Monday morning in winter, and when I arrived, the street corners where the open-air labor market should be were dark and deserted. But the quiet was not to last. If the market has a defining feature, it is the particular way it emerges: like a flash mob, a bustling market appears from nowhere in no time at all. All of a sudden, people started arriving en masse, positioning themselves in what seemed to be predefined places. Young men sat in long rows along the sidewalk with their backs to the houses, some in groups, some alone. A few meters away, at the four corners formed by the junction of two wide avenues, groups of older men—perhaps in their forties or fifties—congregated, chatting animatedly, drinking coffee and greeting each new arrival to the group. It seemed as though they already knew each other. Within half an hour, the crossroads contained three or four hundred people; I was told later that the number decreases toward the end of the week. The crowd was divided into two large groups: the sweatshop-owning manufacturers located upstream in the market, whose work consists in supplying products to stalls located in La Salada and other selling points; and the workers with various specializations. The manufacturers were easy to identify. Their movements suggested a certain ease in

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their environment, and their interactions with one another invited the assumption that they knew each other from elsewhere. These experienced Korean, Chinese, and Bolivian manufacturers walked along the lines of workers, observing, asking questions about specialization and experience, and negotiating prices. After half an hour, workers and manufacturers were still arriving, the former by foot and the latter in vehicles that they parked nearby. Many of these vans, I observed later, were used to transport workers to the sweatshops. A thin man wearing a brown leather jacket and crumpled jeans, probably Korean, is looking for workers. He has just arrived and seems to know some Bolivians grouped together on one of the corners. “Does he cut [fabric]?” the thin man asks the group. Javi, my first interviewee, later explained to me that members of the Bolivian community usually work as brokers, identifying workers and facilitating the supply of a workforce to well-established Korean sweatshop manufacturers. Once the latter find the type of worker they are looking for, the bargaining starts. Crucial factors will be if the young man has experience, if he charges by the hour or by piece, if he is available for the required time, and so forth. I was expecting a quick negotiation, but I was wrong. Groups of Korean, Chinese, and Bolivian manufacturers stay for hours walking up and down the streets, as though they can never quite find what they are looking for. I watch a Korean woman approach the workers, announcing loudly that she is looking for an assistant. Someone seems to be interested. “How much do you charge?” she asks. “Two-fifty,” comes the reply. “Two-thirty,” she cuts back instantly. Out of the group, another voice, indignant: “The regular price is twoeighty!” After a brief negotiation, the woman walks to a van and opens the back door. Her new assistant climbs in and, finding no provision for passengers, sits on the floor. Javi will tell me that workers usually stay one, two, or three weeks at a sweatshop. They work, eat, and sleep in the same place, never leaving the building for the whole duration of the “contract.”

A WIDESPREAD ASPIRATION: RUNNING A SWEATSHOP The informal job market previously described is one of the ways for people like Javi and César to enter into the garment business. The barriers to accessing this market are not particularly high. In general,

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access is gained by getting basic information about the functioning of the job market through relatives or friends and, once there, getting a job as an assistant, as Javi and César did several years ago. As I will point out in detail later, a different way to get a job in a sweatshop is through kinship networks, as did Mónica, another of my interviewees. She was recruited in Bolivia, where she was persuaded that she could earn more money by working as a seamster in a sweatshop in Buenos Aires. Convinced, she decided to migrate clandestinely. What is important to highlight for the moment is that these are the two typical ways of beginning a career that culminates in becoming an entrepreneur in charge of a sweatshop. Examining workers’ first steps in the garment business, along with their emergent aspirations, is crucial if we want to get a better grasp of the actor I describe in the following chapters: the La Salada entrepreneur, adding value to the garment business through design—in many cases through counterfeiting—and directly commercializing their production. Javi told me his story and his future plans while sitting on the sidewalk waiting for a job; the open-air informal employment market was reaching its end, and it seemed that, this time at least, Javi was not going to be hired. He told me that he had been unemployed in his native province when he was persuaded to migrate after observing his cousins, who traveled frequently to Buenos Aires and returned to Jujuy “with money.” Javi remembers that his cousins “bought cars, their house, and had a shop” and that he “wanted to do the same.” For that reason, he left everything and went to Buenos Aires. He was eighteen years old. After twelve years spent working intensively in sweatshops, first as an assistant, then as a seamster, and finally as an ironer, Javi feels that the time to have his own sweatshop is coming. When asked about his prospects and what he would like to do, he clarifies: Now I want to set up a sweatshop, I want to work [as a manufacturer]. The problem is that money doesn’t last! Before I could save, but now, if I have the money, I spend it on silly things, going from one place to another. And when I have nothing left, I regret it. But I have to work. I think, look, now I’m thirty years old, and until I’m forty I think I’ll be able to work pretty well. But I want to be able to say, I have my sweatshop! Do you understand? To earn a bit more and to buy a house. I don’t know— even if it’s in the shantytown. To live there, to not have to pay

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rent and not be worried . . . that I can’t make ends meet, that there’s no money and all those things. Do you understand? What struck me during the interviews was the fact that the aspiration to have a sweatshop is usually linked to an attitude of admiration for senior entrepreneurs, commonly people who have more experience and fulfill the role of teachers. César, for example, while telling me about his advancing plans to set up a sweatshop to manufacture baggy pants, or bombachas (he already had the necessary equipment— a stitching machine and an overlock—and now needs only a location), alluded constantly to the Bolivian manufacturer who taught him the tricks of the trade. His face full of wonder, he enumerated his mentor’s achievements: “He has four houses with four floors each and, in addition, he has rooms in several locations. He buys one hundred and fifty rolls of fabric . . . one hundred and fifty!” And with the same emphasis, he clarifies: “He has everything. He has . . . he has a lot. The machines belong to him. Everything is manufactured in his sweatshop and then distributed.” The deep-rooted desire to own a sweatshop also seems to be conceived as an individual project that, for example, may not result from a commercial association with other would-be entrepreneurs. This became clear to me one of the few times I was able to interview Javi and César together. Listening to them tell me what they needed to start producing independently, I noticed that, combined, they already had everything. What Javi lacked, César had, and vice versa: together, they had machines, contacts with manufacturers, and a location that could be used for their mutual benefit if they first reached an economic agreement. When I tried to show them that they actually had everything necessary to set up a joint sweatshop, they did not understand the idea. As I tried again, they understood and laughed. Suddenly, it became clear to me that the project of having a sweatshop is not only strongly conditioned by gendered assumptions and a clear division of roles, it is also decidedly a family business: MATÍAS: For example, one [of you] cuts and the other does the

sewing. And you both buy fabric together. CÉSAR: No, you’re saying like couples do? MATÍAS: No, as a joint venture. JAVI: [after making sexist jokes] No, because you clash with

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[commercial] partners and then problems arise. It’s better to do it with family, better than with friends—they only want your money. Javi and César’s preference for setting up a sweatshop with a romantic rather than a business partner is coincident with the profile of the rest of my interviewees. The stories of Pablo, Felipe, Matilde, and Betina, all established entrepreneurs working with spouses or other family members, are good examples of this pattern of business behavior. In a social environment in which interpersonal trust is an unlikely state and keeping work processes under control is a difficult task, working with the family becomes the preferred strategy to face such problems. Equally important, however, is the fact that a family business allows profits to remain in the family context. Whenever César or Javi described their future plans, they talked about setting up a sweatshop with their girlfriends: MATÍAS: How do you imagine yourself as a boss? JAVI: I wouldn’t be in charge of the sweatshop. My girlfriend

would do that. I’m the financier, the one who puts up the money and has the whip. The one who just gives the orders and then leaves. Well, I’ll still help her. Finally, Javi’s reply confirms Aspers’s observation that “women dominate the industry on the buying side [garment retailers] and men dominate the production side” (Aspers 2010b: 143) in the market for outsourced garment services. Javi’s dominant position as he imagines the operation of his sweatshop implies an invisibilization of women’s work in the productive process as well as a negation of his girlfriend as a subject capable of making decisions.

STRUCTURAL CONDITIONING FOR ASPIRATIONS The fact that people like Javi and César plan to set up their own sweatshop is strongly influenced by profit distribution within each productive unit as well as by the type of work carried out there. I questioned Javi and César several times about the regular salary of sweatshop

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workers and entrepreneurs, and both were consistent in stressing that the difference was significant. For example, in 2013, an ironer like Javi earned five thousand pesos a month, working “from eight a.m. to eight p.m. and sometimes from eight a.m. to nine p.m., eleven p.m., or midnight.” Meanwhile, according to Javi, “having the machines [i.e., running the sweatshop], you could earn thirty-five thousand or more.” Lieutier (2009) and Montero (2016:10) draw similar conclusions when they analyze the constant mushrooming of sweatshops in the region where Javi and César work. Montero exemplifies the profit structure as follows: Let us think, for example, about a sweatshop with ten seamsters, in which each sews one hundred jeans per day [and each gets $12 per piece]. At the end of the day each worker will have $1,200, but the shop owner will have $12,000 [per worker, and $120,000 overall—the profit per unit is $120 after subtracting production costs]. Now suppose that the sweatshop owner increases his productive capacity by hiring twenty additional seamsters (thirty in total). Each seamster will continue to earn $1,200, but the sweatshop owner will earn $360,000. This reality works as a fabulous incentive to the reproduction of informal workshops.2 Behind this highly unequal distribution of profits lies a form of compensation that is, without doubt, remarkably widespread: payment by piece. Both Javi and César belong to an informal economic sector dominated by temporary contracting based on a fixed payment per item of clothing. This form of payment per piece, which Palacio calls “by productivity,” determines clear relative benefits for the entrepreneurs who own the sweatshops and creates incentives for seamsters, ironers, buttonhole makers, and workers in general: in order for them to really take advantage of the usual one- or two-week stay in a sweatshop, the best strategy is to work quickly, to produce as many pieces as possible, and to work as many hours as necessary. As Javi explains: “You know, I’m aware [of the situation] and I know I want to earn more. I hurry, I go faster. I try to get more pieces, so the Korean [i.e., the manufacturer] gains more and so do I.” Seen from the outside, we might get the impression that Javi’s efforts to realize his aspiration of having his own sweatshop are doomed to failure. We could easily think that both he and César lack

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sufficient knowledge about fashion trends or dressmaking, and that these missing elements, without them noticing, will ultimately sabotage any attempt to become garment entrepreneurs. And the reason for this thinking seems to be supported by the idea that knowing what is “in fashion”—that is, offering products capable of expressing the end consumers’ desires—is a condition of success in today’s garment manufacturing business. Before referring to the strategies developed and put in practice by workers like Javi or César while they wait for the day they can set up their own business, I will allude to the way work processes are organized in this sector and make a series of distinctions that will be useful in order to understand the difference between a (future) entrepreneur like Javi and an established player like Pablo (following chapters). In short, the difference is one referred to previously between different types of sweatshops: those devoted to providing outsourcing services upstream and those that take control over the entire production process downstream. In his study on how social order is manufactured in the market for retailers of branded garments, Aspers points out that the “fashion input” by manufacturers—that is, the addition of work that transforms a standard garment into a fashionable one at the moment of manufacture—“is sometimes very limited.” (2010b:132). This helps us to understand Javi and César’s aspirations in two ways. On the one hand, they aspire to become entrepreneurs and manage sweatshops centered on delivering outsourced services that do not require knowledge about design or efforts to survey buyers’ preferences. The addition of distinct details like embroidered flowers or various prints that take these preferences into account is a task that, if it is necessary at all, can be done following the advice provided by the buyers themselves. On the other hand, the fact that fashion input comes at the end of the production process means that Javi and César aspire to become entrepreneurs involved in a productive process characterized by “the rational organization of work in many small steps, according to a piece-rate of production and pay, and producing standardized products” (2010b:130). If hierarchy, calculability, and subordination are characteristics of this form of production, it is thus not by chance that Javi imagines himself managing his sweatshop with a “whip,” or that César constantly emphasizes the fact that his boss demands compliance with the expected production schedule. This, again, reminds us that the product offered by the sweatshops Javi or César aspire to own is not the result of inspiration or design, but a product that results from a

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price-quality-delivery-time calculation. If they do finally manage to become entrepreneurs, their task will be “to outperform their rivals by producing the right quality and delivering in time.” (Aspers 2010b:136). Their concern is not the production of fashionable items, but of standardized pieces of clothing, such as plain T-shirts, jeans, jackets, and so forth. Understanding the type of productive process in which Javi and César are involved is crucial. It clearly shows the differences among types of sweatshops and entrepreneurship profiles, revealing also the complexity of the economic sector at stake as well as allowing us to grasp the type of entrepreneurs that channel their production through La Salada marketplace. The difference between Javi and César, on the one hand, and Pablo and Leo, on the other, is that the latter two are already able to commercialize their production in La Salada and, therefore, they are practically obliged to conceive of their products as fashion commodities. We will see later that Pablo and Leo are forced to perform tasks that for Javi or César are completely unnecessary. Or rather, they will be necessary only if they become producers and decide to locate themselves downstream, closer to the commercialization stage. Pablo and Leo, for instance, must develop strategies that allow them to know what is in fashion and what the preferences of potential buyers are. In direct contact with the consumer market, they must develop the ability to read the signs of fashion, the symbolic values associated with certain pieces of clothing. While the upstream entrepreneurs who hire Javi and César must construct an identity around the timely delivery of quality standard products and services, downstream entrepreneurs such as Pablo and Leo must be able to perform an upgrade through design (Aspers 2010a); that is, to “enhanc[e] the relative competitive position of the firm” (Schmitz and Knorringa 2000:181), while creating value through an effective learning of buyers’ imaginaries and preferences.

STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES (WHILE WAITING) The previous pages, confirming extant literature on sweatshops in Latin America and elsewhere, leave little doubt about the extent to which the underground garment economy imposes extreme working conditions, which severely restrict the margins of action and creativity of those at the bottom of the social pyramid: the sweatshop workers. Long working hours, deplorable conditions, and damaging

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consequences for the workers seem to confirm the words of Aspers whereby “the way of organizing work does not allow workers any scope for initiative, and the analogy made by Marx, that the worker becomes an appendage of the machine, is largely still true in the garment production sector” (2010b: 130). In view of this situation, and taking into account the constant reproduction of sweatshops, it becomes important to inquire into the practices and strategies that allow people like Javi or César to finally become entrepreneurs. In other words, if we do not shed light on the resources sweatshop workers mobilize “on the margins of capitalism” (Hann and Parry 2018), we are left ignorant of the strategies employed by people like Javi or César in order to become entrepreneurs, a situation that would also imply discrediting their ability to aspire (Appadurai 2013). In this sense, in what follows I will refer to two problems workers face on their way to establishing a sweatshop and how they try to solve them: acquiring the appropriate knowledge and raising enough capital. There is a third problem, which I will also mention, that leaves workers even more vulnerable: addiction. This and other health problems must be understood as the constant background that conditions their working lives.

LEARNING TO WORK Without exception, all the interviews I conducted with entrepreneurs who went through a phase as workers in sweatshops indicate that apprenticeship plays a crucial role. In all cases in which sewing was not learned from family members because of a lack of dressmaking know-how, the interviewees frequently remembered those people who had acted as their mentors to teach them the trade. Probably one of the most remarkable examples is that of Eusebio, Pablo’s father, who worked for several years in a sweatshop as a seamster. Although his son Pablo claimed that they were exploited, Eusebio expressed a rather different view: Because I learned the trade with a man who had stores in Mar del Plata, in Flores, and here, in Lomas. He did the molding and used a ruler to remove the thread, you know? The man was very precise. And he taught me how to do the job. “You know how to get out the thread?” He asked me when I began to work. “No,”

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I told him. I really wondered what “get out the thread” meant. So, I asked: “What is ‘getting out the thread’?” “Well, I’m going to show you,” he told me. And that gentleman taught me to work well, to make pieces of clothing the way they should be: with a good fit, with a good cut, as women like it. And I always say: thank God, and thanks to those people that God put in my way, I learned from them. Because I tell you, now I know how to work well. I know what the steps are that I have to follow. You understand me? Any work that you learn from, that’s a basis for you to be able to start your business.

Stories such as Eusebio’s undoubtedly invite us to think that the master-apprentice relationship, as well as the justifications developed by the apprentice, play a significant role in “manufacturing consent” (Burawoy 1982) on the shop floor in this industrial sector. However, we should not exaggerate this relationship or believe that sweatshop owners are always willing to teach the trade to newcomers. In fact, during one interview, Javi reported the opposite: sweatshop owners refusing to share their knowledge beyond what was necessary as a way to avoid future competition. Without needing to establish which option prevails in the sector at large—willingness or refusal to teach—what these seemingly contradictory scenarios show is that learning the trade constitutes a real problem whose resolution is not evident for those who want to believe in the possibility of setting up a sweatshop. Javi, for instance, although he can identify a Bolivian sweatshop owner who taught him several aspects of the trade, also recognizes that on many occasions he had to learn alone: JAVI: One day I wanted to learn sewing. And I didn’t like it. I

started putting the cloth [under the needle], pressed [the pedal] and advanced . . . and I got scared! When I pressed [the pedal] the needle went near my finger and I got nervous! I stretched [the cloth] and pressed [the pedal] again . . . and pow! The needle broke. And then I went to continue ironing . . . MATÍAS: Was the sweatshop owner angry? JAVI: He didn’t realize it was me. In the end, he blamed the assistants. The sweatshop owner went crazy! And I was the guilty one! All because I wanted to learn.

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The story shows Javi challenging the order imposed by the sweatshop owner and taking advantage of a moment to learn how to sew or, at least, to find out if he liked it. After that experience, Javi never wanted to sew again; the event confirmed that his specialty was ironing. César had a similar experience when he wanted to learn how to cut garments: “When I learned to cut I ruined everything: the piece of cloth, the cutting table, everything. I thought that [the sweatshop owner] was going to screw me, to yell at me. But no, he didn’t say anything to me. He got angry with the other boy because he didn’t help me enough.” Developing additional skills is a strategy designed to increase the chances of being hired. César, for instance, reported that, in addition to the cutting, he had been able to learn how to print polo shirts almost by chance thanks to a Korean sweatshop owner: “A Korean guy also taught me how to print polo shirts, which is basically printing drawings . . . whatever you want. I also know how to embroider. A Korean taught me that. The stamping can be hand-printed or computerized. I learned the computerized [printing]. It’s a spinning wheel, like a robot, that goes down when it’s going to stamp. Then it goes up and spins. [It prints] up to twenty colors.” Javi’s and César’s experiences, together with accounts from more experienced entrepreneurs, show that acquiring knowledge on the shop floor is achieved via strategies aimed at seeking and capturing opportunities. Such opportunities may be the result of a sweatshop owner’s willingness to teach or the consequence of individual initiative. At this point, it is important to mention a type of learning that is critical to remaining active in the market: how to handle fraud or abuse related to getting paid. During the fieldwork, my interviewees frequently referred to unpaid salaries, fraud, and abuse at the hands of sweatshop owners, often in complicity with victims’ relatives. Working under conditions of informality means that individuals cannot appeal to the state to intervene and must learn how to handle conflict in such constellations. For the most part, adaptation is required, the application of a problem-solving scheme based on a de facto acceptance of arbitrariness. Javi’s story summarizes the experience of the rest of my interviewees: The truth is that they exploit you [at the beginning], but not now. When people realize what’s going on, they don’t let themselves be [deceived] anymore. People who let themselves be [deceived] are newcomers. They don’t understand anything

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and they rely on the promise that they’ll get paid. But after these experiences they start questioning and trying to get better deals. In the end, it takes a few months for people to realize [how to play the system]. And when they see that there’s good money, then they decide to stay. The decisive moment comes, however, with the arrival of a conflict situation. Both Javi and César report violent situations involving sweatshop owners who sought to pay less than previously agreed or did not want to pay immediately. In general, the dynamics in these stories can be summarized as a progressive realization regarding the operative logic of field, a logic that includes signaling the potential use of violence and the acceptance of de facto power relations. In Bourdieu’s (2000:208) terms, these dynamics show a process of internalizing external constraints, a socialization related to the “sense of the game” that transforms workers into masters of that game. When Javi, after twelve years of working in sweatshops, relativizes the problem of exploitation, it indicates that he has reached the practical mastery needed to participate in the garment market.

CAPITAL, MARRIAGE, AND CALCULATIONS The second critical problem directly affecting the possibility of becoming a garment entrepreneur is how to access capital. As I will show in the next chapters, the number of formal or informal credit mechanisms available to help buy sewing machines, fabric, or vehicles increases once entrepreneurs are in La Salada marketplace or embedded in strong networks of trust. Meanwhile, in the phase prior to the establishment of the sweatshop, the possibilities are scarce. In the following chapters I refer to microcredits, to small trade credits and, in particular, to a savings system called pasanaku or circle—commonly known in the literature as rotating savings associations—as established mechanisms for obtaining capital. But first I will focus on earlier forms of capitalization strategies used to set up a sweatshop based on relation by marriage. The first step on the road to establishing a sweatshop is to get access to capital. Once workers like Javi, César, and Mónica expressed a desire to set up their own workshop, the most obvious solution in the horizon of possibilities was the same in each case: find a romantic partner who also works in the sweatshop sector. On one occasion, with

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the open-air labor market in full swing around us and Javi expecting a sweatshop owner to express an interest in his ironing expertise at any moment, he told me: JAVI: Now I’m thinking about [setting up a sweatshop]. But

I need the sewing machines. The machines cost around three thousand, five thousand pesos. With fifteen thousand pesos you open your sweatshop. MATÍAS: Only fifteen thousand? JAVI: Sure, with that money you buy your over [overlock machine], your recta [traditional home sewing machine], and your collareta [coverstitch machine]. The collareta is the one for making the neck of a T-shirt, for instance, and it’s the most expensive! The collareta costs a lot. MATÍAS: And how do people here get the money to buy a sewing machine? JAVI: Usually people in a couple do it, how can I explain . . .? If you have a girlfriend, in two months you’ve already bought them [the machines]. They both work, and in two months they can already have their sweatshop. The majority of these [Javi points to the sweatshop workers walking down the street], they all have sweatshops. Everything, everything in the shantytown [villa], in the shantytown there are sweatshops, a lot! They produce everything in the shantytown and go to La Salada. MATÍAS: And tell me, how does a couple set up a sweatshop in two months? JAVI: Look, because . . . let’s say that you can buy one [sewing machine] per month—if you work by piece you can have a good income—you can earn five thousand pesos a month, let’s say. You already [earn] five and your partner also earns five. Then you already have ten. Five would be missing. But the next month they put it together. There are already twenty thousand! From the twenty thousand you set apart five thousand for living, and with the rest you buy the sewing machines. MATÍAS: But you need a place . . . where do you put the machines? JAVI: Sure! There [in the shantytown] you rent a room. They charge you between eight hundred and a thousand pesos. You’re ready to run your sweatshop. MATÍAS: And where does the electricity come from . . . do they make a connection . . . ?

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JAVI, smiling: The electricity . . . well, that’s stolen, what could

we do?! There nobody pays electricity, they don’t pay taxes, they don’t pay for water, nothing. Everyone is “hanging” [illegally connected]. That’s also why the electricity is cut off in there [in the shantytown]. MATÍAS: Coming back to the issue of sewing machines. Where do people buy sewing machines? Do they buy them used? JAVI: New sewing machines cost three thousand [pesos]. A common machine costs around three thousand; the overlock around four thousand, the collareta [coverstitch machine] seven thousand. Some are imported from Japan. Those machines are good, robust. There are also Argentine machines. Other shops also sell used. Here, on Castañeda Street, you can also find machines. Korean people usually sell them, but there are also Bolivian people selling. It seemed as though Javi clearly saw the business. And I could easily imagine that he saw himself in the role of hiring personnel, in the role of those Korean, Bolivian, or Argentine sweatshop owners passing in front of him as they looked for workers and bargained down prices. He paused, then pointed to where the machines were sold: “You buy the sewing machines there and you come to look for people here [the open-air job market].” It seemed that it was not the first time that Javi had imagined how his own enterprise would look. In his imagination, he was designing his future business, calculating his future profits and, as a consequence, unintentionally reinforcing the expectations that support domination structures in the market. Mónica, who spent several years working as a seamster in different sweatshops, reports a different situation, one in which the strategy for acquiring capital is still based on relations of marriage, but that is more entrenched in the dynamics of the sweatshop. Mónica told me to imagine a sweatshop owner who, in his house, has several rooms occupied with sewing machines and workers, but where there is also an unoccupied room to rent. This last room is rented by a couple who bring a sewing machine with them: Imagine a woman who works during the day with that machine, let’s say an overlock, and the man works in a different sweatshop. Then the man convinces the owner of the sweatshop where he works to outsource work to his wife. This means the

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wife works for the same sweatshop as her husband, for example, doing T-shirts. That overlock works all day long. That’s how it goes—one, two, three months go by and thanks to the work of that machine, the couple buys a second machine! So the man, I mean, the husband, leaves his job and goes to work with his wife, because they already have two machines. For example, the husband begins sewing. But they keep working, then they buy a third machine and hire an assistant. That way they already have all [the necessary machines]. The problem that arises, which is more or less always the same, is that now there are two family workshops working and competing in the same house. So, in order to avoid any problems, the couple tries to move to a bigger house. Mónica’s story highlights the complexity of this economic sector as well as the intricate methods used for acquiring capital and the role played by kinship relationships. It is clear that Mónica’s story depicts a constellation in which people take advantage of kinship relationships or networks of friendships that allow them to acquire their own sweatshop more quickly. On the contrary, Javi’s and César’s cases show long careers in which community networks play only a minimal role, or indeed no role at all. At the same time, Mónica’s story demonstrating a set of social relationships—various sweatshop and business relations—allows us to understand why she will later assert that the sewing machine shops “give you the machines for nothing, you only have to sign some papers and they give you the machines; they ask you for the address where you’re going to work and they give it to you.” It becomes apparent from Mónica’s story that credit emerges in a context of trust relationships, with guarantors being members of the same community and, most of the time, also well-known sweatshop owners.

DEALING WITH ADDICTION AND OTHER HEALTH PROBLEMS Several studies focusing on the working conditions in sweatshops located in the city of Buenos Aires (Colombo 2016; Goldberg 2009, 2010a, 2010b, 2011) point out that the maxim of “work for productivity” proposed by shed-market manager Palacio has an overall

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negative impact on workers’ health. Based on extensive ethnographic work, Goldberg (2010b:18) reports that migrants like Javi, César, and Mónica often suffer “anxiety and depression that accompany the migratory grief situation derived from the change—at a personal, family, residential, cultural level, etc.—implied in the new whole situation of emigrating; fatigue at work, due to intense rhythms and lack of rest; overcrowding at work and in housing (which, in most cases, is located in the same place of the sweatshop); the permanent inhalation of dust and blight (even when sleeping) due to lack of adequate protection in sweatshops; the food deficiencies and differences from the place of origin; and the high levels of alcohol consumption (distilled beverages) that are registered in some cases.” In relation to the question of health in the context of the sweatshop economy, the interviews conducted with César and Javi make it clear that addiction is a major concern, impacting not only health but the visualization of objectives such as setting up a sweatshop. Specifically, both César and Javi reported continuous problems with alcohol abuse, especially the negative influence it had on their abilities to both save money and meet planned schedules. While we were sitting on the sidewalk with the open-air job market still in full swing, César spoke once again about his alcohol consumption: “No, no, I can’t get out of bed. Because . . . because I like to drink, I like to drink, especially on weekends. That’s also why I can’t save money.” Javi, meanwhile, reports that his alcohol consumption has been decreasing recently and identifies consumption as a real problem, which in his story appears as an issue already overcome, a problem that now only other people have: There are people who want to work, but most people have drinking issues, there’s a problem: the drink. Some get up shaking, that’s how they are [Javi feigns a trembling hand], and also say they need a drink to get better! They already have a drink early and continue drinking. They spend all their salary on that. Everything, everything. They even sell their things . . . or they steal from each other: they steal the sneakers and then sell them for wine. In several interviews, Javi linked his experience of staying off alcohol with the goal of setting up a sweatshop. The “threat of alcohol,” on the other hand, often seemed to come from his partner, who apparently also has problems with alcohol consumption. Now his concern

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was no longer his consumption, it was rather “her issue.” In either case, these experiences show that consuming alcohol—and it is easy to imagine that the same is true of other substances, too—is perceived as something that could potentially alter the rationality necessary for managing a company. Consequently, César, and especially Javi, made a constant effort to master alcohol consumption, to practice selfdiscipline in terms of improving punctuality (“getting to work on time”) or controlling recreational activities (“rescatarse los fines de semana”). Expressed in other terms, it is possible to think that only by improving these behaviors was it possible for them to imagine themselves as sweatshop owners, as entrepreneurs. The lack of control tied to the consumption of alcohol seemed to be incompatible with the rationality necessary for managing a business. In a general sense, Javi and César’s trajectories show us a pattern of behavior that is widespread among garment entrepreneurs who sell their production at La Salada: initial employment in sweatshops specialized in the provision of sewing services is followed by progressive steps toward becoming an independent garment producer. The latter simply means concentrating all decisions pertaining to the production of fashionable garment items on themselves, which also implies the possibility of outsourcing work to other sweatshops located upstream. In terms of personal experience, it is time experienced as waiting time, a period of people’s lives that involves the clear intention to gather knowledge and contacts. And it is also a period of people’s lives in which the meaning of work largely outweighs the importance of the labor code. Javi and César measure the working day according to their resources of physical energy, to constraints sometimes imposed by illness, or to their perception of what they will be able to do when they are old. And they do so always in alignment with the goals they want to achieve. In theoretical terms, Javi and César’s trajectories clearly show us the interaction between spaces depicting individual agency, such as when Javi uses the sewing machine creatively for the first time, and powerful domination structures that institutionalize incentives that, in the long term, will end up reproducing the same conditions of domination. The ability and desire to wait, in other words, emerges from genuine personal projects, while also being grounded in the circumstances in which Javi and César work.

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CHAPTER 5

The Garment Entrepreneur at La Salada

“This is the item I sell the most during summertime,” Leo told me, holding a child’s cap aloft in the winter sun. “It’s the one that sells the most,” he insisted again and, although we already knew each other quite well by that point, Leo suddenly adopted a new posture, as if he were about to explain the virtues of a new wonder product to a potential client at a trade fair. The small cap still in his hand, he continued to monitor the customers passing the stall while launching into an explanation of the development of his star product. “When I started manufacturing this model, I used the cardboard visor—Papitex, the product’s called. It’s made of cardboard. It’s a rubberized cardboard that doesn’t get deformed when it comes in contact with water. But the visor’s rigid; that’s the problem. You want to give it a curved shape, which is what people like most, and you can’t do that because it can break. You just can’t.” Leo exemplifies a certain type of La Salada garment entrepreneur whose defining characteristic is controlling the whole production process. Providing the outsourcing services described in the last chapter tends to be a stepping stone on the way to taking over every stage of producing a garment from the initial design, to manufacture, to personally selling the items from a stall at La Salada. Leo squeezed the visor, accentuating its curved shape. I used to manufacture this way [with the cardboard], and a customer who bought from me said, “Hey, can’t you get a curved plastic visor?” I said no, I had no idea about plastic visors. I started looking for plastics in different places; I went to a shop in Once [district in the city of Buenos Aires] and got it with the same measurement but they were very expensive. But a short

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time later, the same client came and gave me the number of a guy who makes plastic. The story excited Leo, who seemed to have forgotten the presence of customers milling around. He was telling me the story of how he developed a successful product; his whole face lit up. I called him. I went to his house and I said, “I need this,” and he said, “No problem, I can do it for you.” He gave me some samples of visors to test if it works and now, this year, we launched the curved visors. The curved visor is a different thing. It gives a different appearance; it’s nicer. I saw that all customers, mostly, grabbed and bent the visor. Now, because it’s made of plastic, it bends easily. You get to know people and opportunities arise. Leo’s story neatly illustrates some of the major differences between the typical profiles of a La Salada entrepreneur and an outsourcing entrepreneur located upstream in the market as described in the previous chapter. For instance, Leo’s job consists not only in delivering sewing services, cutting fabric, and assembling plastic visors. He does not have a sweatshop specialized in the provision of outsourced services to other sweatshops. On the contrary, in Leo’s sweatshop it is Leo himself who makes the decisions throughout the entire process of producing seasonal collections. These decisions are made in relation to technology or time constraints, which may imply the outsourcing of certain stages, such as sewing, assembly, ironing, and embroidery.1 However, what truly defines Leo’s position downstream in the market is his contact with end consumers, an aspect that influences the whole production process, not least in the commercialization stage. As I will show in detail later, the decision to market children’s caps in La Salada according to buyers’ recommendations is a crucial aspect that sets Leo—and the rest of the La Salada entrepreneurs I interviewed—apart from the outsourcing entrepreneurs dedicated solely to selling services and located upstream. It is difficult to understand Leo’s activity without taking into account the marketplace through which he channels his products. From a microsocial perspective, the frequent contact with clients determines many aspects of the organization of Leo’s work, in and outside his sweatshop. However, from a macro perspective, La Salada’s offer of face-to-face contact with buyers and the possibility of bypassing

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FIGURE 5.1. Items manufactured in Leo’s sweatshop. Photo by the author.

market intermediaries has stimulated the emergence of a specific entrepreneur that fills a structural gap in the garment market. As I explained in chapter 1, entrepreneurs linked to La Salada marketplace have been providing low-cost items of clothing to a section of the market that has been left untended by formally constituted companies since the early 1990s. La Salada, in becoming the country’s major commercialization hub for low-cost garments, offered an opportunity to outsourcing entrepreneurs, who are traditionally linked to the formal garment market and multinationals by way of subcontracting. They were given the possibility of an upgrade: reformulate your garment business and see your profit margins increase. Reformulation meant switching from an outsourcing business model to what we now recognize as the typical La Salada downstream entrepreneur; that is, the business of delivering sewing services was abandoned and in its place entrepreneurs took control of the whole production process, all the way to commercialization through channels completely submerged in informality and illegality.2 In what follows I refer to two interrelated features of the La Salada entrepreneur that fundamentally set her apart from outsourcing

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entrepreneurs in the same market. First, the defining characteristic of La Salada entrepreneurs is being the locus of production decisions. This strategy involves producing clothing in a sweatshop for the purpose of satisfying the preferences and expectations of end consumers. Second, organizing work in this way involves attempting to increase the entrepreneurs’ competitiveness: they continuously perform upgrading actions based on improving product design, which usually includes copying branded goods, albeit with varying degrees of faithfulness to the original item. Both characteristics, as I will show, are determined by the structure of the business (garments) and the type of everyday interactions (face-to-face) that are typical of marketplaces. As mentioned in previous chapters, both characteristics also exhibit similarities with the profile of entrepreneurs linked to marketplaces in locations as diverse as Italy, China, and Mexico.

UPGRADING THROUGH CREATIVE COPYING With only a few exceptions (Aspers 2010a, 2010b), the scholarship on upgrading usually does not consider cases of informal garment markets such as the market linked to La Salada marketplace. Plausible explanations for this gap might be of two sorts. On the one hand, the literature tends to consider only one type of sweatshop as part of the garment industry; namely, those units that are connected with multinationals by way of subcontracting chains. These sweatshops are visible because large garment companies are responsible for violating private regulations aimed at improving labor standards in these units. This picture, however, excludes productive entities like those linked to La Salada: small or medium-size units located in close proximity to the marketplaces that generally sell within the same country and are mostly run by migrants isolated “not only from other workers but also from the broader society (e.g. workers locked in sweatshops)” (Montero and Arcos 2017:440). On the other hand, an important factor that might explain why scholarship on upgrading ignores cases like La Salada’s is that the work process involved is assumed to be merely copying, when it actually involves design input on the part of producers, or what has been recently described as a process of “creative copying” (Dewey 2019). This inattention to creative processes contrasts with a growing anthropological literature that does examine the cognitive, cultural, political, and legal aspects behind the processes of imitation, copying,

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and counterfeiting (Boon 2010; Coombe 1998; Lempert 2014; Luvaas 2013; Manning 2010; Nakassis 2012; Raustiala and Sprigman 2012; Thomas 2016). However, this literature does not recognize entrepreneurs’ decisions as part of a search for higher profit margins or that these decisions are based on continuously learning from buyers. Leo’s attempt to increase his competitiveness by commissioning a piece of plastic that will allow him to manufacture a cap with a flexible visor may seem trivial. However, in the context of a marketplace where that particular product does not yet exist, his strategy should be understood as a form of “enhancing the relative competitive position of the firm” (Schmitz and Knorringa 2000:181) through the consideration of buyers’ symbolic values and preferences (Aspers 2010b: 192). This fashion input, which appears toward the end of the production process but nevertheless determines large parts of it—that is, it is not a merely decorative task—is usually understood as an upgrading through design and involves a series of coordination activities between the sweatshop and its environment (Aspers 2010a; Evans and Smith 2006; Tokatli 2007, 2013). Entrepreneurs such as Leo, with his children’s caps; Pablo, who produces faux Adidas jackets; Matilde, who makes aprons decorated with Disney characters; Felipe, producer of women’s clothing under his own brand; or Betina, who sells jackets for security staff, all make a constant effort to find inspiration in the information provided directly by buyers or gleaned from elsewhere. As I will show in chapter 8, the data collected is not put into the service of producing exact replicas but serves as a point of departure; “originals” are templates to be re-created according to the demands, preferences, and fashion elements communicated by buyers or imagined by producers. In other words, what these entrepreneurs do is to “understand how commodities get their meaning” (Aspers 2010b: 132) in order that the added value (fashion input) translates into better positioning within the marketplace. Furthermore, the assumption that this type of entrepreneur is capable only of producing copies denies their ability to perceive the environment in which they undertake their work as well as ignoring their ability to collect and interpret information and act accordingly. Likewise, in the context of La Salada, upgrading through design must be observed as a series of decisions that are modified with each fashion cycle. Leo, for instance, initially bought embroidered Nike swooshes, transferred them to the material with an iron, and sold the product as “Nike” caps. However, he abandoned that practice for three reasons. First, the aforementioned illegal marca tax, which I described

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in chapter 2, had an economic impact on his business. Second, Leo was exposed to “proper” police searches and confiscations on his way to the marketplace (a practice closely connected with the marca tax). The third reason, however, was related to his buyers’ behavior: they “got used” to buying children’s caps without a brand logo. In the end, Leo realized that adding Nike swooshes did not increase sales. “Look,” he said, “it’s the same: without using the brand logo, I also sell real good!” As a result of this learning process, Leo could concentrate his efforts and resources on developing or improving his own products—for example, introducing the plastic visor—instead of trying to imitate others. That said, Leo did not completely remove brand logos from his repertoire of upgrading methods: although none of the products currently on his stall are stamped with the Nike swoosh, he keeps a small box of metal swoosh pins on the counter. Leo offers the Nike pin to his buyers and, if they like it, they can take as many as they want. For free. The upgrading carried out by garment entrepreneurs must also be understood in the context of a portfolio containing a differentiated set of products. Pablo or Matilde, for instance, although their products are not one-to-one replicas of original pieces, explicitly use brand logos or trademarked characters. In so doing, Pablo and Matilde decide to take certain risks that Leo, to a certain extent, has chosen to avoid. However, all the entrepreneurs manufacture at least some products without brand logos. This diversification of the product portfolio is common in the context of La Salada: Pablo sells “Adidas” jackets or trousers but also unbranded leggings and T-shirts. Matilde sells aprons with the image of Disney’s Violetta but also plain uniforms for doctors and teachers. Felipe, who developed his own brand, sells specially tailored products for his clients but also plain T-shirts and white shirts.3 Such a greatly differentiated offer should be interpreted as the outcome of business decisions conditioned by various elements, as Nellie Chu (2016, 2018) points out when examining the costs of copying among entrepreneurs in the Xi Fang Hang wholesale market in Guangzhou, China. Leo, for example, employed the strategy of upgrading through copying to jumpstart his business and then, once established, decided to continue with upgrading through nonimitation designs. Felipe, meanwhile, offers plain pieces for women in order to reduce economic risks. In his words: “Classic pieces with plain fabrics are always in demand.” Pablo, on the other hand, seeks to create an identity for his business—he wants passersby and established buyers to perceive his stall as a place where they can get sports products for teenage girls. In this

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context, it makes sense to sell a variety of products, including plain leggings. In general, variations in the types of upgrading through design, including the subtype of upgrading through copying, are dependent on several assessment and decision-making processes. The concrete forms of upgrading in the context of La Salada are the outcome of serious consideration of what is fashionable and buyers’ symbolic values, as well as other factors such as the variable cost of renting a stall according to the sector, a competitor’s decision to manufacture similar products, and the risks involved in using brand logos. Finally, it is important to mention that, in the case of La Salada, upgrading by way of manufacturing counterfeits is not tied to the usual short turnaround times of the fashion industry, usually about a month. The fact that most entrepreneurs do not produce exact copies provides clear evidence that La Salada’s garment economy mirrors designs in the formal market in terms of logos of well-known brands only (with the exception of soccer shirts, where the quality of the copy is vital). In other words, La Salada’s economy does not internally reproduce the cycles of the formal fashion industry in terms of either time or content. This means, then, that Aspers’s observation regarding upgrading through copying does not hold: according to him, “the item may be out of fashion and one cannot get the same added value (2010b: 202),” because those who counterfeit items do not have the necessary time to produce good copies and, therefore, they arrive late to the market. In chapter 8, I will show that this decoupling between the formal and informal markets originates in a variety of information-gathering practices developed by entrepreneurs in the marketplace. They listen to the demands and read the symbolic values of their buyers and try to imagine the purchaser’s point of view—that is, how she expects the item to perform (Beckert 2011; Shackle 2017). In short, entrepreneurs continuously seek to decipher the imaginaries of their buyers, who belong to a segment of the population that is decoupled from the formal economy in ways that go beyond their lack of access to the formal clothing market.

COORDINATION WORK AT THE SWEATSHOP Leo’s story shows that the interpretation of buyers’ behaviors also has an impact on the decision-making and work processes within the sweatshop. Taking buyers’ preferences into consideration influences

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the coordination work in each productive unit. Reacting to a demand made by a client, Leo undertakes a series of actions: he identifies a source of finance—his brother—for the production of the plastic visor; he determines that, from that moment on, the outsourcing of this new component is necessary; he begins to calculate a new structure of production and transport costs, as well as of delivery and order times; and, finally, he is forced to modify fabric quantities and methods of assembling the new plastic visor. The first time I visited Pablo’s sweatshop, his father, Eusebio, took me to a room belonging to Pablo’s brother, Martín. Martín was in charge of reproducing the “Adidas” logo and, next to the bed, there was a computer and a plotter. Full of pride, Eusebio contemplated the room in which—I thought—he would have been so many times. Now, with me at his side, the same room appeared in a new light: “You have to be there [at the computer], you have to be there on the internet,” he said, “and [you should] have creativity, too. To be on the internet and look at the Adidas models and buy them, as I do . . . I buy them and sometimes we copy everything. And I know it’s wrong to.” As I was more interested in the production process of the family’s “Adidas” garments than becoming embroiled in any moral or legal debates, I steered the conversation toward the specifics of design, asking about the colors of some lengths of fabrics draped over a table. Eusebio explained that it was the cloth he would use to make the three Adidas stripes. As Martín joined us in his room, Eusebio commented: He’s the designer, the one who uses the computer. He manages a lot of things with his head, and we do it rather with our hands and body. He thinks about making [counterfeiting] the brand, and we manufacture the stuff. We still discuss the decisions, though. Once we have the patterns, I take them to their homes [to sweatshops providing outsourcing services], I leave all the stuff at their doors, and they coordinate the work schedule. Whether they get up late or they work all night, I don’t care. It’s their problem. But they have to keep to a schedule with me. They tell me a time for picking up the stuff, and I don’t care what they do . . . they have to keep to the schedule. They give me a date and that’s it. They say: “That’s the day I’ll deliver the stuff to you, come here and you’ll have the stuff.”

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In the case of Pablo and his family, the design input needed to recreate an “Adidas” garment implies a series of decisions. Some are related to the action of copying, while others are common to all sweatshops, whether they manufacture plain, unbranded garments or items with logos. In either case, however, what stands out is that the production of fast fashion—that is, the production of brand-inspired, low-cost garments that are ordered in a flexible way and delivered “just in time”— constitutes a specific mode of production. This mode is centered on a productive unit in which the most important decisions are concentrated but that also relies on being able to outsource various services. As pointed out earlier, a brief overview of the sweatshop landscape shows that La Salada’s economy is not alone, since similar constellations have been found in relation to marketplaces in Prato (Ceccagno 2007, 2015, 2017; Lan and Zhu 2014. See also Montero 2011; Ottati 2014; Smyth and French 2009), San Pablo (Vereta-Nahoum 2019), Mexico (Rothstein 2007), and Guangzhou (Chu 2018). Chu’s assessment of this production mode is particularly instructive: “Its emphasis on the cyclical and rapid delivery of trendy, low-priced clothing necessitates a craft-based organization of garment production. More specifically, the assembly lines characteristic of the Fordist industrial model are fragmented so that only one specialized aspect of mass manufacture takes place within a single factory along the larger commodity chain” (2016:195). The daily work in the sweatshops linked to La Salada includes a wide range of activities. However, one constant is the coordination work performed between those whose labor is primarily conducted within the units, often family members, and those outside the units, including suppliers of various goods, transport companies, cart-pullers, warehouse owners, and squatters renting out stalls outside the shed markets. A tight schedule running nonstop from early morning through late evening certainly presented me with a challenge when it came to arranging interviews. The sweatshop was the setting of constant decision-making processes, from those related to the design of next season’s garments to the coordination of schedules with service providers. There are decisions related to the transport of garment batches, the location of stalls within the marketplace, payment for services, quality control of garments, and buying or repairing machines and purchasing supplies, to name but a few. Likewise, decisions regarding the

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outsourcing of services depend on the facilities and personnel available in each sweatshop. The standard equipment for a sweatshop seemed to be three machines—one overlock, one coverstitch, and one lockstitch—and a cutting table, which meant outsourcing the addition of buttons and zippers, more complex sewing jobs such as attaching the three Adidas stripes, the assemblage of pieces, and the ironing. Enumerating all these activities helps us to understand the importance of the coordination work and small tasks within the sweatshops, especially given how crucial it is for the production to arrive in time for the opening days of the marketplace. Failing to arrive on time meant much more than losing the expected profits; it also meant losing the opportunity to refresh contact with repeat clients, and lacking presence in the chosen sector of the marketplace meant failing to attract passersby. Leo, Pablo, and Felipe would often admit that they had not slept due to some mishap related to deliveries from suppliers; for example, when some garments had been badly sewn and they had to work all night to correct the problem in order to get them to the marketplace on time. A final important characteristic of the way work is organized in La Salada is the ongoing need for control and monitoring at all stages, from the purchase of fabric to the sale in the marketplace. Although this, along with widespread informality within the sector (Aspers 2010b:131), is a common feature of garment production, the omnipresent interpersonal mistrust and the continual stimulation of free-rider behavior in La Salada’s economy transform control and monitoring practices into crucial aspects of the production process. The ongoing need to confirm deliveries or shipments, to take precautions against insecurity, to secure the booking of stalls, to solve issues related to supplies such as fabric and accessories (threads, zippers, buttons, needles, spare parts), revealed not only the absence of contracts, something otherwise common in this sector, but the existence of an atmosphere heavy with distrust. In the previous chapter, I described how Javi and César expressed an aspiration to become garment entrepreneurs. In this chapter, I showed that fulfilling these aspirations requires a particular set of skills that are largely determined by the position these entrepreneurs choose to take in the marketplace; namely, as sellers of their own products from a rented stall in one of La Salada’s shed markets. By adopting the role of sellers of finished garment items, they come into contact with buyers and, consequently, are in an unbeatable position from which

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to interpret their buyers’ preferences. From this perspective, we are better able to understand the phenomenon I will describe in the next chapters: in short, that the business upgrade based on counterfeiting is not intended to create pieces of clothing identical to branded originals, but to use brand logos creatively in order to adapt the products to clients’ tastes. Likewise, the downstream position adopted by garment entrepreneurs implies responsibility for the complete set of decisions involved in the production process. This is of huge importance because it shows that garment entrepreneurs adopt a position similar to garment retailers. That is, just like their legal counterparts, they outsource sections of the production process to sweatshops located upstream.

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CHAPTER 6

Dynamics of Aspirations

“The gym is also—and above all—a dream machine. Dreams of glory, of success, and of money, of course. To make a million dollars in one night . . . Who knows if, by dint of will, perseverance, sacrifice, and well-placed connections . . . one day, maybe . . . The story goes that Alphonzo Ratliff made it, that famed million dollars, before getting his face bashed by Mike Tyson in Las Vegas in two pitiful rounds” Waquant 2004:240). In many ways, La Salada is like the boxing gym masterfully described by Wacquant. This marketplace, located just a few kilometers away from the dazzling lights of the country’s capital city amid serious infrastructural and environmental problems, became the center of the world for a whole range of migrants seeking to escape poverty, complicated familial constellations, and the ever-menacing lack of opportunities. La Salada became the center of the world because of its frenetic but rhythmic weekly movement that seems to leave no room for doubt: the movement is powerful and forward, as Pablo’s father liked to say. Felipe’s more professional opinions also lend credence to this perception that the marketplace is a machine moving forward: “You know what? I can’t stop anymore. I can’t fail.” Able to neither stop nor fail, they follow the script of the market. They are the market. Buying all-terrain vehicles for their sons and PlayStations for their free time between market days; replacing vehicles every year; going on vacation for the first time; a long-held desire to finish the house and have a secure job, every day. Activity. Full days. Something worth telling friends and anyone who wants to ask. As in the case of the boxing gym, the dreams of glory, of success and millions, will not be realized; the outcome will probably be more modest. Still, believers will certainly contradict any attempt to describe it as a mere perception, a sort of act of self-deception or distorted evaluation of what they do and

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what they get in return. La Salada has produced real social effects, or, more accurately, the aspirations mobilized by this marketplace have changed the life circumstances of millions of people for the better. La Salada has turned into a space for opportunities for Bolivians seeking to be recognized as makers of worthy, dignified pieces of clothing, a place for impoverished Argentines anxious to get back the economic citizenship they lost in one of the cyclical crises. To have a job. And, above all, La Salada offers the possibility to be recognized by husbands, wives, girlfriends, and boyfriends; to relay the experience of achievement, to share it over a meal at the end of a long day. This is also why the marketplace is not simply a commercial structure located somewhere out there, miles from home. Instead, the marketplace enters into people’s homes, where it gathers the energy that will later sustain its ferocious momentum as it races forward. For Pablo, Felipe, and Julieta, the same applies to the stallholders as to the boxers: At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they don’t get rich. What matters is that the La Salada machine pulls them “out of in-difference, out of inexistence, a machine running full-bore” (2004:240). Where does the force and energy of these aspirations and visions of the future come from? A first partial answer has already been provided in the first chapter: the ongoing demand for garments resulting from a generalized lack of access to legally produced clothing. If chapters 1 and 2 describe the structural conditions that allow the emergence of La Salada, this chapter will go into detail about how aspirations build over time, from the first experiences at the marketplace to the deployment of long-term projects, broad imaginaries about future possibilities and ample maps of connections mobilized by the market dynamic. This chapter shows a transition from sweatshop manufacturers’ initial entry into the marketplace to a stage in which these aspirations are shared and take the form of knowledge. It tells the story of aspirations growing as a result of the unofficial policy described previously whereby authorities favor businesses otherwise considered illegal. The idea of authorities “opening the floodgates” so that market actors can imagine new possibilities primarily alludes to revealing opportunities for new businesses and forms of organizing garment production but also refers to the perception of possibilities in a wider sense. The evidence presented here concerning aspirations shows that they mostly pertain to the sphere of access to goods and services. Whether it be PlayStations, cars, computers, vacations, or simply accessing a certain

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standard of living, they are all seen as certainties rather than mere possibilities; items that can be achieved through hard work and persistence. This chapter shows, in Merton’s (1963) terms, the weight of cultural goals such as economic success and occupational stability. While prior chapters demonstrate that the means for achieving these aspirations are a series of official behaviors that I define in terms of permission, in the remaining chapters I will focus on a second set of means employed for achieving these goals.

THE CONTENT OF ASPIRATIONS Once a year, La Salada transforms into something more than a place to buy and sell garments. In August 2013, in what is usually one of the marketplace’s generous parking lots, a stage has been set up from which a tiny woman presides over the Bolivian festival of the Urkupiña Virgin. The woman is announcing the names of the morenada fraternities, calling out to the growing crowd each time a new group of elaborately dressed dancers arrives at the lot. Each morenada spends months carefully preparing for this public performance: the traditional costumes—suits and ties for the men, wide skirts and tasseled shawls or sequins and feathers for the women—must be designed and sewn, and the dance must be practiced over and over until the steps are perfectly synchronized. Her voice competing with the drums and trumpets of more than fifty small orchestras, the tiny woman addresses the thousands of festivalgoers, most of them stallholders, cart-pullers, buyers, and vendors. She announces the arriving fraternity over a crackling PA system, naming its leaders and any well-known community members among its ranks. In between, she offers more general commentary: Today, we dance moved by our faith; today, once again, we thank you, dear Virgin [virgencita] of Urkupiña; thank you for providing us with health, work, and love, because without health we don’t know what would become of us. If there is any one thing characteristic of our Bolivian community that supports us, it’s labor. And labor is not simply eight hours in our sector, the textile business; labor sometimes means more than twelve hours. This is the tireless labor needed to achieve what one wishes for

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in life: some material goods, but above all a better quality of life for our families. As the master of ceremonies calls a morenada’s name, the performance comes to an end and the dancers disband. Opposite the stage, the roof of the most Bolivian of the shed markets rises behind the groupings of plastic tables and chairs where the dancers are now relaxing with bottles of beer. The market is called Urkupiña, after the Virgin who appeared to a woman tending sheep in the mountains of Bolivia, and it is the focus for the day’s carnivalesque celebrations. The festival had begun in the early morning. There was a ceremony led by the bishop in the small church just beyond the parking lot, after which we emerged to find a large statue of the Urkupiña Virgin beneath a metal arch decorated with colorful plastic flowers. The men, mostly wearing suits, overcoats, and hats, had left the church in groups but now peeled off in search of their wives. Together, husband and wife joined a line that had formed in front of the statue of the Virgin. The line advanced slowly, each couple following the same careful procedure when they reached the front. First, they knelt and prayed for a moment. Next, the woman received a small incense burner and swung it from side to side as her husband dug out his wallet. Then the woman would return the incense burner to whoever had given it to her, take the money from her husband, and pin the notes to the Virgin’s long, pink dress. After greeting this year’s festival organizers, the couple received a small parcel of food and a bottle of Coca-Cola. When each of the well-dressed couples had taken their turn, they sang the national anthem of Argentina, despite every one of them being members of the Bolivian community attending a Bolivian fiesta. I later discovered that these were the founders of the largest shed market in La Salada and that they lived their lives between Argentina and Bolivia. They exuded an air of good health and self-confidence: their fellow members of the Bolivian community, the stallholders selling garments from their rented two-by-two-meter stalls at that very moment, seemed a great deal further away than the hundred meters or so of asphalt that separated the church and the market. They would find time to kneel before the Virgin only hours later after finishing work, once the festivities attended by their smartly dressed landlords were all but over. After the national anthem, the parade set off on its route through the marketplace: groups of dancers took the lead, followed by a small

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FIGURE 6.1. A festivalgoer pins bills to the statue of the Urkupiña Virgin. Photograph

by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

number of people selected to hold the statue of the Virgin, her dress completely covered with cash. “Those are the ones who made all this: La Salada! Those are the ones who made a lot of money!” shouted a cart-puller as the morenada paraded past. The men, dressed in Men-in-Black-style suits, danced with controlled energy, performing abrupt, mechanical movements with great concentration, as though a lack of commitment or proficiency would be a sign of weakness. These men and women were husbands and wives who had participated in the construction of the marketplace. Now, twenty-five years after they had first begun to occupy the land, they danced alongside their grown-up sons and daughters. From the original occupation of the land to resisting all kinds of government attempts to transform the marketplace, this group had managed to become small landlords profiting from the rental of thousands of stalls to garment producers. All of them are also garment producers themselves and are active players in the informal real estate business, especially in the construction and leasing out of sweatshops. And a great portion of them are members of the board of the three shed markets. Their success is visible proof that it is worth making sacrifices in order that, as the tiny woman insisted to the thousands of people congregated in the parking lot, one can “achieve what one wishes for in life.”

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FIGURE 6.2. A morenada fraternity enters the lot in front of La Salada’s local church.

Photograph by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

These men and women, dancing in the middle of the marketplace while others in the community were tirelessly working, were a vivid demonstration that it was possible to be successful, even under conditions of informality and a lack of public security; that success was achievable through hard work and faith. However, success in La Salada is now measured differently. The main goal is neither the possession of two-by-two parcels to rent out—these are regulated through obscure mechanisms and no longer available—nor a seat at the table with the decision makers. Success is now judged according to a very simple principle: the number of garments sold.

INITIAL ASPIRATIONS How do La Salada outsiders learn to aspire? The stories told by entrepreneurs and other La Salada workers make clear that, before entering this new world, they perceived of a future, but they could hold only short-term aspirations. By 2001, Osvaldo had tried a variety of different jobs, from soda-water vendor to gas-station attendant. Eventually, acting on an idea given to him by his wife, he started manufacturing

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children’s pajamas at home and trying to sell them at a small weekly open-air fair near his home in the district of Lomas de Zamora, close to La Salada. Sales were low and money became extremely tight: “There was no money! And sometimes it wasn’t only a matter of having money or not, you know? It’s the general uneasiness. The fear we used to have when we went to work. I don’t remember exactly, but we used to sell just a few pairs of pajamas. I couldn’t make any progress. We were just surviving.” Around the same time, Betina and her husband Enrique were also attempting to enter into the garment industry. They began manufacturing jackets, primarily for private security guards, and selling them in another small open-air fair, this time in the Flores district close to downtown Buenos Aires. Their situation was little different from Osvaldo’s. Felipe, meanwhile, had never once considered having anything to do with garment manufacturing, but his economic situation shared similarities with Betina’s and Osvaldo’s: I was an authorized car dealer and couldn’t sell anything to anybody. Who would buy a car in that period [the 2001 economic crisis] if people could sell their cars and put the money in the bank? These people doubled or tripled the money they made from selling the car in one year. And at that moment I asked myself how that could happen. You can imagine, I couldn’t economically manage the situation. I had to indemnify the employees, pay back debts, and close down the business. When you’re facing such a situation, you ask yourself: Is it worth all that sacrifice? Leo’s story is that of a former employee at a garment company. “I worked half a year there and they fired me. I lost the job just at that time—it was in 1999, when everything started falling apart,” remembers Leo. He adds, “They started reducing the staff, and the new ones disappeared first. At that time, my mother had started to sell condiments at an open-air fair near where we lived and I started helping her.” Though Norberto and Matilde survived the 2001 crisis, several years later they also began experiencing economic problems. Matilde’s job at a workshop manufacturing jeans and Norberto’s work at a laundry paid so poorly that they eventually decided that they could no longer continue living in that way. Pablo and his family arrived at

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a similar conclusion at a similar time, but while they were still living in Bolivia. “My mother and father had jobs, but from one day to the next things changed completely. They lost their jobs and my uncle suggested coming here,” remembers Pablo thoughtfully. The same story is echoed by a great portion of this shadow garment economy: Bolivian migrants, facing a complicated economic situation in their home country, decide to follow a relative’s promise of a brighter future in Argentina. Though for many this future is severely compromised at the hands of people traffickers, Pablo and his family have been lucky enough to see their aspirations begin to come to fruition. However, for all of them, the positive experience of starting to work at La Salada did not erase the memory of where they had come from. Once they were on the path of economic progress, this past began to acquire a special meaning: of something to be avoided at any cost. Thus the fear of returning to that past remains as a source of energy and motivation for investing in the bright future they see before them. Recommendations from family members or friends, or even hearsay circulating in places like fabric shops, played a crucial role in diffusing the success promised by La Salada. Osvaldo remembers the chain of events that changed his fate: his wife, responsible for buying fabric for the pajamas they made at home, was surprised by the apparent contradiction of Osvaldo struggling to sell a few pairs of pajamas per week and the fact that the fabric shop was always crowded. Though the news painted a picture of a country falling apart, the shop was always full of customers placing orders for different colors, sizes, and textures. “These people lining up at the fabric shop were manufacturers who sold [their production] at La Salada,” Osvaldo explains. “They always asked my wife where I sold the pajamas. And then she explained that I was selling in my neighborhood and they always replied . . . , ‘No! Tell him to go to La Salada!’” Osvaldo’s voice changes when he starts telling me about his new circumstances. Arriving at La Salada changed my life, you know? It was a complete one-eighty. I went with a friend and I took some of my pajamas. I threw a piece of cloth on the floor—just started selling—and I saw a guy in front of me with a supermarket cart. And people started surrounding him, the guy selling. I was curious: What the hell is he selling? He must be giving stuff

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away for free, I thought. But I went closer and I saw him selling this really nice T-shirt. With sudden emotion, Osvaldo describes how he told his friend that they should do the same. And that is what they did: “I started manufacturing that T-shirt and I’ll tell you again: It changed my life. La Salada changed my life for good. Yes, we work a lot; there’s a lot of sacrifice. For example, we used to go to the marketplace around Saturday lunchtime, and I came back home Sunday evening. Winter or summer; rain or shine.” Though Betina’s, Leo’s, and Felipe’s stories are very different, they all arrive at the same point: they went to La Salada to sell pieces of clothing and ended up selling in a fraction of the time what they used to sell in weeks. One of Betina’s clients suggested that she visit La Salada, telling her that her corduroy jackets would sell very well there. “We went with my husband just to try. It was a Sunday. What we usually used to sell in the neighborhood wasn’t very much. We went to La Salada and earned two thousand pesos in one day. We used to earn two thousand in one month! We sold so much that we had to go and buy more fabric,” she tells me with sudden enthusiasm. Accompanied by his wife, Felipe also sold much more than he had expected. “I arrived and my first thought was: ‘I have to compete with all these people,’” he remembers. Felipe brought T-shirts and some skirts aimed at teenagers, around eight hundred pieces in total. “I sold! I was lucky and sold, and had to rush to buy additional fabric and manufacture more pieces—I didn’t have enough pieces in stock.” His story is no different from Leo’s, who recalls one of his initial trips to La Salada in 2005 when he was unable to answer a woman asking for the wholesale price of his children’s caps: “I didn’t know what to say and, to top it off, another woman bought half a dozen caps two minutes later.” Leo remembers bringing eighty caps with him and selling sixty in just one hour. At his neighborhood’s open-air fair, he used to sell thirty in a week. “I was happy. If I’m not wrong, I arrived at around eight in the morning at La Salada, and at eleven I zipped the small bag closed, took the train, and went directly to the fabric shop. Then I came back home and started cutting the patterns and sewing. I made two hundred children’s caps. My hand hurt from using the scissors.” The experience of running out of pieces of clothing to sell, encapsulated by Leo when he says “I was happy,” will be a foundational myth

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FIGURE 6.3. A La Salada entrepreneur surrounded by his products. Photograph by

Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

for everything that comes next. The description of La Salada as a space that offers multiple opportunities is fed by this type of experience; moments that mark a milestone in people’s lives and transform their previously narrow futures into a future expanded by new and higher aspirations. These are also experiences that are structurally secured. As I showed in the previous chapter, a significant portion of the population does not have access to clothing commercialized in shopping malls, outlets, and authorized stores and instead must go to La Salada. Inspired by the stimulus of constant demand, the challenge for the thousands of manufacturers such as Betina, Felipe, and Leo is to adequately read and interpret the demand, to no longer react with surprise and “not know what to say.” The stallholders’ positive experiences, however, are not only structurally secured due to demand. The very nature of the economic activity at stake is also crucial—that is, manufacturing clothing under conditions of informality and the characteristics of the marketplace itself. The manufacture of clothing is an economic activity that does not involve previous complex knowledge, and as many producers attested, “in every house there is a sewing machine.” The cutting and sewing of fabric are activities that can be easily learned, and in many cases, the know-how is transmitted from mothers to children or from wives

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FIGURE 6.4. Buyers loading their purchases onto a long-distance bus. Photograph

by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

to husbands. Participating in the market for sweatshop-produced garments does not entail any major barrier in terms of initial investments, either. Like Pablo or Leo, many interviewees found their niche in manufacturing items for children: the smaller patterns mean they can make the most of small cuts of fabric. In some cases, as another producer, Julieta, told me, it was not even necessary to have capital: “I used to collect the fabric leftovers that Bolivian [manufacturers] threw away and I manufactured women’s underwear.” A decisive element that significantly amplified options and opportunities for newcomers is the structure of the marketplace itself. The hyperflexibilized mechanisms at play at La Salada recall a LEGO set: the blocks fit together in multiple ways, and the huge number of possible combinations produces what Luhmann (1995) would call “redundancy,” the solid certainty that there are additional possibilities. We can see La Salada’s eight thousand identical-looking stalls as eight thousand LEGO blocks, the position of each determining its daily rental price. Prices vary significantly according to the services offered in each particular zone—covered by a roof in the sheds or open to the elements in the street; with or without private security; proximity to parking lots or to the main sheds’ entrances. These zones also differ according to the way marca, the brand tax described in chapter 2, is collected.

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Stallholders, therefore, can decide where to sell their production according to their individual economic situations and can react quickly to both increases and decreases in sales. The enthusiasm generated by the initial experience does not necessarily result in making the right decisions, even if La Salada’s pieces allow themselves to be combined in numerous ways. The initial experience served only as the entry point into a phase of learning, searching for a niche and establishing ways to monitor demand. Felipe learned this the hard way: “When I arrived and saw that I was doing well, I wanted to make all the pieces myself. I went out, rented a big factory, got stainless steel cutting tables because I wanted to have a great cutting factory, get public attention, and a ton more stuff. And then I figured out that there are just two of us [Felipe and his wife]. It’s like having a house and eight cars, and only driving two. What’s the point in that?” Unlike Felipe, whose disproportionate decisions could be mitigated, his neighbor Rodolfo’s could not: He purchased three hundred rolls of fluorescent cloth to make into T-shirts. He manufactured ten thousand T-shirts and sold only five hundred. “This kind of stupidity can ruin you,” confirms Felipe in reference to his neighbor, trying to draw a lesson from what had happened to him. “Here, you take a misstep and you fall. You have to walk on solid ground. And that means cutting classic designs.”

ASPIRATIONS AND KNOWLEDGE La Salada is no different from other markets governed by the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest to select those that succeed and remain. But those who manage to overcome initial difficulties—caused by their own bad decisions or events outside their control—progress to a new experience, one that is far broader. If the capacity to aspire generated by the initial experience at La Salada sparks, above all, enthusiasm—“happiness” in Leo’s words—then aspirations that arise from this second experience are characterized by their being knowledge-based. With time, the steps forward and tumbles backward that the producers experience expand their knowledge of how to combine the LEGO pieces more effectively. For example, as a result of his disproportionate investment, Felipe tells me that he learned to wait for the fashion cycles, to measure the amount of cloth he buys, and to learn which designs are in demand: “I don’t know what happened, but we made the

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T-shirts and they didn’t like them. I don’t know how to explain it, but the next year, they all sold. I didn’t lose anything, but I had invested a ton, everything. And the workshops that work for you need paying. I go, take the stuff, and pay; go, take the stuff, and pay. I had to put up with it for a while. Until the cycle was finished; once the cycle is finished: job done. You start again.” On other occasions, difficulties arise because the local government tries to intervene, for example, by prohibiting the use of certain sectors (or evicting sellers). Leo explains that initially, having sold his first caps, he was evicted from one of the sectors. “I couldn’t work anymore and I was thinking about what to do. Then I crossed to the Riviera sector. And I couldn’t believe it. I started selling twice as much as before!” Edward Fischer (2014:134) describes a similar situation experienced by coffee farmers in Guatemala. Farmers aiming to produce high-quality coffee took a great deal of risk when assigning plots for coffee production: it takes a coffee plant three to four years before it begins to produce beans. The strategy, then, was to expand production gradually in accordance with demand. Fischer points out that during the sharp drop in coffee prices in 2000–2001, many midsize producers were forced to abandon the market entirely, whereas those who still relied on diverse sources of income were able to survive. They waited for the prices to recover and then sold their production. The result, according to interviews with small producers, is the certainty that “coffee always sells.” As was the case for Felipe, who learned various lessons from his first crisis, or Leo, who learned to trust that changes could bring benefits, the coffee farmers described by Fischer became certain that they were increasing their ability to navigate the future as well as projecting their desires. In the case of the La Salada producers, the knowledge that resulted from steps both forward and backward is varied: learning to buy fabric in basic colors, changing to items of clothing that are “sure to sell,” especially those for children and women, and learning to better direct their enthusiasm. The control of emotions and a perspective cemented in acquired certainty are the new foundations of the capacity to aspire. In this way, the marketplace proves to be a mechanism that promotes the capacity to aspire: certain structural determinants serve to mobilize individual energy, making possible experiences that generate a diverse range of aspirations, from job stability and access to goods and services to increased autonomy and recognition from peers. The marketplace provides the possibility to see commercial opportunities

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and design strategies to take advantage of them. Appadurai (2013:189) names this the capacity to aspire, conceived as a navigational capacity that draws on real-world conjectures and refutations. In contrast to political aspirations, through which one aspires to achieve collective political action, aspirations in the economy give “voice” (Hirschman 1970) to the entrepreneurs, defining their role and their specialty. The La Salada entrepreneurs’ aspirations remove them from the passive role of employees and bring them closer to economic citizenship and an active role in shaping the future. Leo, Felipe, Pablo, Betina, and Osvaldo have expanded their experiences of the environment as much as they have of themselves: their improved position allows them to visualize themselves in the future and to calculate the consequences of their economic actions alongside their real desires and possibilities. However, in the social context of La Salada, both the broadening of positive experiences and the expansion of aspirations together imply a progress dependent on the environment. That is, an increased necessity to coordinate with seamsters, clients, transport providers, landlords, and numerous other suppliers. That is why “mutual dependency” and “interconnection” appear to be entrepreneurs’ favored descriptors of the marketplace. The visualization of the future is what leads to these particular descriptions, which are characterized by referring to this dependence and interconnection. It is these descriptors that allow individuals to locate themselves in the future and begin to savor personal achievements. The plan for the future is forged from present experiences. Leaning against the metal support at the corner of his stall, Felipe outlines the recipe for creating the expectation of a bright future: “Do you know the opportunity that this marketplace gives you? There are ten thousand people in here every market day. You’ve got the goods, and if you sell them to just three hundred buyers, I mean, three hundred of ten thousand, one item to each buyer, you’ve sold good. This is the possibility this marketplace gives you! You have to think about how to sell these three hundred items. If you sell three hundred items, you’re good; you cover your debts and earn some money, you go back home with money. That’s the game.” Once the stallholders have established their strategies and practices (described in the next chapter), once they have achieved a certain level of stability in their commercial routines, the future begins to be calculable and aspirations become certainties. The latter is less the result of an emotional development and more the result of knowledge sedimented through experience. Matilde explains that going to

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La Salada is worth it “because people come from all over the country, from every province,” and Betina confirms that “you come back home with money, because they [the buyers] pay in cash.” Eusebio, Pablo’s father, asserts that he continuously reinvests the money earned in new fabric, “because if I can’t sell today, I’ll sell tomorrow,” and Felipe, in a similar vein, assures me that he is not worried, because “when the marketplace is open I sell; it might not be a lot, but I sell something.” In this fashion, personal aspirations in La Salada resemble a kind of confidence that emerges as a consequence of definitions of what the marketplace is and who the participants are.

THE COLLECTIVE FICTION: THE MARKETPLACE AS A VIRTUOUS CHAIN “I’m not only working myself; I’m generating work for other people, too!” Pablo exclaims as he presses new pieces ready for sale. “What? What do you do? You work with your family . . .” I respond, slightly puzzled. “This is a chain, Mati!” Pablo puts down the iron and points at the waist-high piles of “Adidas” jackets stacked along the wall of the workshop. He pauses. He picks up the iron again, working as he talks. “I sell those,” he begins, nodding in the direction of the jackets: Work goes to the one who sells the fabric, and the guy who sells the fabric makes work for the other guy, who sells the fabric to him. So then that first guy brings more fabric. The truck driver works, the employees work, the assistants work. And that’s if we’re only talking about fabric. Once it’s in our hands, there’s work for the people who cut it, which means work for us, who sew. There’s also work for the ones selling the three stripes, for the ones making the small brand logos, for the ones who visit the marketplace—for example, the taxi drivers [remiseros]—for the cart-pullers, for the people who come to buy. Do you get how it works? Indirectly, we’re a chain [nosotros somos una cadena]! Once the initial turbulence has been overcome and a certain level of business stability is reached, individual aspirations start being integrated into shared beliefs. Pablo, Felipe, and other workers describe

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their situation as embedded in a virtuous chain, a collective belief according to which the interdependence of market actors brings about the desired results. The everyday experience of making agreements, as well as negotiating prices, quantities, and delivery times as implied in the manufacturing process, is undoubtedly what lies behind the description of La Salada as a chain. The increasing interaction among actors, which easily leads to complex interdependences, and the resulting positive effects reinforce the collective belief that La Salada is a virtuous chain. The more interdependences workers create, the clearer the perception that they belong to a chain and that their personal future is tied to the success of the chain. The evidence shows that once stallholders, cart-pullers, and warehouse owners overcome dangers and numerous coordination problems and manage to establish themselves in the business, shared beliefs allow individual aspirations to materialize. In the rest of this section I will address two key questions in this regard: What constitutes these shared beliefs? And when do individual aspirations start being connected to shared beliefs? Pablo admires his father, Eusebio. They both migrated from Bolivia before the rest of the family, finding work in different sweatshops where they learned how to sew, how to stamp, and, in general, the basics of the business. Although Eusebio is still relatively young, it is Pablo who is responsible for the lion’s share of the decision-making, and Pablo who is the face of the family business. He seems ready to follow in his father’s footsteps: guiding the family toward a more comfortable life by continuing in the garment business, diversifying their economic activities, and starting to sell supplies to other sweatshops. “When we arrived we didn’t have anything. So the job was to cut [fabric], sew, and put on the three [Adidas] stripes. And it’s like you move forward,” Pablo tells me with some pride. “We clung to making, sewing, and manufacturing! Because if you manufacture, you can make good money. That’s essential.” Pablo used to work in a sweatshop that exploited him. He had neither official identification papers nor a work contract and worked around fourteen hours per day. “Yes, it’s exploitation, Mati. You eat, sleep, and work in the same place,” he told me several times, although he was always careful to add: “But you learn a lot.” All this, however, was in the past. Pablo now speaks like the businessperson that he is; the commerce may be informal or illegal, but he is a businessperson

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nonetheless. “We wanted to start manufacturing. That plan has now been accomplished. Now our objective is to buy a little house [casita]. But to do that, maybe we’ll open a shop first. A shop for selling thread, nails, stripes, all that stuff. That comes first. And after that the little house.” “You want to open a thread shop?” I asked, unsure if I had heard correctly. “We’ll do it,” Pablo answers, without the smallest hint of uncertainty. Pablo’s aspirations, expressed without hesitation in plans described with confidence, do not seem to be mere dreams that fail to take his personal situation into account. His aspirations—the future he envisions for his sweatshop or for his stall—are founded in something more than the initial enthusiasm felt at the marketplace or the experience of selling more items than expected. His new plans result from a journey, a learning process in which he has tested his abilities, results, and aspirations. But what is also extremely important, especially in a marketplace like La Salada, is that he learned how to coordinate activities and make specific agreements. Felipe’s stall is very well positioned, situated near one of the main entrances of the Punta Mogote shed market. After many hours on board long-distance buses, buyers making their way from the parking lot to the marketplace almost obligatorily pass by Felipe’s display of children’s clothing. Felipe invests a great deal of money in rolls of fabric every month, and the stall rental costs him close to ninety US dollars per market day. We usually meet at his stall since, as is the case with all the other manufacturer-stallholders, it is almost impossible to arrange a meeting outside the marketplace’s opening hours. After several months of regularly meeting them at the marketplace for long conversations, I understood that it was distrust on their part but also lack of time. To run a business without legal contracts implies a great deal of coordination work. Manufacturers must visit the store to buy fabric and coordinate the delivery; buy supplies such as saws, chalk, or cardboard for the patterns; bring the cut fabric to seamsters and coordinate the pickup; call the cart-pullers, negotiate the price, and coordinate times and meeting points; call clients to coordinate deliveries; and arrange product storage with warehouse owners in advance. They have little spare time at their disposal: their lives are organized around the twin demands of an extremely time-consuming job and taking care of their families.

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One day, while observing people passing by his stall, Felipe described his experience in La Salada so far, how his business has been growing and the time he needs for coordinating all the tasks required to manufacture children’s clothing—using almost exactly the same words as Pablo, he calls La Salada a “chain”: I believe that during the [2001 economic] crisis time La Salada saved a lot of people. This is all a chain! That is, I sell but I have to buy fabric: therefore, the guy who sells fabric gets work. But there is also work for the guy who makes zippers, or imports zippers. There’s also work for the people who sew. This is a chain! There are a lot of families living from this. For example, you can work with your wife: one of you does one thing and the other one does another. First, your wife starts with a machine—like mine did, who sewed with a Singer [sewing machine] that we had at home. Afterward we decided to make the business bigger. We invested and so it’s growing.

In La Salada, success seems to be the result of a sequence of wellfunctioning commercial agreements. Here, individual aspirations appear to rest on the belief held by stallholders that effective understandings are possible. Sitting in a rickety wooden chair next to his wife, Beatriz, Eusebio senses that he belongs to this kind of virtuous chain, telling me, “We also make work for other people. All this is a terrific chain, Matías! It starts in Once [Buenos Aires’s Jewish quarter] when I go to pick up the fabric. And I come back here. I take a taxi [remis] and these people also get to work. You can’t imagine what this is [La Salada’s economy]. There is a terrific chain!” The routine of making agreements, of buying supplies, bargaining prices, arranging meetings, and coordinating delivery times, creates a mutual dependence, a successful fusion between the different links of the chain. Eusebio aspires to achieve a rise in sales that will allow him and his family to go on vacation. But he also wants to be able to build a house, something that will be made possible by the sale of supplies to other sweatshops. These are not random, baseless wishes without precedent; rather, they stem from the personal experience of real progress or from having witnessed the economic progress of others. The stories told by Eusebio’s family, as well as by Matilde and Julieta, are stories of progress that goes hand in hand with an increasing interdependence among actors—stallholders,

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cart-pullers, seamsters, and so forth. It is an experience of ongoing exchange among different actors performing different roles. References to chains or mutual dependencies seem to be present in situations in which the individual future is not secure, dangers loom constantly, and survival is guaranteed only by making agreements. The law in such constellations is at most a weak presence or, as is the case in La Salada, completely absent. Writing at the end of the eighteenthcentury, farmer Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur summed up the necessity of cooperation in a hostile environment. When confronted with the vast wilderness of the American frontier, every farmer, he wrote, must “look out for his neighbors,” since nothing can be achieved alone. “In a new land everything requires mutual dependence,” he continues, before adding: “People work and play together hard because all see that groups are necessary not only for frolics, songs, and merriment but also for barn raisings, swamp drainings, and rock and stump removal. Mutual interest generates both hard work and good feelings” (1782:161).

SHARED ASPIRATIONS AND THE MARKETPLACE OF PLENTY For those who work at La Salada, in addition to deploying the strategies needed to avoid myriad predatory behaviors, a seemingly innocuous problem increases the coordination work enormously: opening days and times of the three shed markets change continuously. Although the origins of the changes might lie in the commercial strategies of the managers of each shed market, there are all kinds of theories circulating in La Salada. One of these theories was explained to me by Silvina as we drank mate tea together one evening along with her husband, Alejo, the long-term cart-puller working for the Urkupiña shed market. Passing her the cup of hot tea, I brought up the issue of the market’s unpredictable opening times. She launched immediately into her explanation: It’s because of the winter! If you try to figure it out, it’s because of the winter. [It changes] in winter so that everyone can work: the coffee vendor, the cardboard collector. It’s a chain. It really is a chain. Just think! [It changes] in summer so that people can work during the day; you’ve got soda vendors, ice creams . . . All this is a chain if you think about it, because . . . for example, if it’s

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summer and you work at night, you won’t buy much ice cream or soda water. The most important thing is that everyone has some work: the baker, the tortilla vendor [tortillero], the coffee vendor, the guys who sell gin and whiskey. Silvina’s explanation may or may not be true. Either way, it reveals a dimension of the chain that other La Salada workers also insist upon: the marketplace is a chain that offers opportunities for everyone. During the same conversation, I asked Alejo, who lives two hundred meters away from the Urkupiña shed market, if the residents from the neighborhood around La Salada take advantage of the work opportunities offered by the marketplace. He could not avoid referring to the chain in his answer: “Yes, my neighbor does it, manufacturing Nike shoes. The majority, I’d say. Or they get by doing something else [se la rebuscan de otra manera]: vending food, manufacturing clothing, sports shoes . . . so, this is a chain.” Micky’s answer to my question about the opportunities offered by the marketplace is not completely transparent either, although he too emphasizes that La Salada works as a chain that provides jobs for everyone. “Look,” he says, stacking bags full of his products at the end of the day, “I’ve just bought a package of corn curls [chizitos] for my daughter: he [the seller] took it to another guy and he’ll resell it. Now, imagine I’m reselling it [the corn curls]. I could also buy leather, shoes, and resell it all. And the last fool [chabón] buys it! It’s a super chain! Every time, for a product to reach the consumer, it has to pass through twenty different people.” The fiction of a chain emerges due to the ongoing experience of interdependencies among actors and the real economic progress that stems from agreements made in order to meet the huge demand for clothing. It is a fiction that becomes a shared belief when people attribute to it the capacity to generate economic opportunities. Parallel to the group belief that La Salada is a dangerous environment and an undesirable place for workers’ children to find employment, there is a strong belief among those same La Salada workers that there are plenty of economic opportunities and strokes of luck to be found there. La Salada workers share the belief that they themselves belong to a chain. In fact, there are two contradictory but well-defined beliefs at play in La Salada: the marketplace involves several dangers but, at the same time, is a place offering abundant possibilities.

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How people perceive the dynamism of opportunities offered by La Salada was clearly illustrated by warehouse owner Micky in the introduction. When I asked him about the topic, he was, as usual, sitting at the entrance of his property observing passersby and answered, also as usual, with a metaphor. It is one that bears repeating: “You know, La Salada is like the goose that laid the golden eggs: the eggs never end. If you don’t like chicken, you can say La Salada is like a dairy cow: the milk never ends. It’s like that. It depends on you!” He went on to explain that “this marketplace is the epicenter and there are eight million businesses you can do. There are plenty of things to do. Here, everyone can make money!” Micky, like all the others, imagines without hesitation that successful businesses exist, as though the results were guaranteed. “Look, I’ll tell you,” Micky continues, warming up to his topic, if I wanted to make easy money, I’d take all this wood you see behind you and go to a sawmill. I’d go with one thousand pesos and ask them to saw the wood, to make broomsticks out of it. [I ask] how much does it cost wholesale? Let’s say, eighty cents per broomstick. Ok. I make one thousand pesos’ worth of broomsticks. I come back home with a truck full of them. Here, I sell them for five pesos each. Tell me if I haven’t made money! More than four hundred percent. That’s business! Sometimes you want to make money quickly. Norberto, who sells at La Salada with his wife, Matilde, is quick to assert that “everyone lives from this marketplace. Let’s say, if you don’t start with a cart, you can establish a warehouse [and for that] you have to buy a house, you demolish the walls and put lockers everywhere, or you start running a parking lot. Here, there’s work for everyone.” The shared belief that the marketplace generates multiple opportunities is also expressed in fantastical ideas about the future growth of the marketplace or potential sales. In 2013, inflation in the Argentine economy was running at about 28 percent, but Pablo’s views about the marketplace’s tendency for growth were clear. I asked him if he thought inflation would affect the economy in the marketplace: “La Salada is growing!” he announced in reply. “There are more stalls, every year there are more stalls! Every year.” Julieta, too, sees only a long, bright future ahead for the marketplace. Once, talking to her at her stall, I questioned the general positive belief I witnessed day after

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day at La Salada. Her tone was sharp as she responded: “Listen to me, look what happens with me. I had a shop and it didn’t work. I’d stay a thousand times here! For me, it [the marketplace] only goes in one direction: up. La Salada will never die.” Álvaro, a former member of the secret service during Argentina’s years of dictatorship and now chief of security at one of the shed markets, has witnessed La Salada’s growth firsthand. He foresees a bright future that every external observer would describe as impossible: “This has been growing continuously! I bet you, you come next year and you’ll be asking me,” he says, nodding toward one of the sheds, “‘when did it jump up to having five floors?’ And there, you’ll see five floors next year, with a second escalator and two elevators.” Today, the market is housed in a single-story building with a lone escalator leading to an unfinished second floor, surrounded by a neighborhood with serious infrastructural deficits. But this current state of affairs does nothing to dim Álvaro’s glittering vision of the future: “Downstairs, on the cement floor that’s being built, there will be shops with armored glass. Upstairs, on the second floor, there’ll only be shops selling shoes. Five or six hundred shops for shoes. And then, on the third, fourth, and fifth floors, there will be parking. And you’ll ask me in a year’s time: When did this project start?” The ideas of wealth and energy springing up in La Salada involve all those who are willing to be part of the chain. They include not only excessive expectations of garment sales; buyers, too, imagine extending the business to other provinces, and in general, all actors imagine potential deals and valuations, even down to the price of a street stall. “How much does one cost?” I ask husband-and-wife sales team Norberto and Matilde. “Well, it’s valued higher than a house in [upmarket neighborhood] Palermo! One hundred thousand dollars!” he exclaims, repeating the astronomical figure for good measure: “One hundred thousand dollars! This little stall. One hundred thousand dollars!” “Are you sure?” I reply in disbelief. “Yeah, sure, what happens is that you can sell a lot.”

THE IMPLICATIONS OF SHARED ASPIRATIONS The consequences of such an inflated belief in La Salada as a never-ending source of economic opportunities are numerous and

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far-reaching. One of the most important of these is the deployment of a set of individual strategies that should be understood as a response to the call of a promising future. Stallholders not only consider themselves to be links in the chain—active players with the ability to produce effects—they also feel powerless to resist the positive effects of the chain’s workings. In this latter sense, the shared belief seems to have a particular force: if La Salada is an inexhaustible source of opportunity, wealth, and business, individual stallholders can exert little influence on such a phenomenon. They can only respond to the conditioning imposed by this force. In the final section of this chapter, I show that shared aspirations in the context of La Salada lead to two ways of experiencing the future’s call, one more passive than the other. Both are manifestations of this phenomenon. The first of these is the experience of reaching the point of no return. That is, the experience of being caught in an unending cycle: higher aspirations lead to new standards of life and work, which also lead to increasing interdependences, and so on. Felipe is a man filled with aspirations. La Salada offered him economic progress, and he has taken full advantage of the possibilities that were open to him. After losing his car company, he is now finally returning to the good old times. Trying to understand why he was always offering new models, I asked him why he was diversifying his product range. You need to understand something: the needs you have. And you need to ask yourself if the business is enough to cover those needs. I can manufacture a T-shirt and sell it, but I have to know if it’s worth doing [. . .] it has to bring me enough profit to be able to live from. I could live hand to mouth; I’d still be alive, but it’s not what I want. So I felt the need to do more. Now I plan to open a stall for my son Juan Manuel and I’ll sell garments for children, I mean, T-shirts, all for children. For a few months now I’ve been analyzing how to do that. Because it’s not that easy. It’s not like you come, throw down some stuff, and you sell it. No, if I do this, I can’t fail; I have to keep doing this. I can’t stop anymore! The second experience is the widespread belief that one must be able to wait for an opportunity, simply positioning oneself in the right place at the right time. La Salada is an immense source of possibilities

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that need only be discovered; the task, therefore, is not only to manufacture garments but to wait patiently for the lucky break that will change your life, or at least for the client who will be your lucky break for the day. Eusebio’s sons, Pablo and Martín, are prone to flights of imagination, especially on days when business is slow. “There’s luck sometimes . . . right, Pablo?” asks Martín, continuing without waiting for his brother to respond. “Some days you can’t sell anything, but suddenly a buyer arrives and says ‘give me two hundred.’ Two hundred jackets, so it’s instantly good!” At the Modjokuto marketplace in Indonesia, Geertz (1963:35) observed a similar situation. There, the traders do not tend to be concerned about whether they will find future clients. There might be good days and bad; days with many clients and days with only a few. The idea, Geertz asserts, is less to stimulate the market in order to sell the goods by, for example, advertising; “rather it is to be present when a chance to sell appears, and most especially, to be capable to make the most of it.” At La Salada, Julieta describes exactly this process of active waiting when she tells me, “The main feature of the marketplace is that it moves a mass of people. Do you understand? [. . .] It’s like a place, a point people come to. And if you just stay where you are, doing what you’re doing, you’ll sell.” Julieta, who started manufacturing women’s underwear having survived the search for a business niche, shares her experience with her neighbors Matilde and Norberto: I was always telling them when they started [. . .] the most important thing is to stay, to be there, to be there, to be there, and it will work. It’ll work because there are a lot of people. The marketplace works! It works! You have to be fishing all the time, and you learn that over time. Because I never used to be a trader; I learned here! I learned that some things don’t work, so, well, you have to do it differently, and the result is that you don’t invest wrong. All these things you learn over time. Pablo and Eusebio, Matilde and Norberto, Osvaldo, Julieta, Micky, and Felipe all have their own businesses and aspire to different things. They have nothing in common, with the exception of the shared belief that La Salada is, as expressed by the actors themselves, a virtuous chain. Aspirations play an important role here, because they promise future benefits that cannot be considered dreams or fantasies, but as

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feasible futures which are made possible by the virtuous chain, or at least the belief therein. It seems also that this shared belief cannot be affected individually by those who work at La Salada: this is a widespread shared perception that conditions and attracts some people’s decisions. In fact, Pablo, like thousands of other migrants, responded to the call of a bright future promised by working in La Salada. The learning process that La Salada workers go through, a process that involves emotions and, above all, knowledge expressed as certainty, suggests a situation similar to the one described by Durkheim in The Division of Labour in Society. Hope, he says, has not miraculously fallen from heaven into our hearts, but must have, like all the sentiments, been formed under the influence of the facts. Thus if men have learned to hope, if under the blows of misfortune they have grown accustomed to turn their gaze toward the future and to expect from it compensation for their present suffering, it is because they have perceived that such compensation occurred frequently, that the human organism was both too flexible and too resisting to be easily brought down, that the moments when misfortune gained the day were exceptional and that generally the balance ended up by being re-established. (1933:190)

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CHAPTER 7

Narratives of Sacrifice and Autonomy

Two months after starting my fieldwork at La Salada, I attended a meeting organized by Patricia, a neighborhood leader and political broker. We were just twenty minutes’ walking distance from the marketplace, and the residents attending the gathering were, if not actually La Salada workers themselves, then their parents, friends, brothers, or sisters. A new chief inspector had just taken over at La Noria Bridge, the police station closest to the marketplace, and the residents wanted him to hear their grievances about the drug-related problems in the area. There was good reason to hold such a meeting: the prior chief inspector had been removed after a large protest had led to the occupation of the station. The protesting residents had finally had enough after years spent watching police officers protect paco kitchens and extort money from young residents, usually their addicted sons. A local resident, Elina, her voice cracking with emotion, stood before the assembled neighbors and officers and explained how her son had been killed: shot by a narcotics gang and left to die in the street. Her son had been a drug addict but had not caused any trouble. He had not needed to steal because Elina had given him money for drugs—“he was sick,” she said, simply. It transpired that the gang had been paying thirty thousand pesos per month for police protection, and no one would testify to having witnessed the murder for fear of the killers. Illustrating the extent to which Elina’s case was not an exception, Javier Auyero and María Fernanda Berti point out that “daily life in the neighborhood [where La Salada is located] became more violent during the last two decades,” and that “homicides increased 180 percent since 2007” (2015:60). Official statistics, though sparse, corroborate that Lomas de Zamora district (where Ingeniero Budge is located) exhibits the highest rates of murder and robbery in the Conurbano.

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How do people in La Salada make sense of their uncertainties, not only about future businesses, but also about their everyday insecurities and fears in their particular social environment? The previous chapter presented the vicissitudes of the aspirations held by those who work at the marketplace, from the first time they enter into the marketplace to the consolidation of their businesses. The depiction of how aspirations develop over time might give the reader the impression that the process is linear. It suggests that entrepreneurs, as well as cart-pullers and other workers, know, in more or less detail, what they want and how they should proceed in order to harvest the fruits of the promised future. Even external observers of La Salada commonly arrive at similar conclusions: economic progress in the marketplace is achieved either due to well-structured criminal organizations dedicated to selling counterfeit goods and stolen products or due to solidarity networks functioning successfully under conditions of an oppressive capitalism (Benencia 2009). In either case, the common element is that entrepreneurs clearly know what they want and that their uncertainty about future events is reduced almost to zero. After several months of ethnographic fieldwork at the site and gathering firsthand observations of entrepreneurs’ decisions and preoccupations, criminal “organizations” and “networks” seem, to a large extent, to be an artifact of external observers. They are constructs that, in the mind of the external observer, allow La Salada workers to orient their expectations (and achieve economic progress) where no institutional framework is able to do so. The situation looks quite different when La Salada entrepreneurs talk among themselves and about their everyday activities. In listening to these conversations, I discovered that the opposite is true: decisions related to the business are experienced with a great deal of uncertainty. And that is not all. In La Salada, there is not only uncertainty about the right economic decisions but also fears and insecurities directly related to the possibility of falling victim to crime and losing everything. If we are to understand La Salada entrepreneurs’ experience of aspiring we need to pay attention to the stories they tell in the course of their everyday lives; for instance, while working in their sweatshops, waiting for customers at their stalls, or hanging out with other entrepreneurs. Although La Salada entrepreneurs discuss different issues when they are at the marketplace compared with when they are at home, there is a well-defined repertoire of themes. Their favorite stories tackle two topics: sacrifice, the harsh personal conditions that make their economic activities possible, and economic independence,

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the desire to not depend on others. Though the latter serves to inspire entrepreneurs and outsiders to commit themselves to work, the former takes a heavy toll on those wanting to make a living at La Salada. Scrutinizing these stories provides us with a privileged vantage point from which to observe entrepreneurs’ experiences of aspiring under conditions of uncertainty and, just as crucially, a lack of personal security. In an atmosphere where the legal system does not play any significant role, the latter is far from a minor issue. It commonly determines the way people cope with economic uncertainty; their feelings of vulnerability, their perceptions of the ambiguous role played by the authorities, and widespread interpersonal distrust demand constant attention and serious thinking about how to run the business without perishing in the attempt. The challenge, using Giddens’s idea of “ontological security,” consists in overcoming the critical experiences of others. Since such ontological security can hardly be “maintained in a more fundamental way by the very predictability of routine” (1984:50), entrepreneurs have to continuously monitor their trajectories. Fundamental anxieties cannot be easily bracketed off in order to go on doing business; that is, reconciling the experience of harsh conditions and the promises of aspirations requires serious personal investment (in chapter 8 I examine such personal efforts and monitoring practices in detail). In what follows, I explore ethnographically the connections between these two opposing experiences: on the one hand, gaining autonomy and independence and trying to maintain trustworthiness when it comes to giving shape to their own future, and on the other hand, a present characterized by distrust, powerlessness, and fear. As I will show, the contradictory character of both is not realized in collective actions that would reduce the distance between them—for example, through protests intended to bring about improvement in citizen security or the elimination of the marca “tax.” Conversely, I will show that collective action, which is difficult given the high levels of interpersonal distrust and the hyperflexible structure of the market, is replaced with a powerful discourse centered on sacrifice and the value of achieving independence, as well as constant moral concerns about opportunistic behavior. By framing their physically and psychologically demanding experience as sacrifices and hard work that need to be done, entrepreneurs are justifying their everyday engagement with the role of businessperson. There is an even greater likelihood that, through this framing,

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entrepreneurs are making sense of situations that put them and their relatives at serious risk. However, more importantly, their stories tend to connect their sacrifice with references to wealth, economic progress, and success. According to this narrative, the costs of being part of La Salada today will be rewarded in the future. The values of sacrifice, credibility, and autonomy allow workers at La Salada to ascribe meaning to the day-to-day hostility they encounter, as well as allowing them to ascribe meaning to the promises that are always on the verge of being fulfilled. Meanwhile, vulnerability is the standard point of departure for all those who work in such an environment; it is a pervasive experience that people in La Salada must overcome if they want to keep doing business.

SACRIFICE AND HARD WORK AS PRECONDITIONS OF A PROMISING FUTURE Three days a week the marketplace is a hive of activity. La Salada works: buyers from all over travel to the marketplace to find garments, and entrepreneurs are there, ready to satisfy them with new designs, colors, and prices. It is not only the high, structurally determined demand that explains the success of La Salada. Equally crucial is entrepreneurs’ ability to overcome their uncertainties, fears, and insecurities in a highly hostile environment and still manage to interpret buyers’ needs and desires. In the next chapter, I offer a detailed depiction of entrepreneurs’ three basic sets of strategies and practices that are designed to take advantage of economic opportunities; that is, how they manage to overcome the many sizable drawbacks in order to keep the flame of aspiration alive. But first, in what follows I focus on the narratives that interconnect events of lived experience (Ricoeur 1985). More concretely, I will dissect the stories that entrepreneurs tell when they navigate the discrepancy between feeling intensely vulnerable, constantly afraid, and exposed to numerous dangers, while also perceiving a wealth of future possibilities. In the discussions I had with entrepreneurs and other workers, the repertoire of themes was dominated by one topic in particular: the narrative of sacrifice and hard work that would be, in the long run, their ticket out of La Salada (or to a much better position within it). There is affinity here with the literature on entrepreneurial narratives, in which images of entrepreneurs as hard workers and explorers, and

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even victims of risk, big business, and competition are common, especially in organizations and family enterprises (Anderson, Drakopoulou Dodd, and Jack 2009; Hyrsky 1999; Nicholson and Anderson 2005). Hamilton (2006), for instance, asserts that “suffering is a powerful element in the narratives of founding and developing enterprises,” which is relevant in accounts of “dramatic events which impact on the family and the business” and an expression of the “hard work required in the day-to-day.” In this respect, we have only to remember the role of the shed-market manager Jorge Palacio (examined in chapter 4) and his ideas about the characteristics of the successful entrepreneur. Pablo introduces the topic to our conversations often. We were talking about the illegal behavior of police forces in the neighborhood, and I was particularly interested in the question of whether his sweatshop had been illegally searched by the police. In his rented stall, his mother at his side, he did not reply to my question directly. Instead, he narrated an event he had experienced on the way to the marketplace several days previously. The direction of the dangerous event is interesting: the scene begins at Pablo’s house and reaches its victorious conclusion at the stall. Also relevant is that Pablo completes his narration by alluding to the image that, he believes, people have of producers like him; namely, rich people who have vehicles, money, and houses. This is, according to Pablo, the reason why thieves target them. He is talking about his situation and his future. He is not rich yet—but he probably will be one day. “The issue is that all this costs money!” he says, “all this” referring to setting up his business. The issue is [preventing] them [thieves] from taking your things. All this costs us! In order for us to have a [sewing] machine, as I told you the other day, we went through robberies; we suffered robberies of goods [mercadería]; we haven’t slept many times; we used to come to the marketplace without having slept. Nothing justifies [the robbery], nothing justifies it, because you make a lot of sacrifice and then they come and take everything you have. This is my source of work! Beatriz, Pablo’s mother, joined the conversation: Have you told him that we were shot when we were coming to the marketplace? It was a market day; customers asked us for

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products and the seamsters didn’t deliver stuff, so we could only come late, let’s say around 8 p.m. They shot us. And before, my husband told me: “We need to be careful, there are some guys on a motorcycle and they turned the lights off.” And no sooner said than done. The motorcycle caught us. My husband did this [hand gesture]. We could go through. I don’t know if they got scared or what. Just because God wanted it, we arrived here. Pablo added: “The problem you have is that everything is on display. Everyone sees everything. If you have a Kangoo [a small Renault truck], you know that he’s an entrepreneur. Because the people who usually drive these cars are entrepreneurs. And what do robbers think about that? That those who have these cars are entrepreneurs. They [thieves] say: ‘Wow! He has money, he has houses!’” Sacrifice, resilience, and physical effort is usually associated with the initial period in which entrepreneurs and workers begin working at La Salada. Matilde refers to this experience as the time “to pay your dues.” The expression, which appears frequently in everyday conversations with sweatshop workers (see chapter 4) and other people involved in La Salada, refers to more than just the pervasive feeling of lacking adequate protection and the ability to avoid dangers. Personal investment is strongly linked to a conception of work in which physical energy and skill play a major role to the detriment of ideas of work based on rights. In other words, work is a notion that denotes everything but an activity related to the labor code. A good expression of this prevailing notion of work in La Salada is found in the announcement made by the master of ceremonies during the festival of the Urkupiña Virgin: “Without health we don’t know what would become of us. If there is any one thing characteristic of our Bolivian community that supports us, it’s labor. And labor is not simply eight hours in our sector, the textile business; labor sometimes means more than twelve hours. This is the tireless labor needed to achieve what one wishes for in life.” When I talk to Leo, the producer of children’s caps, he makes the following pertinent point: MATÍAS: Why do you think that there are economic opportuni-

ties here at La Salada? LEO: In order for the possibility to exist, those who come here have to want to make sacrifices if they want to prosper [para

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prosperar]. Because if you don’t make sacrifices as a beginner here, you can’t [prosper]! If you start, you come to this place and want to start from the bottom; you have to make a lot of sacrifices! As I told you: to cut, sew, and sleep just a few hours. If you don’t do that you can’t make progress, because you won’t be able to compete with the big ones. The big ones are already well established; they have their sweatshops where people are badly paid. They even have machines that do the printing [la estampería]; they have everything, so they can offer good prices and deliver big quantities. When you start you can’t deliver much stuff. In order for you to make a lot you have to pay a lot, too; you have to get a sweatshop, but what usually happens is that you don’t have the capital for that. And you won’t be able to compete because you have to pay the sweatshops [that sew for you], the printing work, the washing, and the rest. So you can’t compete with prices. So the way to compete is to cut [the patterns] and sew. You can send stuff away to be sewn but you shouldn’t let them do it all. You have to do it yourself. Here, Leo refers to hard work in the sweatshop, a strategy whose aim is to make sure that the worker is able to compete. “Not letting them do it all” means not outsourcing work, which ultimately means spending more hours at work oneself. However, the narratives of sacrifice are also present when it comes to the huge amount of time spent at the marketplace. Felipe, for instance, emphasizes that La Salada changed his life for the better, but at the cost of being able to spend time with his family: “I started manufacturing the same T-shirt and it changed my life [. . .] but it was a lot of sacrifice. I started in La Rivera [a sector of the marketplace], and I used to work there from Saturday lunchtime until Sunday evening. Winter, summer; raining, not raining.” Emilio’s story is different. In an environment in which people talk about working hard in order to succeed, success is not guaranteed. In other words, if you can win, you can lose, too. And Emilio lost, falling victim to one of the government’s latest interventions. He had managed to occupy a significant portion of one of the avenues near the marketplace, making his living predominantly by renting out the stalls he had set up on the squatted land. The local government, in one of its periodic attempts to show it was dealing with La Salada, removed the metal structures used as market stalls and succeeded in evicting the

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squatters. I asked Emilio about his relationship to shed-market manager Jorge Palacio. Though he remembers the relationship well, he is keen to point out the progress he made without Jorge’s help. He recounts his achievements and, finally, he refers to the number of hours he used to work. “[Jorge] used to tell me: ‘Come inside [the sheds]. Take a stall and stay there.’” Emilio refused the offer because he did not trust the manager. Now, Emilio is ill and jobless. Remaining upbeat, however, he claims: I don’t regret that decision. Thanks to God I could build my house. That was the most important thing: I could finish my house. Perhaps I wasn’t able to build it in the way I really wanted, but now I have a roof, my house. Thanks to God and La Salada. I don’t need to regret all this. I could please myself and buy a car. It would’ve been impossible to do that working as a street vendor like before. I don’t believe it would’ve been possible. I did it! And I used to work there thirty hours! A lot. Thirty, thirty-five . . . thirty-two, twenty-six hours [nonstop]. The huge discrepancy between the harsh working conditions that entrepreneurs and others experience day after day and the bright future they perceive is also narrated in religious terms. In what follows, Pablo makes sense of his slow economic progress as God’s will. In his depiction, a luxurious life would be a fake life and penalized by God. For him and his family, therefore, there is only one way to live: to keep making sacrifices. Note that Pablo compares his situation with the “excesses” of other Bolivian producers. In the end, his words are a justification of both his economic difficulties in acquiring a house and the sacrifices, the huge personal investments, made by him and his family. MATÍAS: Would it not be better to move to another place? PABLO: No, actually it would be advisable to buy [the house]

where we are now. To buy the house, so we don’t pay rent any longer. But, well, the time for that will come! Lots of people say “I want a house.” Perhaps you’ve already heard that; Bolivian people [paisanos] usually say it. But what happens? God is righteous. God wants us living with the daily bread, just as we do; he wants us to keep following the word of the Lord. And

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spreading the message! What would happen if God gave us a house, cars, money? What would happen? If God gave me a lot of cash [guita], a lot of cash, I would be lost, my father drinking [chupando] because he has money. We would be drinking; we don’t know what my siblings would be doing and I would be driving around in a car all day. I would crash, I would have an accident. So, God does things for a reason. He prefers that we live the way we do, that you keep doing your things, that we live hand to mouth, that we keep working and live to just get by. And God bless you! Of course, [with enough money] in order to be able to pay the bills, the food, the rent, and so forth. It is interesting that Pablo also compares his situation with that of other Bolivian producers whose economic progress is apparently greater. Pablo says, “My countrymen [paisanos], I mean in the Celina neighborhood, a lot of my countrymen have money. They celebrate big parties and drink . . . crates and crates of beer. They pretend to be something they’re not. From the outside they’re one thing, but inside another! Outside, ‘I have money,’ but inside they’re starving; they abandon their children starving, or their children don’t have anything to wear.”

OSVALDO’S BUSINESS REPUTATION Osvaldo looks tired. He has spent a long, quiet day sewing in his workshop, a cluttered room in the modest house he shares with his wife and children. Finally allowing himself a break, he eases himself into a small chair. Unprompted, he begins to explain to me the intricate ways in which the “successful entrepreneur” relies on what he considers to be good working practices: OSVALDO: Definitely, there are people in La Salada who sell

[garments] very well; a lot. There are people who do things properly. MATÍAS: But what do you mean by “doing things properly”? How do you do things that way? OSVALDO: I’ll give you an example. Last week, my wife piled up the Gap jackets for me to bring to the marketplace. One

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jacket had come unstitched. What’s the right thing to do in this case? I shouldn’t bring that jacket to the marketplace. Or, once I’m there and I notice the product is unstitched, I should put it away! But what usually happens? In reality? If I run out of product, I sell you that [unstitched] jacket. I sell you everything. I even sell you a jacket without a sleeve . . . and that’s wrong. Ultimately, if you do that, you’re screwing people. Understand? MATÍAS: . . . and next time they won’t buy your stuff. OSVALDO: Exactly! You justify it to yourself by saying: “Oh! I have to do it because I need it [the money],” but it’s just wrong. Sometimes I justify it to myself when I do things wrong, but I shouldn’t do it. Because this is phony behavior. Understand? Look, the guy who doesn’t do it, he sells his stuff for five pesos more, but the buyers get home, put the stuff in their shops and all the items are perfect! You don’t see any defects. That’s what working properly is! In the end, he might sell five pesos more expensive than me, but he sells and I don’t. Because his conduct is good and people buying from him can do it with their eyes closed. I can offer a jacket for ten pesos less, but the guy will buy it from others because he knows that all the stuff he buys will be perfect! MATÍAS: But . . . is this something you think could happen, or you already suffer the consequences of doing it that way? OSVALDO: It’s real! Look, this year I lost some wholesale buyers just because of that. His break is over; Osvaldo pushes himself slowly to his feet. For a moment, I had the distinct impression that our talk had become a confession, that he had found the right moment to explain his everyday struggles, his experiences of hardships in the production process and other market pressures. At the same time, however, he had peppered his confession of commercial sins with short stories about strokes of luck, like the buyers from Paraguay who bought ten thousand items in one go. “There are buyers,” he says, and when he does, his tired face lights up. Osvaldo moves across the room to take up his position at the ironing station. Holding up a large commercial iron, he continues: “I lost these wholesale buyers because, instead of ironing with this iron, I did it with the small portable one. And you know what happens? The print peels off. The thing is that with this iron it takes longer, and

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because I’m lazy, I used the portable one. And that’s wrong! Afterward I say to myself, ‘Ugh! What a pity, this guy used to buy a lot from me!’” His confession in full flow, he suddenly switches from first person to second person, from “I” to “you.” It is as though he does not want to hear or remember his mistakes, attributing them to someone else instead: “The truth is that he doesn’t buy your stuff because you’re doing things wrong. That’s how things are! You’ve gotta learn! Everyone gets what they deserve! There’s no excuse like ‘the problem is this country’ or ‘the dollar.’ No, there’s no excuse. No! When you’re not doing well it’s because you’re doing things wrong!” Osvaldo sounds firm in his opinions; he has no doubt. It seems that this issue, his behavior as a reputable businessperson, stands out among all his many preoccupations. It seems not to be a new concern, but something that he has been working to improve: I could be doing a hundred times better, but I always end up doing silly things. You know? The usual: I’m selling something well and I end up selling unstitched, stained, faded items . . . again, it’s wrong! It’s simply wrong! Do you get it? It’s a pity, because the demand for garments is there. The other day, a guy bought ten tight pants and returned seven. I didn’t know that they were defective. You can imagine, I wouldn’t sell him seven defective pieces! In the end, I dropped the price of each piece and he didn’t lose anything. Osvaldo’s ideas about the relationship between earning money and “doing things properly” reflect the problem of “working properly” and one’s emerging reputation. It is a tension between opportunistic capitalist behavior and managing to perform good commercial practices. Being a free rider or building a trusted reputation in business seems to be a defining choice for La Salada entrepreneurs like Osvaldo. He knows, however, what he has to do; careful modes of work will bring success, and his aspirations will thus be fulfilled. His reflections and what he ultimately defines as desirable bring to light a common situation among La Salada entrepreneurs: moments of uncertainty and trouble that are mastered in view of previously chosen courses of action aimed at taking advantage of economic opportunities. Osvaldo’s words reveal him struggling with options and putting into practice his “power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction,

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confusion, and difficulty” (Dewey 2008:116). In his struggle to build a reputation, he tries to internalize a specific mode of working, which some time ago was unknown for him. But now he identifies with “good entrepreneurship.”

AUTONOMY AND DISTANCE FROM STATE REACH Osvaldo’s state of uncertainty and his dilemma about how to behave properly are part of a learning process that takes place under conditions of market competition. In this type of constellation, he goes through a learning process that gives him a specific subjectivity, which is characterized by its focus on the individual, entrepreneurship, the benefits of competition, and the requirement of minimal state intervention. In the same way as the sellers described by Gordon (2010) in Challapata, Bolivia, people like Pablo, Felipe, Julieta, and Matilde had no alternative but to become garment entrepreneurs and compete. Julieta, when she became a single mother to her two children, was forced to find a source of income that would allow her to go further. She started by looking for fabric remnants discarded by Bolivian manufacturers on the shores of Riachuelo, the heavily polluted river that borders La Salada. As the pieces were small, she figured that one way to make something out of them would be to make women’s lingerie. Once they have become confident in relying on their own resources, entrepreneurs such as Julieta do not consider state intervention necessary or useful, with the exception of providing security against potential robberies or violent events. Any other state interference would threaten their ability to sell, to make decisions, and to fulfill the aspiration to become a successful entrepreneur. Thus, in the subjectivity emerging out of these experiences in the context of La Salada, “making sacrifices” is oriented toward a particular goal: you have to become master of yourself. You have to be able to compete. You have to know how to work well. You have to become independent of the state. You may not depend on anyone. You have to understand that you are solely responsible for anything that goes wrong. This mantra lies behind Osvaldo’s words when he asserts that a buyer “doesn’t buy your stuff because you’re doing things wrong,” which is why “you’ve gotta learn” that “everyone gets what they deserve,” and “when you’re not doing well, it’s

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because you’re doing things wrong!” In this narrative, however, being successful is not synonymous with accumulating large sums of money, but with building a modicum of autonomy based on a regular income. In this regard, Matilde told me the following more than once when referring to the sale of the aprons she prints with the image of Disney’s Violetta: As I told you last time, at our age we [Matilde and husband Ernesto] don’t get steady jobs. If you need to work, you have to be in a sweatshop sewing between twelve and twenty-four hours. We already did that, and I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want to be sitting for twenty-four hours. Now we earn five pesos [we don’t earn much], but they are ours. This way, you don’t earn too much, but we’re working at home, which is a different situation. You sit, you get up when you want. But when we receive orders, we then work at full speed. At home, it’s not the same as working with a boss. This narrative praises values that the literature typically associates with neoliberal constellations; in La Salada, it is coproduced through the negative experience people have of the state and politics. In the economy in which La Salada is a major player, and as I have shown in prior chapters, different official authorities take on an overtly negative role, stimulating interpersonal conflicts and a profound distrust of state authorities. This way, authorities collaborate in setting the conditions for the emergence of a specific type of economic rationality in which to be detached from state reach is perceived as something positive. If neoliberal ideology stresses the role of the creative and innovative entrepreneur, authorities in the context of La Salada unintentionally cement this discourse by undermining their own legitimacy; entrepreneurs have to be innovative, creative, and distant from the state. For example, in this social constellation, the good reputation of entrepreneurs is built as distance is gained from the state and the formal economy. Economic progress, even if it is low or incipient, facilitates building a reputation that is positively valued in a context in which a large part of the population not only has suffered the consequences of the formal economy cyclically falling apart but also experiences corrupt state officials and politicians every day. The distance gained from the state,

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then, alludes to the possibility of entering and leaving this informal economy, of investing in a personal economic project, and of being able to get out if necessary. The following conversation between Julieta, Matilde, Matilde’s husband, Ernesto, and myself is a clear example of such constructed distance from the state, which illustrates both its benefits and its limits: MATÍAS: For example, how do you experience progress here in the marketplace? JULIETA: I bought my sewing machine, my family machine, my overlock, my iron, my motorbike . . . MATILDE: We got to have the sweatshop, we made progress! MATÍAS: And where do you see that progress? MATILDE: In the things that you can buy, things we couldn’t have before . . . JULIETA: [I notice progress in that] I don’t need a husband who supports me! I don’t need a husband next to me [laughing]; I don’t depend on anyone else but me. And I like it, I find it gratifying! MATILDE: You can paint your house, repair your house. You can make progress! You don’t do it instantly, from one day to the next, but you see it over time. ERNESTO: You make progress, I think, in a more spiritual way. Because it gives you pride to do what you do and say that you don’t depend on anyone. Because if you . . . let’s say tomorrow you’re working in a factory and you get fired, you don’t have job . . . and you want to shoot yourself in the head. . . . The only advantage of working without a boss: you work your nine hours and you can go home. JULIETA: Sometimes I feel like not coming over here to the marketplace. It makes me tired, it made you tired! These weird schedules of the marketplace make you tired. MATÍAS: But you just told me that you like to come here . . . JULIETA: Yes, but sometimes you get tired. [. . .] Sometimes you run out of patience. MATILDE: The same thing happens to me. If there was another, better option, I’d do something else. But you wake up knowing that today is market day and you’ve got to go right ahead! Because you’ve got to bring home the dough.

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Matilde pauses. She tells the story of her brother, who is hospitalized. Her story reveals the negative aspects of working under conditions of extreme flexibility. It’s difficult. For example, I have a very sick brother, my mom is already old, we’re the only support, do you see? I’ve got my brother who’s divorced, and it’s like if you don’t come to the marketplace you’re not providing. Well, my mom gets her monthly retirement, but we can’t all live on her retirement. We’re a family already. And when I get down, for instance, when I see my brother—only God knows, he’s in a coma, two months already—and it’s difficult! You see, it’s hard to start the day with all this thinking, but then you’ve got to say: No! I’ve got to go to the marketplace and I’ve got to get my act together, you have to smile even if you don’t feel good inside. The next chapters provide evidence about how this autonomy from the state, understood as an ambiguous goal and heavily conditioned by high levels of distrust toward state authorities, is constructed every day while producing at the sweatshop and the marketplace. Sacrifice, hard work, and autonomy, all of which are values associated with success, give shape to everyday narratives. These narratives allow La Salada workers to make sense of a series of risks and dangers that constantly conspire against market exchanges. If at first glance these narratives are similar to those of any other entrepreneur, a closer look shows that the insecurities and uncertainties behind these narratives are qualitatively different. La Salada garment entrepreneurs have to overcome direct or indirect experiences of robbery, violence, and assassination if they want to succeed in the business. Therefore, these narratives go hand in hand with a crushing physical and psychological exhaustion resulting in part from the constant need to be “alert” and “attentive” to dangers.

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CHAPTER 8

Taste, Credit, and Bullets

As shown in previous chapters, money collectors were a regular fixture at La Salada. They were present every market day, visiting stalls both inside and outside the shed markets. All year round, they came to illegally collect fixed sums of money from entrepreneurs selling counterfeited garments and would register debts where necessary. Being embedded in this setting, sharing time with people at their stalls and in their sweatshops, I was able to recognize that this behavior, performed with an uncommon regularity and compulsory character, ended up shaping people’s expectations. Pablo and Leo would know beforehand that the collector would pass and would have the money ready. More importantly, they would consider the payment as a fixed production cost and include it in the final prices. Other stallholders, meanwhile, would avoid using brand logos because they did not want to pay any extra money to corrupt police officers or La Salada managers. In other words, the payment was not just money or corrupt behavior; it embodied a deeply ingrained expectation. Of course, stallholders would always complain about this particular mandatory payment, arguing that it was an illegal action, that the sums were too high, or simply that they already had other expenses. And they were certainly not wrong. However, they tended to remain silent about the advantages that this kind of regular payment afforded them. If we search for the bedrock on which these informal and even illegal practices rest, if we study the unwritten fine print of the informal contract stallholders enter into, we soon see that the constraints imposed by police officers and delegates of managers also open a wide range of possibilities for stallholders to make economic gains. To borrow Fligstein’s (2001) terminology, we could define these recurring illegal practices as constituting the informal architecture of the market, a

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dense, undocumented structure that not only dictates the conditions for doing business in this field but also, and more importantly, allows lawbreaking businesses to exist at all. Adopting this perspective, we could even zoom out and consider a wider spectrum of actors, from the national and provincial to the local level, all acting in the same way; namely, as forces that under certain conditions permit the emergence of economic opportunities otherwise regarded as illegal. In sum, several layers of actors and institutions at different levels shape what at the micro level is experienced by thousands of garment manufacturers and stallholders as a simple economic opportunity. In this chapter, I unpack and analyze how a series of La Salada entrepreneurs, exploiting this enforcement-free social space, take advantage of the economic opportunities they perceive. Chapter 6 focused on the perception of numerous earning opportunities and how these perceptions became shared expectations that indicated imminent access to goods, services, and peer recognition. To follow on from this, my argument is centered on how grasping the future is translated into specific strategies and practices carried out by entrepreneurs. More specifically, I aim to show how they make sense of perceived economic opportunities and translate these perceptions into specific work activities. To do so, we must turn an attentive eye toward a series of practices that are crucial for capturing business opportunities. We need to focus on three sets of activities: those aimed at interpreting what is in fashion, those concerned with financing businesses, and those oriented toward avoiding conflicts and potential violent events. In other words, we have to pay attention to how entrepreneurs perceive fashion trends and potential target groups, how they make decisions regarding dressmaking, and how they choose which brands to counterfeit. Additionally, we need to observe entrepreneurs’ businesses in relation to available sources of credit and how these producers behave once they ask for credit. And we also have to examine which strategies La Salada entrepreneurs deploy in order to avoid violent events and robberies; that is, how they behave in an environment riddled with acute interpersonal distrust, pervasive personal insecurity, and rampant violence—a “no-man’s-land” where “anything goes” (Auyero and Berti 2015:63). There are three sets of practices connected with the informal governance structures at work in La Salada, which constantly re-create entrepreneurs’ perception that lawbreaking behaviors are permitted under certain conditions. Entrepreneurs respond to these imposed

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conditions by reproducing or rejecting them or finding alternative ways to deal with them. Expressed differently, this chapter examines specific practices performed by entrepreneurs and shaped through the general conditions established by official authorities and analyzed in previous chapters. Entrepreneurs face a constant barrage of questions: How will the omnipresent possibility of falling victim to thieves be dealt with? Which brand logos will be counterfeited? Which patterns will be used? Which group will be targeted in the new season (women, men, children, teenagers, sportspeople, homemakers, uniformed employees)? How can the acquisition of a new stitching machine or fabric rolls be financed? Answers to these questions can be found through a detailed examination of routinized practices as well as processes of perception of, for instance, what entrepreneurs consider to be in fashion, how they get credit, or how they neutralize violent events amid such a particular social environment. Ignoring these processes would have two important consequences. First, we would fail to understand the historical and economic relevance of La Salada entrepreneurs. As I show later, their products are far from exact replicas of the originals (i.e., La Salada products simply do not exist in the legal market), meaning that they innovate in Schumpeter’s (1947) sense; that is, they bring new combinations of elements to the market. Additionally, they innovate by offering low-cost garment items to a segment of the population that is not otherwise catered to. Second, we would be left unable to grasp the way market order is created at the micro level, a market order achieved through a constant string of decisions observed as practices, embedded in hierarchies and sui generis organizational forms. A central argument based on my observations in the field is that taking advantage of perceived economic opportunities, those that continuously feed people’s aspirations, implies acquiring particular sets of habitual practices. As I will show, entrepreneurs’ actions aimed at taking advantage of economic opportunities need to be understood in terms of new habits. Practices related to grasping what is in fashion, enhancing trustworthiness, and avoiding conflicts are, according to a pragmatist view, solutions to unsettling events faced by entrepreneurs that over time become routinized activities. These habituated, unreflective actions are, however, always exposed to renewed shocks that, in turn, force new creative outcomes (Dewey [1922] 2002; Joas 1992:191). Entrepreneurs need to develop renewed forms of behavior,

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commonly by way of trial and error, and, since they are essential for conducting businesses in such environments, they have to continue to hone them. In a social space utterly hostile to conducting business, the La Salada entrepreneurs persistently strive to execute their goals. They have to figure out how to ensure their physical security and transform what they learn into disciplined behavior. Additionally, when confronted with the wide range of activities involved in garment production, they need to develop routines for gathering information in order to be able to interpret buyers’ dressing preferences. In a similar fashion, entrepreneurs are compelled to become trustworthy credit takers from informal sources and to establish long-term relationships with wholesale buyers. Using evidence gathered during my fieldwork, I show that such sets of habitual practices are learned. The decision to enter into the marketplace triggers a series of situations in which entrepreneurs’ ideas, goals, and behaviors are put to the test and they have to learn how to persist in their goals. This learning process, through which entrepreneurs improve their ability to stay in business, shapes the particular type of subjectivity examined in the previous chapter, which is imbued with values commonly associated with the neoliberal program. Thus, in what follows I examine how entrepreneurs monitor the market in order to be able to interpret what is in fashion, before describing the sources of credit, especially the rotating credit associations. Finally, I address entrepreneurs’ attempts to avoid conflicts and violent events.

MONITORING AND THE ART OF INTERPRETING TASTE “I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ve somehow lost track. I don’t know what the newest model of the skirt is.” The new season was approaching, and Pablo was unable to identify the latest skirt worn by Las Leonas (the Lionesses), the women’s national field hockey team. In Argentina, field hockey is a national passion, second only to soccer. But yesterday I watched the game, Italy against Argentina, the Las Leonas game, and I saw the uniform worn by the Italians . . . Puma, beautiful! I liked it very much! Puma. It was different. The problem is . . . you know. Here people like Adidas,

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everyone! Actually, it’s women who like Adidas: cumbieras [women who like cumbia music] and girls who play sports. Women buy Adidas immediately! But with Puma, you have to swim upstream [tenés que remarla] . . . this is the problem. This is why I had to transform something from Puma into Adidas. I took the Puma pattern, but I put the Adidas stripes on it. By this time, I had already heard Pablo talk about transforming the cut of one brand’s product into a counterfeit Adidas piece, but I wanted to see the process firsthand. I planned to buy a hockey skirt for Pablo, the current design worn by Las Leonas, so that he could show me the production process. I imagined us in his home sweatshop, him taking the skirt apart, trying to get the pattern that would be the first step in the copying process, and me looking on, gathering fantastic, unique data. But Pablo did not know what the newest skirt model was. I questioned him about the skirts at his stall, Pablo inside the wire-mesh structure surrounded by the last of this season’s models and me outside. He mentioned clothing designs, brands, field hockey games, players, types of patterns, and the preferences of specific social groups. The copying process turned out to be much more complex than I had imagined. I gradually got the impression that Pablo was not talking to me, but to himself, that my questions had triggered the process for dealing with the concern of the moment; to determine what the next trend would be. He needed to decide which clothing item would define the next season, the period covering the end of the year when sales tend to be highest. In the end, my plan to observe the copying process came to nothing; a few weeks later, the new Adidas skirts were already lined up on hangers hooked onto the roof of the stall. In La Salada, thousands of stalls line up to compete for the constant stream of clients passing through the aisles asking for certain brands, quality, prices, colors, delivery times, quantities, and transport possibilities for bulk purchases. Something as simple and apparently insignificant as offering last season’s model of a hockey skirt could be reason enough for a client, with other clients in other provinces in mind, to move on from Pablo’s stall in search of the latest design. Pablo had told me that some brand logos are more desirable than others, and I could well imagine that, in turn, his clients (mostly wholesale buyers) had their own clients expecting the same in other parts of the country. These expectations were mostly transmitted during short, casual chats,

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FIGURE 8.1. Manufacturing branded garment items. Photo by the author.

by feeling the texture of the fabric or observing details like the seam and logo. Later, I also came to understand that the chain of expectations concerning the use and performance of garments forced Pablo to improve his product. He was obliged to overcome problems of cut and quality so that he could offer items that were considered to be in fashion. Once Pablo was able to plug into this long chain of aesthetic expectations, the new skirt promised to reach new clients, diversify his product portfolio, and, crucially, increase sales. We might be tempted to assume that, in a market like La Salada, manufacturing fashionable clothing—products able to take part in the world of symbols and meanings, social hierarchies, and feelings of belonging—means simply copying brand logos and patterns designed by established companies. But what does being in fashion mean for La Salada producers? How are they able to connect with such extended expectations indicating new tendencies, preferences, and tastes? Or, in more general terms, what do producers do in order to be able to extend their future horizons in the sense of projecting the new season’s clothing that will really be worn? If we want to comprehend how sweatshop producers prepare themselves for the new season and the

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accompanying new fashion trends, we need to examine a set of practices that are crucial for identifying opportunities and for organizing production around a handful of ideas oriented toward the future. La Salada entrepreneurs are fully aware that certain practices, defined in the specialized literature as copying, contestation, interpretation, or translation, are crucial for increasing profit margins and staying on track to fulfill their aspirations. In fact, the issues of brand reproduction, the diffusion of intellectual property, and the way certain brands are re-created locally (Coombe 1993, 1998; Nakassis 2012; Thomas 2015, 2016) are the subject of a growing body of anthropological literature, which consistently challenges the “copy/original” dichotomy and proposes notions of style, bricolage, hybridity, and creolization (Crăciun 2012; Hansen 2004:372; Miller and Küchler 2005; Polhemus 1994; Thomas 2016). Nevertheless, we still know little when it comes to the specifics of how entrepreneurs learn from buyers in order to manufacture clothing that is in fashion, and the way in which such individual learning is embedded in a larger process of garment production.

Getting into the Habit of Monitoring For any of the almost eight thousand sweatshop entrepreneurs in La Salada, interpreting the tastes of buyers seems like a matter of life or death. Success comes from learning about buyers’ behaviors and desires and means increasing their chances of economic progress. If they fail, the market will penalize them and they will be excluded, as they would in any other market. Interpreting buyers’ tastes and the economic possibilities they offer means putting a particular skill into practice: the constant monitoring of the market. Monitoring refers to a series of practices whose main objective is to gather information. The decisions sweatshop entrepreneurs make and, ultimately, the level of success they achieve will depend on the quality and quantity of information they are able to collect. Using this information, the entrepreneurs produce their own personal reading of the market. This section offers a description of various monitoring practices that are carried out by entrepreneurs regularly both inside and outside the marketplace. The first set of monitoring practices is carried out only during days the marketplace is open. This means that they

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are employed only three times a week, when sweatshop entrepreneurs come into contact with their customers and have the opportunity to, as Betina would say, “walk the market.” This practice entails producers going through the aisles of the shed markets in order to keep track of what is being sold; ascertaining whether there are models similar to what they are producing—or intend to produce—themselves; and, of course, verifying prices. The second set of monitoring practices is employed outside the marketplace and is based on two sources of information: the internet and fabric shops. The former can be monitored constantly, at any time, and includes checking all kinds of internet sites as well as being attentive to social media, especially Facebook. The latter, fabric shops, are crucial sources of information that strongly influence decisions made by entrepreneurs. The interaction not only with sellers of fabric and textile supplies but also with other clients offers a unique opportunity to collect ideas about the new season’s trends. In general terms, different monitoring practices are aimed at gathering information about what other sweatshop entrepreneurs are doing, what kind of garments they offer and at what prices. This knowledge allows entrepreneurs to identify promising possibilities; that is, possibilities that are worth exploring and, depending on the results, may be used as templates for future action. Monitoring practices are, therefore, in line with Möllers’s (2015) recent idea of “normative practices,” a conception of social norms in which the future and its promises serve to enforce norms. Monitoring also allows possibilities that contradict the present state of affairs to be recognized. This implies distancing oneself from the immediate reality in order to modify it; for example, by offering a new model of counterfeit Adidas jacket that is different from the other counterfeit Adidas models seen in the marketplace. In the long term, the monitoring of competitors means establishing the evaluation and development of strategies as ordinary practices. When Felipe says “I was forced to produce other things; there’s a lot of competition. I can’t have only T-shirts and children’s coats, but several items: T-shirts, children’s coats, skirts, tightfitting sweat pants,” he means that the post-monitoring evaluation immediately offers indications for action. That is, certain possibilities are positively perceived and therefore identified as a course of action that is worth exploring. In this sense, it is easy to see that monitoring practices need to be carried out at the beginning and during the development of the business. They must be employed at the beginning because they are an additional element influencing decisions regarding

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the question of what type of garments need to be produced first. Once established, monitoring during the production phase is necessary because it allows opportunities to be discovered, certainties to be confirmed, and wrong turns to be detected. In short, monitoring alludes to a set of practices that each sweatshop entrepreneur assumes to be mandatory and permeates the majority of their daily activities. Only by performing these monitoring practices will the business come to fruition. In general, the monitoring of competitors, which sweatshop entrepreneurs usually express in the saying “be aware of what others are doing,” is one of the main habits acquired at the marketplace and is the foundation upon which, to a large extent, the success of the business depends. This type of behavior, which is practiced in order to tailor garments to the demands of the clients, is akin to that of branded garment retailers operating in final consumer markets. In this sector, as explained by Aspers (2010b:41), companies hire designers who share the background and interests of the clients in order to meet the expectations of the latter. Also, companies strive to meet demand by building classifications—idealized types of consumers that will later become the subject of market research. Although the level of sophistication is higher in this constellation, it does not differ much from the classifications that sweatshop entrepreneurs like Betina, Pablo, or Felipe make at La Salada; for example, when Betina says that children consume more items of clothing because they get dirty faster, or when Eusebio describes the kind of jeans teenagers like. They, in the same way as the branded garment retailers, do everything in their power to know what their clients feel and think. Monitoring introduces them to a continuous interpretive exercise, to a constant attempt to assume certain roles—as teachers, children, soccer players, security agents—and to compare those projections with the real possibilities they have available. Monitoring fosters the development of a special sensitivity to novelty, to what is different, what does not conform to established patterns. They are small details—accessories, seams, buttons, and fabric textures—which are detected in a single quick glance. But sweatshop entrepreneurs are not the only ones who develop this ability. Buyers also monitor and become accustomed to distinguishing details. What is crucial is that both parties know that both parties are able to notice details. And that’s why details and small variations become decisive. In short, entrepreneurs’ monitoring of competitors is intended to help

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develop novelty in the products, to create the idea that something is being done differently while keeping the price as low as possible.

Walking the Marketplace: Monitoring Prices and Clothes The monitoring oriented to finding a commercial niche means being alert to identify the opportunity—to find something that is not yet available, to notice gaps in colors on offer, and to keep walking through the marketplace. Thus, basic operations of comparison and identifying differences are essential. And once something is discovered, the trick is to specialize in it “so that everyone knows that that’s what you do,” as Matilde would say. Visiting the marketplace every week, walking through the aisles to observe and to ask for prices, has an additional objective of the utmost importance to sweatshop entrepreneurs “doing marca” only: to check whether similar models that a sweatshop entrepreneur is manufacturing have already been manufactured or even counterfeited or not. Or, conversely, if a design has not yet been counterfeited and may have the potential to be manufactured. In this sense, the monitoring process is closely related to the need for differentiation. For instance, if Felipe sees that another sweatshop entrepreneur has counterfeited his model, he will try to differentiate his products by using different fabrics, though he will keep the design the same because it’s easier to just change the fabric than the design. Additionally, the monitoring of competitors can also reveal if imported products are entering the country. This was a development noted by Betina as she walked the marketplace, comparing the jackets she was producing with “those [jackets] that look like leather.” The latter were, according to her, “imported,” because “that’s not manufactured here, it’s got lots of pockets, it’s difficult to do that.” But Betina is attentive to more than just the arrival of imported products. Even if she could overcome the technical difficulties of reproducing those imported jackets, they would entail costs that she cannot afford. For that reason, she decided to manufacture blue jackets for private security guards that are simpler and, above all, cheap. MATÍAS: So what you’re trying to do is to sell a jacket a little

cheaper than your neighbor, right?

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BETINA: Sure, yes. And they all do it like this. Everyone’s looking

at the prices. For example, the tenants of the stalls arrive [at the marketplace], lay out all the products and go out for a walk [in the marketplace]. Everyone is looking at the prices [. . .] because that’s what people do when they come to buy. Betina’s answer shows that the sweatshop entrepreneurs carefully monitor the prices stipulated by the competition. It is a crucial practice since La Salada is primarily a wholesale marketplace where added value counts to a certain extent and demand tends to be inflexible. The price, then, is the second aspect that really matters. “People look at the price,” says Eusebio, because “they then double it, triple it.” This certainty is what compels sweatshop entrepreneurs to continuously monitor prices throughout the shed markets. Price monitoring thus becomes a mandatory practice, a standard strategic behavior on which the business depends. Price monitoring also offers immediate indications for reformulating strategies. Going through the marketplace and scanning prices helps, for example, to evaluate the price-quality ratio of sweatshop entrepreneurs’ own products, to eventually reformulate their commercial strategy, and to design new ways to capture the attention of customers. After identifying a stall that also sells aprons at a similar price, Matilde redesigned her product: she began to add little hearts and images of the Disney character Violetta to her previously plain designs, with the hope of attracting new customers. Price monitoring can be undertaken by walking around the marketplace or at the stall itself. The constant changing of product lines means that Osvaldo is given no respite: I spoke to him about a fortnight after stopping production of tight-fitting sweat pants. He regrets not having finished before: “I slacked off,” he explains, adding that he has already started making sweatshirts. However, he quickly makes clear that the change in product was not entirely the right thing to do. “I made a very nice sweatshirt but it’s not cheap, and that’s why I’m already thinking about making a nice but cheaper sweatshirt.” The price is what counts. Like Matilde, Eusebio, and Felipe, Osvaldo wanted to unleash his creativity and produce clothing with exciting colors or beautiful seams, according to the common language of sweatshop entrepreneurs. But they cannot. Or they just imagine that they wanted to. The truth is that the price dictates what ends up being made, and there are few options available in terms of technology. Price monitoring is, in this sense, a

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strategy of continuous adaptation to the reality of the marketplace and requires doing not what you want, but what is determined by external forces. Most of the time, monitoring allows sweatshop entrepreneurs to overcome or amend bad business decisions. Monitoring becomes a habitus, a mandatory and central practice for business continuity. When Betina arrives at the marketplace, she walks through the aisles from the beginning to the very end. She walks through the corridors and screens what is exhibited, what is for sale. But above all, she looks at prices. “If you sell, for example, for 110, I’m going to sell it for 100, because that’s what you get here: competition. And when you sell wholesale is when you win.” Everyone is aware of the competition. It is not a competition for quality if it does not allow competition for price. The price guides preferences and is the main factor that—people believe—will attract customers. Quality comes last. But although price is the decisive factor that determines decisions and defines the dynamics within the three shed markets, a visitor to La Salada might be surprised to notice that the prices of the garments are not displayed anywhere. There is no trace of them: a complete absence of numbers—large or small—anywhere in the vicinity of the piles of clothing items for sale. At first glance, nobody is able to fathom the prices. Whoever wants to know the prices of the clothes—even entrepreneurs monitoring competitors—must ask, and whoever decides to buy will discover that prices are, in most cases, flexible. They can be modified using very pragmatic criteria, such as the quantity of items required or the prospect of future sales perceived by the stallholder, but can also be modified according to a client’s look; that is, if they appear to have money or not. The profit margin, therefore, depends on prices determined situationally, which means that they are determined according to the specific situation established between the seller and the buyer.

Learning from Clients If “counterfeiting” in La Salada consisted only in producing exact copies of an original model, the copying process would surely not be a source of curiosity. However, with the exception of imitation soccerteam shirts or clothing items worn by celebrities, there is no item offered in La Salada that is an exact copy of original designs. Therefore, whenever Pablo, Eusebio, or Leo showed me a new product, I always

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had the same question: What were the influences and decisions that had converged in those garments to define the color, cut, texture, and brand logo? During the meetings I had with him in his workshop, Eusebio did not hesitate to answer: “The clients tell you: [for example] Why do you not cut here or combine it with another color? People give you the ideas, because they don’t always want the same! They don’t want the classic, the typical Las Leonas skirt. You see, the classic one has the three strips here. Look, people want us to put it another way, something that’s out of the ordinary,” he repeated. The crucial role played by buyers’ preferences, which is mostly expressed through questions and comments put to stallholders, can be found in a field note dated May 30, 2013: Pablo’s family enterprise reacted rapidly to the demand. The first thing that captured my attention when I arrived at the stall was the large supply of goods; shelves were full of jackets, and the counter exhibited several piles of no less than ten jackets each. Paulo’s mother, Beatriz, was sick and sitting on a stool, her neck wrapped in a scarf. She explained her ill health to me: she had caught a cold because of the weather after removing the rainwater from her courtyard. And she also had to go outside because the fabric was delivered and “we have to be quick so people don’t realize that we’re unloading fabric rolls.” Beatriz was there at the stall, sitting close to Pablo, surrounded by piles of colorful jackets and awaiting the arrival of buyers. Shortly after I joined them, a buyer approached us and asked about the price of a pair of “Adidas” pants displayed on the pink mannequin hanging from the roof. “This is a sample, capo [boss]; we’ll bring more to sell Monday next week,” answered Pablo. The family enterprise had reacted to demand. On previous market days, I had witnessed situations in which potential buyers approached us and asked for tracksuits [matching jacket and pants]. “People want tracksuits,” Pablo repeated often. I got the impression that he was trying to explain something to me of which he and his mother were attempting to convince themselves: “People want tracksuits and it means that we have to manufacture tracksuits.” Indeed, the previous market day, Pablo’s sister Mariela said the same to her father. That day, after a long journey back from the stall to the car park, we got to the family car and, on the drive back home, Mariela said, “Dad, people want tracksuits.” The

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reaction was quick. Last week Mariela passed this information to her father and this week the situation changed: the mannequin was wearing an “Adidas” tracksuit. This event highlights the importance of constantly monitoring what customers want and evaluating their suggestions. Thus, it could be said that production in the context of La Salada, despite the demand to sell at low prices, also consists of a continuous adaptation to the preferences of customers. The existence of a monitoring process exercised in a continuous way leads us to the conclusion that seasons are short and changes are introduced constantly. This situation leads sweatshop entrepreneurs to refrain from manufacturing large quantities of garments, instead producing small batches adapted to the tendencies and tastes of the moment, often at the expense of offering more elaborate designs. “We used to order embroidery,” explains Matilde, who makes school aprons, “and we put a small butterfly on it to attract attention. But the mothers told me they wanted it another way, with the neckline like this and like that. [They wanted] always the same, always the same thing. But anyway, we would start doing that. They were telling me what they wanted.” These decisions reveal the true profile of La Salada: a marketplace for low-cost garments in which product differentiation based on added value and details certainly counts but is subordinate to the price. Differentiation through a higher level of design or better fabric quality is almost impossible not only because of technological precariousness and lack of knowledge but also because there is little margin for error. In the end, despite her desire to add delicate details, Matilde must adapt to the reality: “It’s like that, in the end you always end up doing the same! In my case, adding Violetta. But at least you can produce it cheap and they buy it. You almost have to give it away,” she laments, laughing. One of the greatest advantages of monitoring through contact with buyers is that it offers the possibility of reacting quickly to new styles or trends within the same season: When Pablo’s sister Mariela told their father that “people want tracksuits,” the family reacted immediately to design new products. Trends can be driven, for example, by certain television celebrities or famous athletes. As was always the case with Pablo and his references to Las Leonas, small talk with buyers is packed with constant references to celebrities or fashion trends, led by television or clothing companies. The importance of reacting to the market is alluded to in Crăciun (2012:852), whose interviewee Mustafa declares that his “branded jeans” manufacturing

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business “is based on a simple principle; that is, a prompt response to market demand.” During a single season, these reactions enable a continuous adjustment of expectations between sweatshop entrepreneurs and buyers in the context of certain fashion trends. The encounters with buyers do not occur, however, without previous assumptions being made by the sweatshop entrepreneurs. Exchanging perspectives about possible models, colors, or designs takes place in the context of cultural scripts or popular understandings about demand. Thus, monitoring is also guided by culturally produced forms, ideas acquired by sweatshop entrepreneurs about tastes and trends, about “what women want” or “what the boys wear.” Eusebio knows how the pattern of women’s trousers must be: “With good fit, with a good drape, like women want. They want it to be easy, a bit wide. A comfortable piece.” The monitoring of competitors, prices, and other designs undoubtedly plays a role of the utmost importance in shaping decisions about tailoring garments, but the search for a niche is also strongly influenced by imaginaries and ideas about the tastes and behaviors of the clients. On the other hand, the sales niche—that is, the type of garment that is going to be manufactured—is not something that is decided once and for all. The continuous monitoring of what happens at the marketplace serves to confirm or modify certainties and decisions. The ideas that operate for making decisions related to the production of garments are usually also theories that sweatshop entrepreneurs develop about their clients. They believe they know their behaviors and elaborate classifications. “Here is a public that comes to buy and cares about the price,” says Felipe, describing the different categories he has defined for his wholesale customers, “then there is the other who comes because he says, ‘I have a business and I have to buy something that isn’t bad, because otherwise I flame out.’ But that type of person is also looking for good prices. And then there’s the other type of guy who says, ‘No, I’m looking for quality!’ In my case I have quality and good prices,” he claims. But there are also theories about the needs and tastes of retail buyers, no doubt a minority in the marketplace context. Norberto, Matilde’s husband, does not hesitate to explain why his aprons are white: “Because when they start studying medicine, everyone demands white.” On the other hand, the teachers, Norberto’s other clients, do not want everything white “because when it’s school time everyone has the same thing, a Peter Pan collar, everything is classic and embroidered. And the teachers don’t want that. They want

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to differentiate themselves. You know how women are. They want to attract attention. They want something elegant [pituco].” Finally, another very widespread belief that operates as a “neutralization technique” (Sykes and Matza 1957) is one according to which “Argentines love branded clothing,” a characteristic that would indicate the benefits to be gained from manufacturing garments with brand logos.

Online, the Fabric Shop, and the Sports Stores The first time I visited Pablo’s workshop, his father, Eusebio, was keen to share his enthusiasm for the possibilities offered by the world behind the computer screen. “It has internet, too,” he announced triumphantly, pointing at the monitor. “We have internet! We see everything. With the internet we see all the models, all the models in Europe, everything. Look, with internet you can get everywhere! [As for the logos,] we enlarge them, we reduce them; we do what we want.” “To get everywhere” seemed to be the premise. The possibilities perceived in relation to the internet resemble those offered by La Salada marketplace, in that both sets of possibilities appeared to be almost limitless. Spending time with Leo, Pablo, and other producers also meant discussing products and new trends, which they constantly looked up on their phones even while we were chatting. This gave rise to a dynamic in which the various monitoring strategies were intertwined: what was observed in the morning during the walk through the marketplace was compared to the results obtained from internet searches, and all this was then discussed with neighboring stallholders and with casual acquaintances like me. While the official internet sites of the big brands played an important role in signaling new trends, cuts, and colors, Facebook posts referring to specific products were decisive, and Pablo, like others I spoke to, mentioned them often. “Have you seen how good the model of the new River shirt is, Mati, the one that my brother posted the other day?” he would ask, referring to River Plate, one of the biggest local soccer teams. So why did he not manufacture the shirt himself? “Very complicated, Mati, we still haven’t got the little machine to make the hologram that’s down there, you know?” Spending hours and hours browsing the internet, especially between market days, is essential if a producer is to find designs and alternative products that allow them to offer something new. But how do

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producers know which colors and designs will be in style next season? Certainly, the internet plays a major role in offering ideas and indicating future trends. “Now, you go to the internet, you go to a site in Spain, you’re looking for boys’ fashion and you see what the trend is, you go to a site in England and do the same, you go to one in France and the same. Then you pretty much know the colors that can be used and the style of the clothes,” Felipe explained. However, although the internet is a very important source of information, it does not have the last word. Relying on intuition or paying close attention to the design preferences and colors of the clientele can also be essential ingredients in getting the product right. Felipe almost fell into a trap that caught many producers out when they saw fluorescent colors becoming fashionable in Europe. “You looked on the internet and everyone said: all of January and February will be fluorescent. No sooner said than done. It lasted those two months and not a bit longer. Anyone who bought fabric rolls [in that color] was stuck. I did only very little. It’s not my style; I mean, the style of clothes that I manufacture doesn’t work in that color.” But making a mistake by opting for a fluorescent color was not simply the result of visiting certain websites. The trend for fluorescent colors was also propagated by the fabric shops and manifested in the florescent garments on display in sports stores. While standing in line or otherwise coming into contact with vendors in a fabric shop, sweatshop entrepreneurs receive valuable information about “what is coming out”; that is, what other producers are buying and which trends are on their way from Europe.1 Each year, fabric wholesalers, especially those located in the Once neighborhood, travel to fashion centers such as Milan or Paris, or to exhibitions related to the textile industry, to get acquainted with new trends and obtain new catalogs exhibiting the designs and colors of the new season. On their return to Buenos Aires, these major fabric distributors operate as diffusers of trends. Their suggestions about new trends and designs are, however, reappraised by the sweatshop entrepreneur. Similarly, all the interviewees regularly visit sports stores, eager to identify new models, check colors, and get new ideas. This is especially important for entrepreneurs like Pablo who manufacture sports items. For them, visiting sports stores can be about more than just finding inspiration; if necessary, they will actually purchase a particular product and disassemble it in their sweatshop in order to get the exact measurements. Again, elements of various kinds, such as the preferences shown by customers, intuition, economic limitations, or simply technical

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issues related to, for instance, the combination of colors, interact to filter the recommendations gathered at the fabric shop or in sports stores. For example, beyond the various trends for each year, a very common behavior among sweatshop producers is to opt for basic colors or classic designs. The selection of basic colors such as black, white, blue, or brown, as well as designs lacking significant innovation, reveals risk-averse business behavior that proves to be effective in practice. It is no coincidence, then, that a walk through La Salada gives the impression that most of the items of clothing on sale are more or less similar in terms of cut and color. Sweatshop entrepreneurs arrive at this situation, in which colors, patterns, and brand logos are repeated on an endless loop, not only because everyone is aware of what others are doing, but also because the attempts at differentiation are moderated by choices—of colors and classic designs—taken to mitigate risk, even when the suggestion comes from someone who “knows what people are going to be wearing next season.”

The Outcome: Uniformity It was difficult to get a more general impression of the market when my point of reference was only a handful of stalls run by Pablo, Leo, Betina, Felipe, and a couple of others. Any general statement about what types of garments are sold in the marketplace should be based on a representative sample, a condition that the four or five stalls that I visited regularly did not fulfill. It was in search of a different piece of information about the marketplace—the total number of stalls—that I stumbled upon the possibility of acquiring an overall vision of what can be found there. Lacking detailed information about the scale of the marketplace, I adopted the simple method of counting the stalls by hand. Walking from one end of the seemingly endless aisles of each shed market to the other was necessary for counting the stalls, but it also proved useful for corroborating certain statements made by my interviewees. For example, it was possible to confirm that La Salada is a very female- and child-oriented marketplace. Betina and her husband’s theory that “women change clothes a lot and therefore buy a lot” and children need to change their clothes “because they get dirty quickly” seemed to hold.2 Meanwhile, the idea that only counterfeit items of clothing are sold in La Salada proved to be both wrong, in that many unbranded products were on offer, and misleading, in that most

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of the counterfeit products made fraudulent use only of the logo, while all other elements of the design were unique creations of the sweatshop entrepreneurs.3 During my walks through the aisles of the shed markets, it became clear that the result of manufactures’ decisions was an assortment of garments on offer characterized by uniformity in colors, designs, and brand logos. That is, the product offering does not contain risky products, mostly because the risk involved in the product—a particular design or color—has already been taken by the companies that own the brand. Without a doubt, the Disney character printed on a T-shirt indicates the search for something that is more than a “plain model,” but it is no longer a risk when the Walt Disney Company has already proven that items featuring the character are successful. In this sense, the practice of monitoring expresses a desire for differentiation among producers, although it is this same monitoring that, finally, leads to options being discarded and products exhibiting limited variation. In Betina’s case, differentiation does not necessarily mean opting for a change in colors or garment patterns. The addition of details, such as a printed flower or embroidery, is part of the attempt to offer something different but for the same price. And what is more, these small details are what then lead sweatshop entrepreneurs to describe their own products as “delicate,” “different,” or “not like others.” More surprising to me, however, was the practice of creative counterfeiting described in chapter 5. Instead of directly copying the original garment, La Salada producers combined patterns and logos from different brands with colors and accessories they had designed and decided upon themselves. Walking through the aisles, I found it revealing that this process of creative counterfeiting, which is carried out in conjunction with a continuous monitoring practice, leads to a paradox reminiscent of Harrison White’s observation that “the key fact is that producers watch each other within a market” (1981:518). The paradox in La Salada is that stallholders are more likely to find an almost exact replica of an item at another producer’s stall than in the store run by the brand that they are counterfeiting. The reason for this is that a topselling design counterfeited by another producer is a better guarantee of sales than the exact counterfeit of a genuine branded item. Unlike the latter, the sweatshop entrepreneur’s model is already adapted to the tastes of La Salada customers and, also, a model with proven salability in that commercial context. A similar strategy documented by Thomas (2016:91) is practiced in particular by manufacturers from

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the Maya community, who decide to copy brand logos simply because they do not know the tastes of the wider community; they believe that copying well-known brands is playing it safe. All this highlights the importance of monitoring competitors’ clothing items in terms not only of cut and color but also how well they are selling. “It’s easy. We go through the whole marketplace, and if someone has a good model we do that. Because they also copy. Same as us. They copy, we copy. There is no code of behavior,” said Pablo. In truth, there is a code: counterfeit freely. Thomas (2016) has some interesting observations concerning producers of counterfeits who accuse each other of envy.4 Not only is the counterfeit of the counterfeit better because it is done in a way that is perceived to be meaningful, but there is also the fact that the modifications introduced lead the second counterfeiters to believe that their piece is a better product. But what is most significant is that this dynamic culminates in shaping a market that is heavily adapted to the marketplace’s customers and is coupled to the garment market at large only in terms of price. In general, what is behind these dynamics of creative counterfeiting is the continuous practice of monitoring exercised by almost eight thousand producers, which brings together influences from television, customer tastes, the internet, fabric merchants, and magazines. The agency of the entrepreneurs resides precisely in the production of clothing that is a synthesis of these influences and not just a copy of original designs from global corporations.

ACCESSING CREDIT There is a link between the fulfillment of aspirations and objectives. La Salada entrepreneurs need to monitor the competition within the marketplace, sound out color, design, and fabric trends, and take advantage of commercial opportunities. But that is not all: they must also develop strategies and practices in order to secure financing. One important feature of La Salada’s economy is its complete detachment from the formal banking system and, therefore, its rejection of any means of payment other than hard cash. This means that all economic transactions, from those involved in the production processes to those in the commercialization stage in the provinces, leave no formal records. In this context, La Salada entrepreneurs face the fundamental problem of obtaining finance in order to purchase sewing machines, rolls of fabric, or supplies. Although entrepreneurs such as Leo, Felipe,

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and Pablo have accumulated some capital, which allows them to enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, situations such as supplying fabric rolls, replacing machines, or economic bottlenecks usually force them to seek alternative sources of credit. In the following pages I examine the sources of financing available to entrepreneurs in the context of La Salada’s economy. The problem of credit in a social atmosphere like the one in the marketplace highlights entrepreneurs’ need to build islands of trust; that is, trust-based circuits of social contacts in a context in which interpersonal mistrust is widespread and free-rider behaviors are experienced daily. In other words, the problem of credit comes to illuminate a series of practices and strategies related to the management of money in an informal and illegal marketplace. In what follows, I will refer to three sources of financing: (1) the credit granted between entrepreneurs and suppliers; (2) the credit granted by informal microcredit institutions; and, finally, (3) the so-called rotating credit associations, which will be analyzed in particular detail. There are two reasons for focusing on this third source: On the one hand, I acknowledge the extension throughout the sweatshop economy of rotating credit associations as a valid and effective financing mechanism. On the other hand, however, the interviews I conducted with entrepreneurs expand our understanding of the rotating credit associations. Until now, existing literature on the topic has made only brief mention of these structures that allow participants to be illiquid; that is, to have no easy access to savings. Here, however, I provide evidence to show that rotating credit associations, by way of allowing people to be illiquid, are self-control mechanisms that guard against gambling and alcoholism, two issues widespread among interviewees that can have serious consequences for their businesses and the realization of their aspirations.

The Rotating Credit Association in La Salada Interviews with garment manufacturers and other actors in La Salada revealed a remarkably high incidence of turning to the so-called rotating credit associations as a preferred method for financing garment enterprises. Regarding La Salada, such associations are known as pasanaku within the Bolivian community and círculo (circle) among the Argentines participating in the market. Though the name may vary, these informal institutions assume a remarkably similar form in

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Asia, Africa, and America. The Bolivian term pasanaku, according to Adams and Canavesi de Sahonero (1989:222), “appears to be a contraction of a Spanish word pasar and an Aymara word naka. The u ending may have its roots in the other major language spoken in Bolivia—Quechua. Pasar indicates a game while naka connotes a fixed time and place for the game.” They go on to claim that the “playing of pasanakus arose with the introduction of money by the Spanish and gradually expanded as the use of money became more common.” In the context of La Salada marketplace, as in other geographies, members of a rotating credit association agree among themselves to contribute a fixed sum of money at fixed intervals. There are usually between ten and twenty entrepreneurs in each “game” who draw lots to decide the order of the “rotation”; that is, the order in which each entrepreneur receives in cash the total sum of money collected at each defined interval. According to the interviewees, these intervals usually follow marketplace cycles; for instance, opening days or weekends with specific marketplace activities. In La Salada, multiple pasanakus are in force at the same time, the frequencies of which vary according to the agreement reached by the participants at their inception. This means that entrepreneurs like Pablo, for example, can “play” in multiple pasanakus at any one time, each one with its specific temporal limitations. “Now a pasanaku’s going to come out [start],” says Pablo. When I ask him for the frequency, he explains: “But it ends and I start another: you finish and start, finish and start, finish and start. I’m on it. I’ve always been in that. But now you have to be careful because the volume of sales is very low; it’s not like before. At other times I played three pasanakus. I played three pasanakus each market day. One for three hundred [pesos each time], another for five hundred, and another for three hundred. Around one thousand pesos each market day. I had to raise a thousand pesos! And only for the pasanaku . . . and then I had to raise money for rent of the stall.” Organizing pasanakus, or circles, is commonly an additional string in the bow of ambulant vendors, most often women. They usually charge for the service in the form of being the first or second to receive the money collected, though preferences in terms of the order in which people want to receive the money vary. Pablo, for example, thinks himself lucky if he draws the lot for last place because he receives the money and “doesn’t have to pay anymore.” His mother, however, offers a more strategic perspective: it depends on how urgently the money is needed. For example, she hopes to receive the money at

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the same time as she needs to buy more fabric rolls—one of the most common purchases made with pasanaku cash. All these characteristics are similarly described in the abundant literature on rotating credit associations. As Geertz (1962) asserts in his pioneering work on these associations in the Modjokuto marketplace in Jakarta, it is a social arrangement in which no interest is calculated, a lottery determines the rotation, and the number of participants is usually small. Geertz (1962:243) and other scholars have drawn our attention to the role of these associations in strengthening community bonds and argue that they are an illustration of the significance of embeddedness (Granovetter 1985; Light, Kwuon, and Zhong 1990), social capital (Coleman 1988), and “group solidarity” (Hechter 1988:108). Such by-products of the workings of pasanakus in the context of La Salada marketplace seem to be confirmed by interviewees’ assertions that cases of free riders—that is, participants who leave without contributing—seem to be few and far between. Neither Pablo nor Leo, regular pasanaku players, could recall such an event taking place, although they conceded that the option of being a free rider was always available. The various motivations for participating in rotating credit associations are well documented; for instance, there are instrumental reasons such as using the lump sum received in order to meet basic needs, purchase small luxury goods, or make advance purchases of “lumpy” products (Adams and Canavesi de Sahonero 1989; Ardener 1964; Geertz 1962, 1979; Kurtz and Showman 1978). Alternatively, people may have a “gambling attitude” (Geertz 1962:247), or respond to an established commitment and the rejection of social ostracism, peer pressure, and possible feelings of guilt or shame (Ardener 1964; Biggart 2001; Fessler 2002; Geertz 1962; Gugerty 2007). Although I was aware of these motivations, during my seven months of fieldwork in La Salada I insisted on asking the following question: If you do not receive any interest on the money invested, why not just save the money at home? Entrepreneurs like Pablo, Leo, and Matilde are all pasanaku players, but if they just saved at home, they would avoid risks such as other players’ potential free-rider behavior while making no financial sacrifice. In other words, I wanted to understand the distinction, given the characteristics of the specific social context, between playing pasanaku and saving money in solitude. Along with the idea of taking advantage of another of the economic opportunities offered by La Salada’s economy, the entrepreneurs

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seemed to decide to play pasanaku for two additional reasons. In accordance with much of the available literature, the main purpose cited by La Salada participants for joining an association is to be able to purchase goods such as sewing machines, vehicles, or rolls of fabric, all items that require large sums of money (Bortei-Doku and Aryeetey 1995; Mbizi and Gwangwava 2013). Pablo, for instance, reported that his participation in pasanakus was in order to purchase fabric: “With that money I can buy fabric and manufacture [garments], then I sell and each market day I pay [into the pasanaku with the money earned].” Mónica, meanwhile, who worked for several years in different sweatshops, pointed out that the main destination of pasanaku money among would-be entrepreneurs is the purchase of sewing machines, essential for starting up the business. Other interviewees such as Alejo, who works as a cart-puller, were able to buy a car by way of participating in a rotating credit system: “A vendor was offering a Renault 12 at a thousand pesos—I think it was the first car I had—and I bought it on credit that I was repaying with pasanaku, with circles. I earned and repaid, earned and repaid. I basically did the following: I contributed in two pasanakus of five hundred, I called the guy and said: take your money! And that way I paid for the car.” I was also told of a secondary purpose for participating in pasanakus: it allows La Salada workers to support each other. Alejo, for instance, links the need for people to invest sums of money that exceed their immediate possibilities with solidarity: I think about this—my wife also tells me the same thing—I think that with my money, I can help other people, too! Because loads of people do it [pasanaku] to build their house, to buy . . . I don’t know, for example, another vehicle, or they need it to pay for an operation, that kind of thing, do you see? If I give [the money], I know that I’ll recover the money. I’m giving but I’m giving a hand to other people, you know? Because the money’s collected together with other people, everyone’s contributing, we all “give each other our hands”! We’re giving each other a hand. So, someone helps me, I help other people, they really help each other! In addition to highlighting the embedded character (Granovetter 1985) of La Salada’s economy as well as people’s social capital (Coleman

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1988) and existing “group solidarity” (Hechter 1988), the peculiarity of Alejo’s story is that he knows that he will get the money back. In the social context of La Salada, Alejo’s unwavering certainty acquires a particular meaning, because it rests on a faithful fulfillment of contract obligations in a social environment that continuously stimulates free-rider behavior. This compliance with informally regulated agreements is the result of a moral obligation expressed in strict practices of self-discipline. Confronted with the question of what she is working for, Chepita, who runs a stall at Ocean shed market selling socks, stated that her ultimate goal is “to accumulate capital” and, therefore, she “plays pasanakus.” I asked her about the stability of the business and the possibility of not being able to pay the fee. “Now, I’m playing in one for 300 [pesos] every Sunday,” she began by way of explanation. “I have to sell no matter what happens [in order to have money] for paying the rent of the stall, which is 250 and for the pasanaku, another 300. I must have that money, even if I don’t eat. At the beginning of October, I’ll receive 3,000 because of the pasanaku, and I’ll invest that 3,000.” A situation of economic instability, meanwhile, can lead to declining to participate in a pasanaku. This is illustrated by Julieta’s decision, at a time when her lingerie business was not working as intended, to borrow money from a friend rather than play pasanaku. I expressed my surprise at her choice, but she was sure of her answer: “No, no, no, because for the pasanaku you must have the money secured no matter what, an amount of money that you have to deliver weekly.” What Julieta’s and Chepita’s accounts reveal is the importance of honoring informal agreements. However, this adherence to private verbal contracts might also be explained by the fact that additional sources of credit in La Salada’s economy are scarce. Nevertheless, interviewees’ accounts demonstrate that upholding agreements necessarily implies a series of practices and calculations, such as “not eating” to save money or avoiding participating in a pasanaku if the risk of not being able to repay the credit is deemed to be too high. In so doing, Julieta made sure to keep her credibility intact should she want to participate in the future. But this is not the full story. In an environment where distrust is commonplace, there is evidence of other kinds of practices designed to take care of the business and to avoid damaging people’s credibility. In questioning La Salada workers about rotating credit systems, I discovered an additional purpose for participating in pasanakus, which

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appears only tangentially in the available literature. Several studies highlight that institutions such as pasanakus are usually functional to the objectives of certain participants, usually women, who want to protect their savings against immediate financial demands of husbands or relatives. The literature refers to the “illiquidity function” of associations (Bouman 1995:375; see also Anderson and Baland 2002; Mayoux and Anand 1995; Niger-Thomas 1995). “People with cash on their hands and afraid of greedy relatives,” notes Bouman (1995:375), “will purposely join a [rotating credit association] to become illiquid.” In the case of La Salada, the evidence points to a variation of this illiquidity hypothesis. Indeed, in-depth interviews with Pablo and Alejo show that illiquidity, which basically consists of “taking money out of the home,” is not a method to protect against greedy relatives, but against the effects of the participants’ own destructive behaviors. It is a strategy that seeks to keep at bay the consequences of two issues that are widespread in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, especially in the south of the metropolitan area (Auguste 2015; Cabrerizo 2016; Míguez 2009), and that constitute a problem for the successful participation in La Salada’s economy: alcoholism and gambling. Pablo’s mother, Beatriz, was constantly playing pasanakus and I could not see why: Would it not be just as effective to hide the cash under the mattress? She was adamant that it was not. The real danger of losing your money, she explained, did not lie in the risk of other pasanaku players free-riding, but in having the money at home. “Because in your house you can grab it. You have a need and you take it! But if you give it to other people you can’t have it till you get your turn. Get it? It’s like that. There are dangers at home. You can use it for drinking [alcohol].” Alejo provides a similar reasoning after recognizing that he is “a disaster” when it comes to managing money, and he makes it clear that the pasanaku protects him from his weekly trips to gamble at the casino. “I like slot machines,” Alejo says, but he can avoid this danger by giving his money to his wife, “who keeps the money hidden” and “plays pasanaku.” In general, the interviews I conducted indicate that, regardless of the final destinations of the money, compliance with the periodic contribution to the credit association is understood as a serious social obligation. Gaining and maintaining creditworthiness is an indispensable task in a social environment where the interest in establishing economic transactions is constantly threatened by a profound

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interpersonal distrust. Like the monitoring of the market, the main objective of which is to manufacture garment items that are in fashion, the construction of creditworthiness in the context of rotating credit associations is aimed at exploiting business opportunities. Rotating credit associations, in other words, are directly related to specific aspirations. In what follows, I will refer to other sources of credit in the context of La Salada in which the construction of creditworthiness is also fundamental.

Microcredits and Trade Credit To date, only one study has been published on financial sources, both formal and informal, for micro enterprises in the Conurbano, the area where La Salada marketplace and most of the sweatshops are located. According to this study (Higa 2013), the economic recovery after 2002 led to growth in the demand for credit, which was mainly met by informal means. Betina’s story would seem to corroborate this diagnosis: following a recommendation from her son, she started selling garment items at La Salada in 2003. Until that point, she had provided sewing services to other garment manufacturers, and her husband specialized in making patterns, marking the fabric, and cutting. However, having rented a stall at La Salada in 2003, the situation changed. The demand for jackets, her flagship product, was high and forced Betina not only to invest in new sewing machines, fabric, and additional supplies such as zippers and buttons but also to look for a means of financing her investment. All microfinance institutions that offer formal loans in the Conurbano area are associated with the Argentine Network of Microfinance Institutions (RADIM). Microfinance institutions offering a range of different loans are mainly located in two hubs, one in Greater Buenos Aires and one in the south of the city. In both of these cases, interest rates are significantly lower than the charges imposed by informal credit providers or loan sharks. In the area surrounding La Salada, some institutions focus primarily on members of the Bolivian community; for instance, FIE Gran Poder and Oportunidad Microfinanciera Latinoamericana (OMLA). Trade credit is also a widespread way to finance commercial activities in the context of La Salada’s economy. It is common to hear from entrepreneurs or suppliers who have put

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payments they are owed on hold for a certain amount of time—sometimes for a few days, sometimes a number of weeks. In all cases, I was able to observe that the method of deferred payment was possible only because of previous trust relationships with clients, which is why interest on the payments does not usually apply. As Higa (2013) states, “although it is technically a financing (since she [the client] receives goods but pays at a later moment), the short term is usually absorbed by the supplier because it is implicitly contained in the price of the product or it is part of the customer loyalty strategy.” In general, it is a type of credit found frequently among manufacturers and sweatshops providing outsourced services such as sewing or cutting fabric. In these cases, the entrepreneur usually advances supplies such as zippers, rolls of thread, or buttons to outsourcing sweatshops in order for them to finish the orders. Afterward, the price of the advanced goods is discounted from the payment for the finished pieces at the time of delivery. In these cases, the price of the supplies delivered is determined by the entrepreneur.

DODGING BULLETS Alejo’s livelihood requires him to pull a one-and-a-half by two-meter cart made of solid metal with two motorcycle wheels attached. His job is to transport bags full of garments from the vehicles of entrepreneurs, who park in the lots next to the shed markets or in the immediate vicinity, to the stalls located either inside the shed markets or on the streets. Alejo shifts two bags at a time: including the weight of the cart, it can weigh fifty, seventy, or even one hundred kilograms. One night we worked together. He started receiving phone calls from entrepreneurs at eight p.m., just before the shed markets opened; agreed to a price and a meeting point over the phone; and then led me to the vehicle to pick up the bags. At that point, the entrepreneur indicated the location of the stall, and we set off with the fully laden cart. Alejo heaved the cart along by himself, always taking the same routes, passing through the same entrances, turning the same corners, avoiding the same obstacles, greeting the same people. It was a route that he clearly knew by heart. He knew exactly where to go, and everything indicated that other cartpullers, private security guards, stallholders, long-distance bus drivers, and the people in charge of the parking lots were also aware of his

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route. He never once stopped on the way to a stall. It was midnight by the time we finally took a break and Alejo could light his first cigarette of the shift. I was curious about the almost identical routes he took on the way to and from the stalls; that is, I was curious about the discipline exhibited by his behavior. When I questioned Alejo, his answer consisted of a list of robberies he and other cart-pullers had experienced, culminating with the summary of the lesson they had collectively learned: “If you take the wrong route, you’re done for.” Alejo’s blunt statement of the guiding principle of his selfprotection strategy indicated that it was necessary to pay attention to the strategies, many of them almost imperceptible or seemingly insignificant, aimed at surviving in the context of La Salada. What Alejo says refers to an effort to create a type of security anchored in routine practices that, after a continuous process of adjustment based on trial and error, has proven to be successful. As Auyero and Berti (2015; see also Auyero and Kilanski 2015) assert in their study on how individuals cope with violence in the same social context, routines—fundamental in all human activity—acquire a special resonance under certain sets of circumstances. In the case of La Salada, routines provide order and predictability in a social environment that provides anything but: a situation in which entrepreneurs must manage their sweatshop and take advantage of business opportunities in an emotional climate dominated by fear, distrust, and ambiguity. What happens if Alejo detours from his usual routes or, in case of robbery, refuses to hand over the goods? In the context of this marketplace, the deep moral ambiguity linked to the role of the police and the general perception of lacking protection offer few certainties about the outcome of conflictive situations. The impossibility of foreseeing the outcome of conflict, as shown in chapter 3, is the result of an emotional climate permeated by the experience of indifference, the difficulty in establishing trustbased social relationships, and the ambiguity surrounding what kinds of behaviors are ultimately “good” or “bad.” While chapter 3 deals with the different dimensions of La Salada’s prevailing emotional climate, here I examine a selection of routines developed by entrepreneurs and other La Salada workers in order to reduce potential conflicts and thus be able to take advantage of business opportunities. In comparison with other marketplaces, a distinctive feature of La Salada that has already been discussed is the high level of interpersonal mistrust associated with the negative role of local, provincial,

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and national authorities. In this hostile social context, however, entrepreneurs—and La Salada workers in general—manage to reach commercial agreements that are generally successful and, thus, to take advantage of business opportunities that will allow them to fulfill their aspirations. When Alejo talks of taking “the wrong route,” he implies the existence of the “right” route that offers higher levels of security. In the same vein, “taking the wrong route” is the result of an error that may be voluntary or involuntary, but that is sure to have negative consequences. The “right routes,” on the other hand, are temporary solutions (Dewey [1922] 2002) to the problem of uncertainty instilled by certain conflicts, reductions of uncertainty, or personal efforts to reduce high levels of alertness provoked by inhabiting spaces riddled with fear. In the context of La Salada, there are “right ways” that take the form of established routine practices, such as Alejo’s cart routes, or other specific strategies, such as “making friends” with people who could take your side in case of conflict. When cart-pullers carefully follow the same routes again and again when transporting garment items, or when we notice that workers in general deploy certain strategies in a systematic way, such as contacting friendly police officers or “calling friends,” we can see that the success of a business depends on a series of carefully designed acts aimed at dealing with potential conflict situations. In order to understand the logic behind these sets of routine practices and strategies, we first need to understand the fear that drives them. This is the fear that comes from being unable to predict how a conflict will develop once it has been ignited. In chapter 3, I explained that this fear arises because relationships—with the police, with managers, with politicians—are deliberately structured in such a way that, in the event of a conflict, it is impossible to predict what will happen to entrepreneurs’ business opportunities. If the sociology of law observes the state, justice system, or authorities in general as “third parties,” which appear at any time on the horizon of experience and may assume the role of arbitrators in case of conflict between two parties, then the climate of fear in La Salada can be said to result directly from the absence of a third party. It follows, then, that fear arises from the dyadic nature of the social relationships involved in conflictive situations: in the absence of a third party, entrepreneurs and other market participants are left to deal with conflictive situations on their own, and outcomes are therefore uncertain. The feeling that the resolution depends

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heavily on their own actions is unavoidable. In this context, as Barbalet says in relation to emotional climates similarly charged with fear, fear “is an expectation of negative outcome [. . . ,] is a prospect, the prospect of harm or injury” (1995:19). The problem of fear linked to the impossibility of predicting the outcome of conflict takes on special significance in a market that appears to a disadvantaged segment of the population as the last great economic opportunity. What happens if you react to one of the frequent scams or attempted robberies that take place in La Salada? What do you do if you witness a mechera gang shoplifting? How can you control emotions such as fear or distrust in this environment? At the beginning of this book, I recounted a good example of the type of problems faced by entrepreneurs: Pablo, robbed of a bag full of jackets, must decide what course of action to take. Should he face up to the thief or not? In what follows I analyze two types of practices that can be identified as “retreating from danger” and “making friends.” Routinized or used in a strategic and conscious way, these practices are adopted by entrepreneurs to attempt to minimize conflict situations, preserve entrepreneurs’ lives, and realize their ultimate goal: to take advantage of business opportunities. That is, like the previous sections—the monitoring of fashion trends and the construction and maintenance of credibility—the following section aims to examine a set of practices and strategies closely linked to La Salada workers’ desire to take advantage of an economic opportunity and inch ever closer to fulfilling their aspirations.

RETREAT FROM DANGER AND MAKING FRIENDS Talking to Alejo on his cigarette break about the importance of keeping to the predetermined paths, I asked if he had ever worked outside the limits of the shed market. “No, I’d rather lose money,” he told me, revealing the seriousness of the problem. “When I go to collect garment bags from La Rivera [a sector outside of Urkupiña], I go with an assistant or take someone with me. I don’t care if I have to give them twenty or fifty pesos. That way, I can come back [safe] with the bags. You understand me?” Alejo’s account allows us to examine one of the main patterns of behaviors among entrepreneurs and other La Salada workers in relation to “the question of insecurity”: withdrawal. Just as Alejo is

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willing to refuse work at the expense of losing money, other workers commonly impose self-limitations of various kinds: not reporting theft, not reacting negatively to armed robbery, not deviating from established routes, not arriving at the marketplace at certain times, refusing to help unknown stallholders, and many others. In La Salada, fear is the motivation for constructing security through restrictive behaviors, as illustrated by Chepa in response to my question about why nobody defends anyone else: “Just because of fear; because there’s fear that someone will take out a weapon and shoot you.” Alejo provides more detail about this common fear of being shot and the impossibility of predicting the best way to react: “These kids come out to steal, those kids are redrogados [completely stoned], they just kill you. If you give them everything? They kill you. And if you don’t? They kill you anyway. If you stop there on the corner on market day, if you get distracted they rob you of everything. So, they mark you first, they steal from you, and they run away. If they don’t kill you, you have to thank God!” It is also worth mentioning that withdrawal as a reaction to fear in the context of La Salada does not lead to any kind of mobilization of resources that, eventually, could be followed by an organized response. In that sense, unlike a situation such as the one described by Barbalet (1995)—in which fear of unemployment drives increasing organization of unions—La Salada’s everyday social traffic highlights the effects of fear: a social fragmentation that also implies a power deficit or weakness on the part of entrepreneurs. Despite this generalized situation, there are moments in which islands of interpersonal trust still appear. Matilde, Julieta, and Ernesto; Pablo, Martín, and Leo; Alejo and his assistant Álvaro; Felipe and his neighbors; Chepita and her neighbors: in all these cases, sweatshop entrepreneurs build small networks of trust that allow them to survive in such a hostile social environment. “Then we all cross the iron bridge together, the one on the other side of the train tracks; we cross it all together. If you’re alone, you can get robbed, but if you’re with four or five others it’s different. Yes, they can rob us all together, but [the thieves] in a situation like that have some complications,” says Felipe, explaining his strategy for getting to the market and returning home. Matilde, meanwhile, shares Felipe’s strategy. Sitting at her stall, she tells me: “In the market, I take care to make friends in order to survive, and I try not to make enemies.” Then she adds a telling qualification: “But outside [the neighborhood linked to the stall] there are no more

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friends. On the street there’s no solidarity at all.” She speaks about an “outside” and an “inside,” the reference being to the trust-based group to which she belongs. Beyond that, everything constitutes a danger. These strategies developed by entrepreneurs point to a classic problem in the literature on economic exchanges taking place beyond state reach. Typically, the scholarship on illegal economic governance, commonly informed by the rational choice approach, postulates that, in cases in which there is a “society without state law” (Dixit 2004:13), other instances emerge in order to enforce compliance and act as arbitrators in cases of conflict. According to this view, classic informal institutions working as enforcers of contracts are mafia formations, which describes a variety of organized crime groups whose main business is the sale of private protection in the shadow of the state (Campana 2011; Chu 2000; Gambetta 1993; Varese 2001; Volkov 2002). Using violence and retaliation as deterrence mechanisms, mafia groups provide their clients with a secure environment for economic transactions that is free of unfair competition. Is this what is at play in La Salada? At first sight, the functional equivalent of the mafia in our case seems to be the shed-market managers. Scholars who conducted research in the same social setting (Auyero and Berti 2015) have recently postulated that these powerful, informal businesspeople are responsible for a pacification of social relationships within La Salada marketplace, setting in motion a process similar to Tilly’s (1990) state formation process. Nevertheless, as the experiences of La Salada workers clearly show, once we pay special attention to ordinary, everyday practices, a more nuanced and ambiguous picture appears. Through the many interviews I conducted with La Salada workers such as Alejo, Matilde, or Chepita, it became clear that a top-down statelike pacification is far from a reality: robberies, assaults, and predatory behavior, as their experiences show, are prevalent. The private security groups hired by the shed-market managers are simply not equipped to eradicate crime when hundreds of thousands of buyers are circulating through La Salada’s myriad aisles. In this section, I described how entrepreneurs, vendors, and cartpullers like Alejo usually deal with La Salada’s hostile social environment. I showed that people’s lives take place within an unremitting emotional climate of fear, understood as “a prospect-based emotion” (Barbalet 1995), in which profound feelings of vulnerability are rife. From their experiences, we learned that the perception of a statelike

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FIGURE 8.2. Private security guards on the top floor of a shed market. Photograph

by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

institution that informally but clearly regulates the social traffic—in the form of a mafia—ranges from weak to entirely absent. This is not to say that no such institutions exist, but rather that the reference to instances that exert a top-down influence on people’s behavior are somewhat fuzzy and are a source of unpredictability regarding the unfolding of conflictive situations. What seem to gain relevance, however, are sets of “less public, and often mundane” (Auyero and Kilanski 2015:394) practices and strategies that appear in response to the experience of fear. These are carefully and individually monitored modes of coping with fear, forms of anticipating possible outcomes, and individual habitual forms of neutralizing potential threats, avoiding conflicts, structuring everyday activity, and preserving business opportunities. This individual deployment and monitoring of routines is a crucial element in the everyday work of securing informal contracts and maintaining the flow of business. Monitoring in order to know what to manufacture, establishing bonds of trust in order to obtain credit, and minimizing conflict and violence in order to be able to trade successfully: these three sets of practices are indispensable if someone is to survive and progress in the context

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of La Salada. The importance of monitoring lies in the fact that only these daily practices make it possible to interpret the buyers’ preferences and symbolic universe. But not only that: monitoring also facilitates the identification of business opportunities. That is, it allows perceptions to be translated into concrete instructions about, for example, what fabrics to buy, what suppliers to contact, or what kind of information still needs to be collected. Similarly, the need to finance productive activities is the basis on which informal credit institutions such as rotating credit associations or trade credit are built. Finally, success in business will depend on a set of practices that acquire a special meaning in a marketplace where state and government structures foster a hostile business environment. Designing fixed routes for circulating through the marketplace, avoiding situations considered dangerous, and establishing limited bonds of trust are all intended to ensure the minimum conditions that make trade possible. These three sets of practices are the foundation of a web of norms crucial for the everyday functioning of a marketplace such as La Salada. These practices give shape to a bottom-up social order that is directly related to the aspirations of those who participate in La Salada’s economy; that is, the norms here are not simply the result of criminal organizations imposing a top-down social order. This bottom-up approach to the socioeconomic order is fundamental if economic sociology seeks to account for the architecture of illegal markets. The existence of mafias, networks, or other organizations can hardly explain how a myriad of contracts are fulfilled in an ever-expanding economy in which the state plays no relevant role in properly enforcing regulations. Furthermore, this bottom-up approach, based on actors’ perceptions of the future, addresses the question concerning the structural conditions that allow for the emergence of aspirations. In the case of La Salada, it is clear that people’s powerful aspirations cannot be explained without linking them to specific major constraints present in the garment industry, to access to clothing, and to governmental tolerance of illegality. We can conclude, then, that analyzing the rules governing economic spaces such as La Salada requires going beyond an analysis of the state as an organization that imposes a specific type of order. Instead, we must consider the social structure and the tolerance practiced by authorities as conditions for the emergence of parallel webs of norms.

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CHAPTER 9

Squatters, Cart-Pullers, and Demolition

As I stood on the roof of Pablo’s home, his sweatshop concealed below a thin layer of concrete beneath my feet, I noticed a rather curious feature of the skyline that I had not seen from ground level. In every direction, thin metal rods protruded vertically from each corner of almost all of the squat, one- or two-story buildings. These exposed metal rods announced that the house was not yet in its final state; that the current concrete roof was destined to be the floor of the second or third level of the house. It is rather easy to conclude that the lack of completion of the houses, their lack of paint or whitewash, the columns of concrete still unfinished, or the formwork still standing is the material expression of the aspirations of their inhabitants. A significant portion of my interviewees, for the most part entrepreneurs, vendors, and cartpullers, made it clear that their work in La Salada was undertaken in order to finish building their houses. Their aspiration was to finally own a completed house. Pablo’s father, Eusebio, had invited me to go up to the roof of the second floor so that he could point out “all the sweatshops making marca.” I was not able to confirm whether counterfeiting was as prevalent among his neighbors as Eusebio claimed, but the unfinished state of most of the roofs clearly showed a neighborhood waiting for construction to continue. An attentive look at La Salada marketplace, however, shows that the greatest material expression of aspirations held by those who work there every week is the whole commercial infrastructure of the place. At this point it is worth recalling Álvaro’s words—reported in chapter 6—as he was the first to call my attention to the relationship between economic progress in the context of the marketplace and its infrastructure. Álvaro had been a “soldier” in La Salada at the beginning of the nineties, when a minimal order allowing

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peaceful trade was established at gunpoint. Now, however, Álvaro liked to talk about the future. MATÍAS: When did the marketplace make such progress? ÁLVARO: This [place] is always growing. If you come within a

year, you’ll see five floors here. With another escalator, with two elevators . . . Because [Álvaro points to the shed market in front of us] here, under the slab that’s being built, all the stalls will be there. All glazed, with Blindex glass. Those stalls are below. Upstairs, the first floor will be all for shoes. Five hundred, six hundred shoe stalls. And from the second floor it’ll continue until the fifth. Third, fourth, and fifth will only be parking. Then you’ll come within a year and you’ll ask me: When did the marketplace make such a progress? In line with Álvaro’s predictions about the future of one shed market’s facilities, I will show in this chapter that the aspirations of those who work at La Salada have a profound impact on its infrastructure. In the second part of the book, I showed how a particular sociostructural configuration, including the general lack of access to clothing, leads to the general emergence of aspirations among entrepreneurs who see a business opportunity in the manufacture and commercialization of low-cost garments. In the third section, I have so far shown that the generalization of aspirations concerning access to various types of goods and services are constantly stimulated by buyers arriving at the marketplace and coming into contact with garment entrepreneurs. In turn, this generalization of aspirations gives shape to discourses on sacrifice and autonomy, as well as provoking the deployment of a series of personal strategies aimed at taking advantage of business opportunities. According to the argument developed so far, several practices and strategies—how to interpret what is currently in fashion, construct creditworthiness, and avoid violent events—are aimed at taking advantage of economic opportunities directly linked to the fulfillment of aspirations. In short, this argument reminds us that, beyond institutional arrangements that introduce market order from the top down, what ensures orderly commercial transactions in La Salada are everyday practices inspired by the force of widespread aspirations. In what follows, I expand this argument by showing that the positive expectations emerging from the constant arrival of wholesale

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buyers to La Salada marketplace have also had a decisive impact on its infrastructure. Over time, three secondary markets developed, each of which has its own infrastructure: selling points, transport, and storage. The markets for (1) stalls created through the unlawful occupation of streets and sidewalks, (2) transport within each shed market, and (3) storing clothing provide the necessary infrastructure in order for entrepreneurs and buyers to succeed in doing business. In other words, these are secondary markets that arise in response to specific needs, mainly of entrepreneurs, and give the marketplace a particular shape. It is not by chance that all these secondary markets emerged and consolidated between 2000 and 2004, when the garment trade— according to all the interviewees—reached its peak. The arrival of increasing numbers of wholesale buyers and, consequently, the increasing numbers of entrepreneurs looking for stalls to rent, served as a powerful incentive for squatting on the streets surrounding the marketplace. Once the streets and sidewalks were subdivided into small stalls, the informal rental market gained new momentum thanks to even lower rental prices, a situation that became a stimulus for entrepreneurs with less capital available. Likewise, the marketplace’s orientation toward wholesaling, which meant the need to transport greater volumes of clothing, coupled with the managers’ interest in employing large numbers of young men with little or no qualifications, resulted in the emergence of a transport system featuring the cart-puller as the main protagonist. Finally, a portion of the insecurity problem, which derived from robberies and selective police confiscations, was eliminated with the emergence of warehouses immediately outside the shed markets where entrepreneurs could keep their goods safe between market days. It is worth looking at these emerging secondary markets from two points of view. First, the garment trade is functionally reliant on the three markets mentioned. In fact, the current volumes of garments can be traded only because of the infrastructure provided by these secondary markets. Second, there is an entrenchment at the level of aspirations. As I showed in chapter 6, the fieldwork revealed that both participants in both the principal and secondary markets hold beliefs referring to a mutual interdependence, a constellation in which everyone provides work for everyone else, and La Salada marketplace appears as “the goose that lays the golden eggs” due to its virtuous workings. Individual aspirations are based on the intersubjectively

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constructed certainty that the interdependence of actors—entrepreneurs, cart-pullers, informal landlords, owners of warehouses—is rewarding for everyone. Observing the marketplace not only as a functionally coordinated commercial enclave but also as a social space where aspirations can be finally fulfilled is how we might come to understand La Salada’s powerful magnetism. The spatial dimension and the infrastructure within these spaces that shapes market exchanges appear with varying degrees of emphasis in studies on prominent marketplaces (Bestor 2004; Keshavarzian 2007; King 2015; La Pradelle 2006), and increasingly also in relation to informal marketplaces and vendors (Bromley 1974; Bromley and Mackie 2009; Cardosi, Fayazi, and Lizarralde 2015; Cervantes Corazzina 2014; D’Angiolillo et al. 2010; Humphrey and Skvirskaja 2009; Mandel and Humphrey 2002; Nejad 2005; Watson 2009). However, though space and infrastructure appear in the literature as core dimensions of marketplaces that shape or constrain market exchanges, we still know little about the origin of the different types of infrastructure and the ways in which they are connected with the expectations, aspirations, or imaginaries of their inhabitants. Therefore, it is crucial that we shed light on the infrastructural dimension of the marketplace, which is often overlooked or conceived of merely as an accessory constraining or limiting human action. To do so, I describe how widespread aspirations shaped three aspects of infrastructure that are fundamental to La Salada’s operation: transport, storage, and selling points. Each of these infrastructures should be observed as secondary markets appearing around the primary market for lowcost garments and as directly related to the growth of aspirations throughout the entire marketplace. Furthermore, the infrastructures I examine in this chapter are also dependent on the main market. While cart-pullers, owners of warehouses, and squatters are no more than service providers relevant only in the context of La Salada, garment entrepreneurs are the only ones capable of creating value—in or outside the marketplace—and are therefore responsible for structuring relationships. Finally, an important question pertains to whether the infrastructures examined here are the result of perceptions of the future, or whether they are actually the result of the workings of specific informal institutions. There is little doubt that both past experiences and perceptions of the future shape the experiences and actions of all those

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who are involved in the three infrastructures. However, it is worth highlighting once again the preeminence of the future in the explanation for behavior in the context of La Salada. The experience of individual economic progress, which is structurally secured by a specific constellation in the garment industry as a whole, constitutes a fundamental element that marks a milestone for a segment of the population whose chances of integration in the formal economy are close to zero. This makes La Salada marketplace an aspirational economic enclave, a place where informal arrangements are made at the service of fulfilling long-held aspirations, while also staying in line with entrepreneurs’ commercial needs.

CART-PULLERS AND THE MAKING OF THE FUTURE The cart-puller-based transportation system emerged in the context of La Salada between 2001 and 2003. The appearance of the cart-puller’s role is directly linked to the managers’ interest in having a large group of young men working for them in the shed markets. The functions performed by these groups have always been diverse. The most visible is the transport of large quantities of garments to or from the stalls located within each shed market in exchange for a negotiable fee. In fact, the limited team of cart-pullers designated by each shed market is the only one authorized to provide the service of bringing garment bags into the shed markets. For each manager, however, the relevance of these groups of cart-pullers does not end in the provision of transport. Through this group of young men, managers can exert more efficient control over the boundaries of each shed market and thus offer a higher level of security to the entrepreneurs who rent the stalls inside. Finally, there are two less-explicit but nevertheless crucial additional justifications for the existence of cart-pullers. On the one hand, by offering the possibility of employment—informal and precarious— to young people with low or no qualifications from the neighborhoods surrounding La Salada, each shed market absorbs a labor force that rarely finds employment in the formal economy. Consequently, managers reduce the possibility of robberies and violent events. The life stories of cart-pullers I interviewed exhibit a common pattern, in which being employed as a cart-puller allowed someone like Daniel

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to leave behind—in some cases only partially—stories of robbery and drug addiction: The marketplace itself, for the neighborhood, is a blessing! So that’s for sure. And it was even more of one when La Rivera [a displaced street market] existed; that was even better than now! Because lots of young guys, who were actually stealing, stopped doing that stuff as the marketplace started making progress. They devoted themselves to work. They devoted themselves to work. That’s why my old man always tells me that the marketplace is a blessing. My old man tells me that many people who used to steal stopped doing it once the marketplace got here. Finally, on the other hand, the group of cart-pullers usually works like a shock troop at the service of managers, especially in cases of power disputes at the municipal level or when managers need to provide a show of political support for provincial or national candidates. On more than one occasion, cart-pullers have been forced to participate in protests or partisan gatherings. The consolidation of a transport infrastructure based on a system of cart-pullers, however, has depended on a social dynamic in which aspirations play a crucial role. At the core of this dynamic we find the establishment in each shed market of a fixed number of cart-pullers with an informal license to work: 145 cart-pullers in Urkupiña and a similar number in Punta Mogote. Given that the demand for work is significant in this environment, this cap on the number of cart-pullers allowed to work in each shed market has enormously increased the value of each of the 145 positions. In other words, once the managers decided to protect the transport market by putting a limit on the number of workers allowed, each informal license—manifested in the form of a numbered vest worn by each cart-puller—suddenly had a price. In practical terms, this means that each cart-puller carrying a numbered vest has an informal license that is highly valued in the context of La Salada. In this sense, this system of transportation based on carts is no different from the taxi markets that exist in many cities throughout the world whereby only a fixed number of licenses exist. The particularity of the existing system of numbered vests as licenses lies partly in its informality, supported as it is only by verbal agreements and trust-based relationships with managers. More

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FIGURE 9.1. Cart-puller wearing a vest. Photograph by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada

Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

important than informality, however, is the fact that the vest has become an informal institution that, in practice, works as a trigger of aspirations—a mechanism allowing the segment at the bottom of the social pyramid to imagine a different future. The value of the vest, as well as its function, is neatly summed up by Alejo: The vest, he says, is “the guarantee. Today, the vest costs about thirty thousand or forty thousand pesos; that’s why the guarantee is the vest.” Alejo knows that the vest, his authorization to work in Urkupiña, is a guarantee because of the possibilities it offers him. The vest is a powerful asset that, in a context of marginalization and exclusion from the formal economy, offers possibilities that would otherwise be unthinkable. I had not long begun my fieldwork at La Salada when I saw firsthand one kind of benefit associated with the vest. Instead of meeting me at the market, Alejo invited me to his place: he was laid up with the unbearable back pain that plagued many cart-pullers as a result of shifting hundreds of kilos of garments each day. For those who do not work in a protected market—such as seamsters or even entrepreneurs—being unwell implies serious economic damage. As Alejo told me in reference to other La Salada workers: “If you get sick, you don’t work, and if you don’t work you don’t eat.” To my surprise,

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however, this did not apply to Alejo. His greatest asset, the vest, allowed him to stay at home while an informally subcontracted employee of Alejo’s choosing did the work in the shed market in his stead. “When these things happen, I rent out the vest. Now I’m renting it out at seven hundred pesos per market day. The problem is that I have back pain and that really screws me up.” In other words, the vest, which is essentially a work permit, becomes a form of health insurance, something allowing Alejo and his family to continue earning an income when he is too ill to work and thus granting access to the necessary medication. Additionally, the vest serves not only as health insurance, but also as a retirement plan. After more than fifteen years of continuous operation, the transport market in La Salada has its first retirees, in many cases forced withdrawals due to the dangerous working conditions. “There are a lot of elderly people who don’t come to work anymore, who are old. They’re people who are already seventy or sixty years old, they have the vest and they rent it out to live off it,” says Alejo. “Or there are elderly people, for example, who don’t want to work anymore and they sell the vest. If you don’t want to work anymore, you can sell the vest and you get the money,” Alejo clarifies, though he does not know exactly what percentage of the 145 official cart-pullers live from renting out the vest. Alejo is able to visualize his future thanks to the promise of the vest. He imagines the vest working for him—“I’ll continue making the vest work”—which means that he would collect a monthly income equivalent to a pension, a situation that would also allow him to work in parallel as a wholesale buyer for clients located in other provinces. This informal social arrangement, which allows people to imagine safe future scenarios linked to significant life events such as illness or old age, is also the trigger for aspirations focused on the consumption of goods. In this regard, the vest is also widely used as a guarantee of repayment; that is, as security against informal credit. “The shops in the area that want to sell here [in Urkupiña shed market] come to talk with Quique [the manager], make some arrangement, and then we can buy on credit. Then you buy a table, you buy chairs, you buy a refrigerator, you buy . . . you get your house equipped!” Alejo explains. His wife, Silvina, adds that this is possible only because of the guarantee embodied in the vest, and that failing to repay the credit is met with a particular consequence: the manager withdraws the debtor’s license, the vest, and with it all the benefits it entails. Alejo knows well what happens when a vest is withdrawn due to unpaid debts:

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My brother has a vest. He had to pay for it, every market day he had to pay the debt left by the previous owner. He paid all the fees and so he finally got the vest. The previous owner bought a television, paid half of it and the other half was owed. So, what do they do in cases like that? Quique comes and says, “If you don’t pay anymore, I’ll take your vest.” So if the guy doesn’t pay back, Quique gives it to another person who can pay the debt. My brother paid all the debt and now he has the vest. Though it is nothing more than a work permit for an informal shed market, the vest is an asset imbued with the promise of a good future, and this has very real consequences for the organization of the cartpuller-based transportation system. Cart-pullers’ expectations and aspirations inform their attempts to improve the way they organize their work, neutralize potential conflicts with managers, and continue profiting from a market that admits only a certain number of participants. It is not surprising, then, that cart-pullers are the only group in La Salada whose members have managed to organize themselves, creating a forum where all kinds of labor-related issues are discussed and resolved. One day, Alejo invited me to take part in one of these meetings, held exclusively for the owners of the vests. Despite the pouring rain, close to a hundred cart-pullers had come to La Salada on their day off to have their say. There were two main topics on the agenda: renting out the vests and unpaid debts. “We have no right to claim anything if we don’t do things right, we have no right to anything!” said Mosqui, almost shouting. Mosqui was a colleague of Alejo, a fellow cart-puller and in charge of liaising with the shed-market manager. “The names were authorized and now how many still owe [the fees]? They are seven or eight. We already had to take one away. Do you get it? What excuse are we going to give [the manager of the shed market]? Tell me, what excuse are we going to give? The list [of debtors’ names] is the only thing that counts. That’s why I say to you, once again: Let’s have respect among ourselves and let’s dedicate ourselves to work!” Mosqui, whose role was something like an intermediary between the management of the Urkupiña shed market and the organization of cartpullers, was demanding that the organization’s members honor informal agreements—like the repayment of consumer loans—and warning that the lack of compliance would inexorably lead to severe penalties. The second issue on the day’s agenda was discussed more extensively. The problem was the almost uncontrolled subleasing of the

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vests, an issue that directly affected the security of buyers. There had already been numerous cases of cart-pullers occasionally renting a vest to someone who would then simulate the theft of garment bags from the cart. This would not trigger any kind of police intervention, but the owner of the vest inevitably lost a client, or perhaps several. “We live from this, guys, we live from the cart, we live from our buyers and we depend on our buyers!” Mosqui insisted. I’ll give you an example, guys: He [points to a cart-puller] has pains in his waist. What can he do? You can sublet the cart to another guy. But what he cannot do is this: sublet it to a guy, then that guy sublets it to another. . . then there are already three people! You can’t do that, guys! The problem is that, in the end, we’re all strangers working. And if the situation continues like this they’ll take away all the benefits we have; they’ll let more carts enter [the shed market] to work and we’ll all lose out. Throughout the day, there was little talk among cart-pullers about the benefits and possibilities for the future promised by their valuable asset, the vest. Alejo had spoken about his informal license in terms of a promise of insurance against illness and old age, as well as credit for the purchase of several goods. That Saturday, however, it was quite the opposite: the future appeared as a negative, in which failure to comply with informal agreements would lead to the elimination of all benefits available. At least in principle, the future did not cease to exist in cartpullers’ dialogues, but rather appeared to be empty, stripped of possibilities, closed off. But above all, those dialogues gave cart-pullers, the most fragile segment in La Salada’s social factory, another taste of the experiences they knew well and hoped they could one day leave behind.

SQUATTERS Of the 7,822 stalls that currently exist in La Salada marketplace, 2,915 units—almost 40 percent—are made available by squatters. This figure hints at the evolution of the marketplace. As I explained in chapter 1, the vast majority of stalls, basically those located within the shed markets, are the result of subdividing the former recreation centers and other, disparate constructions in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, La Salada’s success as a low-cost garment distribution

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center was indisputable, and the demand for stalls—along with entrepreneurs’ need for cheaper rent—skyrocketed. In practical terms, this abrupt increase triggered a massive squatting on public streets in the shed markets’ immediate vicinity. Such massive squatting was driven by a single purpose: to satisfy the demand for cheaper stalls. Today, the rental of street stalls allows La Salada marketplace to offer a wide variety of rental prices. It is a differentiated informal real estate market that offers selling points to entrepreneurs with different levels of capital, from established manufacturers to those who have little initial capital or wish to change sectors according to their economic situation. Although the growth of this informal real estate market acquired its own logic over time, it should not be forgotten that it emerged as a result of growing aspirations linked to the sale of clothing, the most visible expression of which is the weekly arrival of thousands of buyers. Graciela’s story is a good example of the phenomenon of rising expectations, as well as how they are expressed in terms of practices and strategies. Toward the end of the 1990s, Graciela began to manufacture items of clothing using fabric remnants discarded by entrepreneurs and fabric shops. She partnered with other women, with whom she shared the manufacturing process, and sold their production in the neighborhood, especially to parents at her daughter’s school when they collected their children at the end of the day. By 2001, however, La Salada began to extend its commercial networks and deepen its wholesale profile, which in turn meant a general decline in clothing prices that affected retail sales businesses like Graciela’s. She described the situation: “Then, in a moment we all [the women who manufacture] got together and we said we have to take a sector [of the street] and rent stalls as well. I wasn’t going to pay for a stall simply because I didn’t have the money.” Graciela and her companions’ decision to occupy a sector of the street is not an isolated event. Other interviewees, such as Emilio and Esperanza, also noticed an increase in the number of buyers arriving at the marketplace and committed themselves to occupying sectors of the streets. “When more people started arriving, they started to pile up,” Osvaldo tells me. “Then I started to let people know where I was going to set up my own rental business.” Thus, the occupation of street sectors, which spread partly by imitation, was perceived as a business opportunity for those willing to risk their physical integrity and constantly renegotiate the terms of the occupation.

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FIGURE 9.2. Stalls set up on streets. Photograph by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project.

Courtesy of La Salada Project.

In fact, from 2001 onward, the high demand for stalls turned street occupations into a risky business that required special skills such as the use of physical force alongside bargaining power. Álvaro, who has always been employed as the head of private security at one of the shed markets, remembers that, at the beginning of the decade, conflicts between gangs relating to the boundaries between occupied sectors were resolved at gunpoint. Typically, three different groups adopted systematic squatting as a business opportunity. First, the managers of the shed markets, who claimed as their own both the sidewalks and half the streets surrounding their sheds. Second, gangs of hooligans from numerous soccer clubs arrived at La Salada marketplace to demand portions of the streets in order to become rentiers. Leo, the right-hand man of the current mayor of Lomas de Zamora, the district in which La Salada is located, was rather explicit: “The hooligans of the Andes, the hooligans of Temperley, the hooligans of Banfield, the hooligans of El Porvenir, the hooligans of Independiente, the hooligans of Racing . . . all these criminals work there.” The practices of these gangs of hooligans do not seem to differ significantly from what Vadim Volkov, observing Russia after communism, defines as “violent entrepreneurship.” This is not only because of the link with the world of sports but

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also because La Salada’s hooligans could be observed as “a set of organizational solutions and action strategies enabling organized violence to be converted into money or other valuable assets on a permanent basis” (Volkov 2002:27). Finally, squatting was also a strategy used by groups of neighbors, often made up of one or several families, armed and capable of resisting pressure and violence from other groups. A close look at these three groups, however, shows that cooperation among them is not infrequent. For example, although some gangs of hooligans managed to occupy large street sectors, other gangs put themselves at the service of managers, exchanging their skills as violent entrepreneurs for ready-to-rent sidewalks adjacent to the shed markets. There are many occasions in which managers need to intimidate or exercise violence against other actors who dispute their power. As one of the managers confessed: “Sometimes you have to make people sweat.” Meanwhile, managers have also strengthened ties with groups of neighbors. My interviews revealed that, without exception, these groups of neighbors formed formal associations that are used as a platform for establishing political links with either the municipal or provincial levels of government or both. Graciela, for example, the informal owner of a large street sector, became the official representative of a security forum, a neighborhood association whose mission is to inform the provincial police authorities about local police behavior, as well as of neighbors’ specific needs in the area of security. In practice, this neighborhood association served to legitimize Graciela and other neighbors’ squatted sectors, especially through the official contacts they were able to access. However, such associations also served managers because they allowed them to establish a valuable channel of dialogue with the police. Another association that fulfilled a similar function was the one dedicated to fighting the consumption of freebase cocaine. In this case, the contacts were not the police but provincial and local politicians, and the occupied sectors were converted into parking lots rather than stalls. What these complex relationships among hooligans and shedmarket managers, political and police contacts, neighbors, and community associations show is that, unlike the cart-puller-based transportation system described above and the warehouses described later, large-scale squatting forced these actors to constantly establish alliances and agreements, which were often unstable. While in the case of the other two infrastructures—transport and warehouses—tax or

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building regulations are violated, the infringement of the law in the squatting case affects others’ expectations about the use of the streets, thus demanding that the squatters perform a kind of social gymnastics. In addition, alliances are crucial during and after the occupation of the streets. Esperanza recalls that she squatted a sector together with her husband’s family—a sector that was subsequently subdivided into about three hundred stalls. “You have to fight! The strongest one wins. And the wisest. Because a lot of times it’s not about occupying using violence. With my husband, we have thirty stalls and we rent to those who want to sell.” Other members of Esperanza’s family manage the additional occupied area and recognize that bookkeeping is difficult for such a large number of stalls. Equally difficult, however, is to maintain the occupation of the streets in the face of possible contenders. MATÍAS: And what happens when someone wants to take away

your stalls? ESPERANZA: It always happens on Sunday mornings. On

Saturday night all the bastards come, all drunk, stoned, and try to get your place. And in those situations you have to grab the weapon and shoot or throw a punch. But my strategy to avoid that is to go on Saturday night and stay seated. I sleep on the street, frozen. And the others, the ten brothers of my husband, do pretty much the same. That’s how it is: one day I hit a guy who came wanting to take the place—I almost killed him. Graciela tells a similar story: she occupied the streets together with her children and a group of young men. As a result, the street was subdivided, and now both she and the rest of the group are “owners” of two stalls each that they regularly rent to entrepreneurs. Unlike Esperanza, who mentions the violent dimension of squatting, Graciela emphasizes the existence of codes in the context of the shed market and “friends who warn you.” But when “they want to steal what’s yours,” she does not rule out violence as a resource: “And when they confront you, you have to show who you are. If we’ve survived from 2003 until now it’s because we know how to defend what’s ours.” The actions of these various groups—hooligans, managers, and organized neighbors—has shaped a complex mosaic of relationships, interests, and agreements that support the marketplace infrastructure of street stalls in La Salada. In material terms, any visitor to La

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FIGURE 9.3. Wire-mesh stalls in a La Salada street market at closing time.

Photograph by Sarah Pabst; © La Salada Project. Courtesy of La Salada Project.

Salada can identify such a huge infrastructure: it consists of cage-like metal structures of approximately two meters across by two meters high within which entrepreneurs can display their garments. In this sense, the task of Esperanza, Graciela, and Emilio is to transport, set up, and rent out these structures in their sectors. As Graciela once told me, the occupied plots cannot be sold because they are public streets, but it is possible to sell the informal right to rent the sector. This way, for example, Esperanza sold a stall (along with the metal structure), meaning that she sold the right to rent the stall. As in the case of the vest worn by cart-pullers, it is not difficult to acknowledge the fragility of this asset, since they are nothing more than fictions whose value lies in what they promise: future profits that will be harvested by those who own them and that can be eliminated simply by enforcing the law—selectively or not. The levels of violence and the depth, complexity, and density of relationships between different actors in the context of the marketplace are indicators of both the profitability and the aspirations surrounding this informal real estate business. Again, as in the case of garment sellers and cart-pullers, the success of the stall-rental business should be understood as the direct result of high levels of aspirations,

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a phenomenon not dissimilar to a gold rush: the occupation of streets appears to be big business, essentially becoming a pilgrimage site that invites people to establish relationships and act strategically. As in the case of a gold rush, only a few will be able to make significant sums of money, with most getting only modest gains or even none at all. On Saturday nights, Esperanza sits in her chair watching over her sector, well aware of what drives her to do so. “I want to be able to invest a little money and have a future. Because I think: What mother doesn’t want her son to progress? I love my children! And I want my children to have everything. Actually, not everything, but the basic needs met. You understand? To have milk in the morning, clothes to go out. Because, as mothers, we want our children to look impeccable.” Esperanza’s aspirations, however, seem to be propelled by the economic progress she has already made; that is, her current aspirations are based on the previous successful experience of improving on extremely tough circumstances. I constructed my home only with money I earned with the stalls. I made two duplexes and my house upstairs. And I’ll defend that progress. I had a very hard life. My life, my childhood, my adolescence, my father . . . was all shit; my whole life has been shit. So I can’t allow history to repeat itself. I have to do something so that my children live differently! Because I have four children and I’d like for one of them to be president of the nation someday. Why not? I have a son who wants to study science. Did I tell you? Like Esperanza, Graciela recalls a sad and difficult past. “I had to take my son out of school because I couldn’t travel and no one could take care of him during the other half of the day. He was doing very well; he always got ‘outstanding,’ ten out of ten.” Her voice cracks: “I was alone with the two kids and had to go out to cartonear [collect and sort discarded paper and card],” she says, wiping away tears. However, her participation in La Salada has allowed Graciela a measure of economic progress that means that neither she nor her son needs to continue to cartonear. That progress is also expressed in her having been able to finish her house, which “doesn’t have much luxury, but is beautiful”; in paying for private school for her children; and in the fact that one of them already has a formal job. However, unlike Esperanza,

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Graciela emphasizes the autonomy she has gained over time, and her aspirations are rather political: “Here you don’t depend on employers! In the market you’re your own boss! Now I want [the neighborhood] Cuartel IX to progress. I won’t give up on making sure that things don’t stay this way. We need to get better streets, the bus . . . we can live a little better and have better security! That’s something I’ll always fight for.” Graciela and Esperanza’s biographies remind us, once again, that the relevance of the future in La Salada finds its explanation in past experiences, most of them exhibiting a complete lack of affection and economic support. As in the case of cart-pullers, La Salada marketplace marks a turning point in people’s lives, the beginning of a new life that offers a different future. People like Esperanza, Graciela, and Emilio will do everything to maintain what they have achieved so far and to realize yet more dreams, aspirations, and hopes.

DEMOLITION In La Salada marketplace, aspirations also led to a “creative destruction” (Schumpeter 1947): the demolition of houses for the construction of warehouses. The internal transport network featuring cart-pullers and the provision of stalls by squatters were not the only structures to emerge as a result of the growth of the marketplace and its distinctive orientation—namely, the wholesale supply of garments through trade networks that extend to remote parts of the country. La Salada marketplace, in addition to transforming the sidewalks into stalls, transformed the neighborhood as residents recognized that, by virtue of their location, their homes offered a precious commodity that they could sell to entrepreneurs. That commodity is storage space. Entrepreneurs were facing economic losses, security risks, and health problems on every journey they made to and from the marketplace: in transporting their garments between their sweatshops and the marketplace, they risked robbery, police confiscations, and physical damage from loading and unloading bags of garments weighing tens of kilos. The entrepreneurs’ necessity became an incentive for residents to transform their homes into warehouses for storing the bags safely between market days. The transformation of the neighborhood was gradual at first but gained momentum after 2001. From that time onward, the neighborhood became an inseparable part of the marketplace and the

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marketplace an inseparable part of the neighborhood. La Salada’s success began to show promise for people residing in nearby houses. At last, the neighborhood began to experience an upswing in an economy that had been stagnant ever since the mineral-water pools disappeared and unemployment rose in the working-class neighborhood. Álvaro, the long-serving head of security at one of the shed markets, witnessed the whole housing transformation, whereby real estate values in the neighborhood skyrocketed. This was a ghost village, son! I don’t know if you understand me. Who raised [the value of ] all this [the neighborhood]? The marketplace! Here, the neighbors were selling their houses for ten thousand pesos! Today each house costs one million pesos. Why? Do you want me to explain why it costs a million pesos? Because in your house you have to pay taxes, do you follow me? To maintain your house you have to pay. Well, here, the house gives you money! I’ll teach you why. You buy a house here around the corner, or on the other side, or two blocks away. Then, the only thing you leave standing in the house is the façade and the front door. Inside, you demolish everything! All the rooms, everything; you leave the square and start making lockers so that the entrepreneurs can protect their goods. Each locker costs [the entrepreneur] six hundred pesos per month. [The lockers] protect the goods, so they don’t need to come and go with goods, because on the way home they get robbed [los chorean], right? You can construct eighty, a hundred lockers inside, each one a meter wide by two-and-a-half high. Inside one room, you can put twenty or thirty lockers. Imagine! You demolish the walls and you only leave the main structure. There are one hundred lockers and every house earns you sixty thousand pesos per month. Álvaro describes a phenomenon that became evident when observing the local area at the shed markets’ opening and closing times: hundreds of cart-pullers and entrepreneurs, all carrying bags full of clothing items, going in and out of the nearby houses that had been transformed into warehouses. These are informal establishments that, like the cart-puller-based transport system, almost exclusively employ young men with little or no qualifications, a population seriously

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affected by the lack of job opportunities. They spend long hours fetching the heavy bags of clothing from the lockers, transferring them to the carts, and then back into the lockers when the marketplace closes. It is just one of the jobs that emerged as the marketplace grew and the atmosphere began to be marked by growing aspirations. The exorbitant figures quoted frequently by Álvaro serve to justify the risk of demolishing the interior of their homes. Again, Álvaro summarizes: “The whole neighborhood did the same! All the people around here [gestures to the right], all the people around here [gestures to the left]. Who’d be interested in selling you a house for one million pesos? No one! Because one million pesos is what the house gives you per year!” Running a warehouse, however, is not an easy task. In fact, certain characteristics of the job raise doubts about whether everyone is equally capable of entering the business simply by demolishing the inside of their houses, as Álvaro suggests they can. Micky, an experienced warehouse owner, confirms that it is not just a case of opening the door for entrepreneurs to pick up or drop off their bags. Nor is it simply a matter of bookkeeping. The problem faced by warehouse owners is similar to the one other marketplace actors are confronted with: how can they protect the entrepreneurs’ property left in their care? When a house is converted into a warehouse, it is transformed into a target for thieves, and warehouse owners are therefore forced to design strategies to avoid robberies. And not only that: warehouses are attractive targets for the police, because they contain bags of counterfeit clothing. Micky’s answer to these issues is to cultivate a low profile and trust no one: “I don’t want anyone to know how I move, where I’m going, how I’m going, and what I do there, understand? Because here there are many people who can, for example, cheat you.” But Micky’s strategy is not limited to just keeping a low profile and saying only what is necessary; he also takes part in the aforementioned security forum. His participation has allowed him to get closer to managers, to groups of neighbors who rent street stalls, and to other neighborhood leaders, as well as to political brokers. However, the most important connection is the one established with the local police. Micky collaborates with the police to avoid confiscations that would damage his reputation as a secure warehouse. Micky is fond of repeating phrases such as “the police don’t bother me,” and “here, the police never come looking for anything; they go everywhere, but not here,” in a way making it clear that his business depends on these relationships, a subject about which

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Micky is less fond of talking. Álvaro and Micky’s stories, with their respective emphasis on future developments of the business and the problem of security, offer elements to help us understand the emergence and functioning of this thriving market of warehouses. What ensures the survival of each of these business units is a network of relationships in which information is constantly exchanged and political and police authorities play a crucial role. The profits that Álvaro sees may be real. However, those who decide to demolish the interior of their home in order to install lockers must, at the same time, establish good connections with other actors in order for them and their aspirations to survive.

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Conclusion

Though there may be nuances between different approaches, the perspective on sweatshops in the garment industry is nevertheless fairly unanimous: they are the result of a progressive extension of offshore production and subcontracting mechanisms that are characteristic of an industrial sector prone to instability and constant change. These strategies are linked to companies’ need to manufacture clothing items for shorter fashion cycles with faster turnaround times, reduced profit margins, and greater uncertainty. Coordination within this industry—between entrepreneurs and workers on the shop floor, between sweatshops and contractors, and between retail companies and consumers—is governed by a wide range of regulatory mechanisms present throughout the whole chain: local labor, safety, and commercial laws, international trade agreements, and a body of private regulations and standards introduced by companies themselves. But, in the case of La Salada’s economy, this narrative is completely misleading. In the world of entrepreneurs manufacturing in their sweatshops and then renting a stall to sell their collections, I witnessed very different relationships. Garment manufacturers who became entrepreneurs were not part of subcontracting chains whose final destinations were national or international garment companies: they themselves were the end of the chain. The entrepreneurs I spent time with in the marketplace or in their sweatshops were not subject to any official commercial regulation, to any private labor or quality standards, or to any regulations protecting trademarks. Located downstream in the market, these entrepreneurs were concerned, like any garment company, with making sense of customers’ preferences and offering them items of clothing conforming to the latest fashion. By focusing on aspirations and emotionally loaded expectations held by entrepreneurs, I was able to recognize the very different nature

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of the garment industry that I was witnessing. I was able to break with current explanations about the economy of sweatshops and show that there was a double phenomenon underlying and propelling its expansion and persistence in Argentina. On the one hand, far from being the result of a vibrant formal economy incentivizing companies to increase their production and feed subcontracting chains, the generalization of aspirations around La Salada’s economy was the consequence of a governmental and state response to a particular structural problem. Tolerating, permitting, and legitimizing the market in different ways were forms of promoting an economic sector that, beyond its illegality and informality, is capable of solving a fundamental structural and political-economic problem: the lack of access to clothing for a vast sector of the population. On the other hand, this informal tolerance and permission opened the door to entrepreneurs’ aspirations along with an optimistic general view of the economy, a phenomenon that forced entrepreneurs and other La Salada workers to seek, test, and establish practices and strategies that would allow them to take advantage of business opportunities they perceived as worthy. Thus, far from being the result of formal commercial or fiscal rules, the coordination of interests and expectations within the marketplace was the consequence of entrepreneurs’ investment of physical and psychic energy in making and maintaining agreements, avoiding risks and overcoming difficulties, interpreting customers’ preferences, and capturing fashion trends. From that perspective, the images of the future contained in aspirations in La Salada, which injected vibrancy into social interactions, had a dual nature: this future was an indirect creation of broad structural processes and permissive official behaviors, and, at the same time, a phenomenon that explained individual economic practices and strategies. In the world of La Salada, I was able to observe aspirations as both explanans and explanandum: as a social phenomenon shaped by overarching social structures and as one that inspired individual actions. By unearthing the multiple layers of government and state actors appearing in one way or another in La Salada’s economy, I was able to show that an effective way to govern an economy that works outside the law is by informally granting permission. If tolerance and political legitimation, alongside the extensive informal taxlike system that operates within the marketplace, indicate something, it is that a series of formally prohibited practices will expand and become accustomed

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patterns of behavior. The systematic collection of money from entrepreneurs who infringe trademark laws within the marketplace offers a specific and salient outlet for the reproduction and reaffirmation of expectations and economic practices. In fact, the regular informal signalization that certain practices would be permitted facilitates specific economic calculations, makes it possible for entrepreneurs to consider counterfeiting as a realistic economic strategy, and encourages the fraudulent and creative use of brand logos, as described in chapter 5. In the long term, the state’s permissive behavior sediments expectations and favors a confident attitude toward future events, confirming that certain behaviors are possible and not subject to punishment. Meanwhile, the flip side of these growing opportunities facilitated by way of informal permission is that several authorities, from the security forces to various government agencies at different levels, gain access to valuable resources. Financing political activities and campaigns, nourishing patronage networks, and manufacturing social order constitute real everyday problems that the economy of La Salada has helped to solve. The solution comes in the form of a constant transfer of financial resources, as well as through the promotion of consumption, the creation of informal employment, and a consequent neutralization of protests. Thus the governance of this economy is not based, as many would be inclined to believe, on the absence of formal rules and stipulations, but precisely on its opposite: the recognition of their existence and their constant selective enforcement and manipulation. By identifying the historically concrete and structurally specific forces that stimulate the expansion of the sweatshop economy centered on La Salada marketplace, and by witnessing the kind of work entrepreneurs perform in their sweatshops, I was able to recognize the emergence of a type of entrepreneur that has so far been absent from the specialized literature. In direct contact with distributors and retailers, La Salada garment entrepreneurs focus on manufacturing low-cost garment items—mostly targeting low- and middle-income segments—and adopt a role similar to branded garment retailers: they translate fashion trends, interpret needs and desires of buyers, and seek to differentiate themselves from their competitors through the introduction of new designs. One of the main obstacles plaguing explanations about the persistence of sweatshops in countries like Argentina is the tendency to assume a necessary connection, through

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subcontracting chains, between sweatshops and national or multinational legally constituted companies. This perspective, mostly focused on dynamics linked to export processing zones, draws a line connecting companies—for example, branded retailers or private stores—with sweatshops located elsewhere. It assigns to the former a creative role, basically the task of interpreting symbolic preferences, and to the latter a role in which creativity does not figure at all, because the organization of work “does not allow workers any scope for initiative” (Aspers 2010b:130). This book has shown practically the opposite situation in the case of La Salada’s sweatshop economy. While subcontracting is a widely used mechanism, especially for assembly and sewing work, the window of opportunity created by both the authorities and the huge demand for low-cost garment items has created enormous incentives for the emergence of a type of entrepreneur who is downstream in the market and is responsible for all the decisions related to the production process, from the design to the production stages. In other words, these entrepreneurs are owners of production units that constitute the beginning of subcontracting chains—usually short ones—and not the end. Accordingly, I have also shown that incentives to become a downstream entrepreneur are associated not only with the expectation of a higher income but also with a series of imaginaries about the access to goods and services and about greater degrees of autonomy from the formal economy. Interestingly, the economy of La Salada is an economy detached from legal regulations, but above all an economy constructed by people who value distance from state reach.

THE DISCIPLINING FORCE OF THE FUTURE In the previous pages, I have shown that answers concerning how women and men become garment entrepreneurs and manage to conduct business in a social atmosphere riddled with distrust and posing real dangers should be sought not only by analyzing social norms imposed from the top down but also by examining a bottom-up process. That is, how aspirations and imaginaries of the future force individuals to develop strategies and practices that may ensure business success. To understand how entrepreneurs, cart-pullers, warehouse owners, and squatters created a minimum order for carrying out their economic activities, it was necessary to examine the limits of top-down

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governance. Neither the shed-market managers, nor diverse mafia-like groups, nor private security guards were able to secure the myriad daily transactions carried out by entrepreneurs, wholesale buyers, squatters, tenants, and warehouse owners. Thousands of transactions and economic agreements simply escaped the purview of these informal authorities. The limits of top-down governance indicated that there was a portion of La Salada’s social order that remained unexplained, along with the need to focus on the micro level of practices and strategies associated with honoring economic agreements, meeting buyers’ expectations, repaying loans, avoiding dangers, and organizing the production of clothing. In La Salada, I found that all these micro situations were strongly linked to aspirations, the desire to access certain goods or services, or the wish to maintain living standards that had clearly improved after entering the marketplace. And these aspirations were not an emerging by-product of business success, but quite the opposite: a disciplining force of everyday attempts to make better business deals, improved pieces of clothing, or more efficient forms of organizing production. These behaviors were certainly decisive for business success. The best examples may be Osvaldo, who fights against his own free-rider tendencies and seeks to improve his way of doing business “in order to do well,” and Leo, who reorganized the production of a product to meet the expectations of a client. In these and other cases, aspirations—some related to achieving new living standards and others focused on maintaining what had already been achieved—had a direct impact on ways of doing business and reaching commercial agreements. In the same way, if researchers seek to examine how actors in other informal or illegal economies are involved in a process of manufacturing social order (i.e., social order conceived as an ongoing process and not as a final state [Ahrne, Aspers, and Brunsson 2015:21]), then they should analyze how the projective and practical dimension related to sellers, dealers, distributors, or producers’ work is jointly structured as part of people’s agency. Parts II and III of the book show this continuous learning process, which consists of a constant back-and-forth dynamic between projections and practice, and where perceptions about the future have a guiding role. As in Durkheim’s (1984:190) definition of hope, aspirations in La Salada are not a biological product but a social one, and it is the socially constructed future that helps us understand our current economic decisions.

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Analyzing the emergence of rules that facilitate coordination within a marketplace in which the state plays only a negative role requires much more than simply going out to look for mafia structures or governance networks in charge of enforcing unwritten rules. If it were, examinations of the social order of informal or illegal markets would not be very different from studies in which the social order is explainable only through functional equivalents of the state, such as the mafia, complicity networks, or organized crime. What makes an approach that observes perceptions of the future (such as aspirations or hope) unique is that it identifies such perceptions as sources of discipline for present actions. This approach requires a careful analysis of both the discursive manifestations of that expected future and the present or past practices linked to these perceptions. Instead of assuming from the outset that market participants are involved in webs of norms governed by an entity responsible for enforcing them, I had to take seriously the conditions that La Salada imposes on entrepreneurs and other workers and therefore focus on other sources that would provide vitality to social norms. In effect, the main question that this book tries to answer is how it can be that businesses thrive and people feel confident enough to make economic deals in a social environment permeated by physical dangers and interpersonal distrust. This means that if we truly want to understand the workings of an economy detached from legality and constantly threatened by various predatory behaviors, we must avoid resorting to explanations based solely on statelike formations imposing a top-down social order. Instead, we must be able to detect modes of rule enforcement carried out—at least in part—autonomously; that is, without the need to expect the intervention of a group, network, or organization as enforcers. By focusing on the most surprising finding of my fieldwork, the high level of aspirations throughout the entire marketplace, I was able to observe that people’s feelings of obligation associated with certain practices derive from the very nature of aspirations: those who enter into the marketplace experience and perceive the content of aspirations as certain possibilities. At this point, my fieldwork points to Möllers’s (2015) proposal about a broader definition of norms: as a perception of possibilities embodied in normative practices. Possibilities such as being an entrepreneur, selling garment items, counterfeiting without penalty, working as a cart-puller, or designing and manufacturing

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garment collections become certain options embodied in concrete practices as a result of acts of the imagination, projects popping up during slow moments at the stall—between one client leaving and the next one arriving—or at home during a meal. However, the case of La Salada teaches us that these acts of the imagination are strongly bound to past experiences: previous experiences provide a particular texture and specific strength to images of future possibilities. Past experiences dye the imaginable, defining levels of obligation and forcing the design of practices and strategies. We would have an incomplete perspective of normative practices if we did not emphasize enough the meaning of recognizing a possibility, very often after periods plagued by unemployment and all kinds of shortages. Here it can be illuminating to recall the words of Esperanza, a squatter who rented out stalls in public streets for many years. Several conflicts ended up leaving Esperanza without her source of income. She explained the reasons why she wanted to return to work at La Salada: “I can’t allow anyone to snatch away my children’s future. I was able to invest. I sold one house, I could afford a car . . . I could project a future! And I’ll defend that progress. I had a very hard life. My life, my childhood, my adolescence, my father . . . was all shit; my whole life has been shit. So I can’t allow history to repeat itself again. I have to do something so that my children live differently!” The normativity of what Esperanza does, as her words seem to suggest, comes not from an external, recognizable instance of enforcement but from the fact that not pursuing what appears as a certain possibility entails negative consequences: loss of money, damaged social status, or reduced consumption possibilities. In other words, the enforcement of normative practices is performed by people like Esperanza themselves, a situation that is sure to increase the effectiveness of the enforcement. Therefore, in recognizing the power of perceptions of the future, expressed in aspirations that are considered true possibilities, we are able to reduce the importance of enforcement as a constitutive element of norms. If we are to understand the force of social norms in informal or illegal environments, it is necessary to work with conceptions in which enforcement is not a condicio sine qua non when it comes to understanding a norm’s validity. Until now, prevailing conceptions of how social order is manufactured in social spaces under conditions of illegality have worked with rather narrow ideas of normativity in which the existence—and validity—of

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a norm necessarily depends on its enforcement. In the most common approaches dealing with this problem, mostly studies done in the fields of law and economics (Basu 2018; Dixit 2004) or informal institutions (Helmke and Levitsky 2006; Lauth 2000), the enforcement of norms is enacted in the context of interactions and takes the form of group exclusion, ostracism, peer shame, or fines. Therefore, the requirement for interactions compels researchers, in the absence of the state, to include social formations such as groups or networks in their models. In these interaction-based models of social norms, some kind of social entity capable of generating social bonds is needed, an entity that, in turn, would make enforcement an almost natural consequence. As I have shown in the previous chapters, this is certainly not the case in constellations like La Salada. Having explained the complications of such a conception of social norms, it remains only to emphasize the importance of acknowledging perceptions of the future as sources of a type of normativity that, embodied in practices, maintains its validity independently of its implementation. The myriad activities, informal contracts, and responsibilities carried out successfully in La Salada derive from possibilities perceived as unique in the context of the marketplace and not simply as a result of norms enforced by brokers, middlemen, or mafia groups. The disciplining force of La Salada’s economy must also be understood as a phenomenon resulting from a situation that was recognized in different ways by all my interviewees: the certainty that the perceived possibility of progress is achievable in the context of the marketplace and nowhere else. Understanding the shape that the perceived future acquires in La Salada, therefore, means recognizing that the future appears as a one-shot possibility. Put differently, the future appears in the singular and not in the plural. Almost in unison, the garment entrepreneurs linked to the marketplace recognized that the opportunity to do business was circumscribed to that particular economy. And the experience of being locked into this economy was partly the result of differentials in education and/or social capital, but above all the consequence of governmental and state actions that fostered the deepening of the divide between La Salada’s informal and illegal economy and its formal counterpart. Thus, the power of attraction of La Salada is explained by its emergence as an island of possibility in a social space riddled with a generalized lack of opportunities and social marginalization. In this social context, the future that motors entrepreneurs’

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aspirations is presented as a totalizing force, which imposes itself by offering possibilities of access to goods or services and, by its very nature, leads entrepreneurs to anticipate that this future offers no alternatives. In the end, the singularity of this future is what leads people to express positive opinions about La Salada as a source of work and regular income, although they would do everything possible in order that their children have access to a different future. Finally, it is worth emphasizing that the singularity of the imaginaries of the future in La Salada is closely associated with the power structures that, paradoxically, make the emergence of a future possible. The reader may have noticed in the interview material provided throughout this book that La Salada’s economy does not generate political aspirations, something that the literature points to as political or collective hope (J. Braithwaite 2004; V. Braithwaite 2004; Courville and Piper 2004; Drahos 2004; Kleist and Jansen 2016). As I have shown, this absence of political aspiration is connected with the fact that, in order for entrepreneurs to survive in the marketplace and obtain any kind of economic returns, they must use and, therefore, nourish existing political structures through participation or the constant supply of resources. Because the concretization of aspirations within the marketplace is commonly based on a continuous transgression of norms, they are sustained by feeding existing political and state structures with acceptance and resources. Consequently, while imagining another future would imply the risk of losing the benefits that actually make aspirations possible, participating in the future proposed by La Salada’s economy means legitimizing the current governance structure. Thus, the problem of the future in La Salada’s economy is not a problem of human agency regarding how to shape the future (Andersson 2018), but an agency problem about how to adapt to the only possible future.

TASKS AHEAD Marketplaces are not well-studied sites of commerce. With some outstanding exceptions (Aspers and Darr 2018; Bestor 2004; Geertz 1979; La Pradelle 2006), marketplaces are often considered relics of the past, enclaves of traditional societies that still persist in modern times and somehow resist fading away in a world of digital economic transactions. However, as argued throughout this book, this perspective is

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far from accurate. La Salada’s specialization in the commercialization of garments needs to be seen as directly linked to well-known modern phenomena such as the deindustrialization of the garment sector, ever-increasing social inequality, and the related decrease in access to legally produced clothing experienced by large segments of society. In addition to these very contemporary features, La Salada entrepreneurs’ ideas of what is in fashion, as well as their everyday communication, is sustained by social media and the internet in general. To recognize that marketplaces are not relics of traditional societies or backward social spaces is essential if we are to advance our understanding of their role in the twenty-first century. As analyzed in preceding discussions, the phenomenon of La Salada is at first sight the result of a set of global processes that impacted in different ways a peripheral country that used to have a relatively well-developed garment industry. The transformation of global value chains and their relocation to low-wage countries led to a process of far-reaching deindustrialization that ultimately exacerbated a series of preexisting problems such as unemployment, poverty, and precarious work. In this context, the value of ethnographic work, combined with a strong emphasis on analyzing the political economy behind these transformations, lies in highlighting how a number of actors and institutional dynamics translate, re-create, and adapt global trends at the local level. La Salada and the sweatshop-based economy that it sustains is governed by a series of informal institutions that have emerged in response to broad processes such as deindustrialization, increasing global trade, the emergence of free-trade zones, and mass immigration. We might easily conclude, then, that while the processes that complicate the governance of certain countries are global, the reactions of those countries are sui generis: they tolerate illegalities, create alternative trade routes, or unleash a race to the bottom for labor costs. Put differently, they govern the economy by informal means. If these observations are correct, future sociological studies should focus on marketplaces as particularly relevant phenomena situated at the interface between global and local processes. The case of La Salada also teaches us that it is of fundamental importance to recognize the political value of marketplaces. They are nodes of economic activity where employment is continuously generated, networks of trade are fostered, and spaces of social exchange are created that have enormous political significance for governments,

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companies, and state agencies. Although they are beyond state regulation, La Salada–like marketplaces solve several problems faced by governments, especially at the local level: they generate employment, promote trade, induce consumption, and create incentives for both cooperation and investment. Future studies on marketplaces should expand our knowledge about the networks of trade that emerge in tandem with informal marketplaces and should shed light on the complex web of enterprises connected with these economic spaces. Trade networks nourished by traders, resellers, shoppers, and different types of intermediaries fall beyond the scope of this book; it is a topic that is difficult to study, but one that future research should address, especially concerning the question of how fashion is communicated and how it influences garment entrepreneurs’ decisions. As recent studies (Goldstein 2016; Hummel 2018) have done, it is also crucial to increase our knowledge about the relationship between informal and illegal marketplaces and state agencies. The study of these relationships would offer an excellent vantage point from which to observe variations and peculiarities in the way laws are enforced in such economic spaces. Finally, though I have focused on a case study, comparative perspectives combining an interest in the political economy of marketplaces working beyond the confines of the law and thick descriptions of their social environments will allow a better understanding of the main drivers behind these vibrant economies. Future comparative endeavors should be able to explain the underlying factors of what can be considered a de facto special labor regime within legal frameworks. In addition, they should also strive to illuminate the dynamics of trade and the exchange of information that have allowed small entrepreneurs and traders to build large networks of trade. Covering several European countries and most of the Southern Cone, these trade networks silently dress people from all segments of society—without advertising or leaving any trace in official records.

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Epilogue

As the writing of this book was coming to an end, La Salada marketplace underwent a noteworthy transformation. By mid-2017, the managers of two of the three shed markets were arrested and charged with various crimes, many of them linked to practices described in the first part of this book. To this day, toward the end of 2019, both are still in prison. Confirming the thesis I present in this book regarding the political relevance of La Salada, these changes occurred when the shed-market leaders lost political support from the national and provincial governments after the 2015 elections. The arrest of La Salada’s two strongmen, who had exercised power for years, taking advantage of their well-oiled links to various state agencies (security forces, judiciary, etc.), political relationships at different levels, and the help of “violent entrepreneurs” (Volkov 2002), opened a window of opportunity and brought about some changes. However, these changes have not been profound. The positions left by the imprisoned managers were occupied by their business partners or by those second in line, people who always went unnoticed by journalists reporting on La Salada. Today, they manage the shed markets and ensure that La Salada remains the country’s main wholesale supplier of low-cost pieces of clothing. Successive visits to the marketplace, the last one in January 2019, allowed me to confirm that the sale of clothing using logos from well-known brands continues to be a profitable business. Both Pablo and Leo still sell garments exhibiting brand logos, although they decided to change both the type of garment and the brand they counterfeit. And they do so, as described in chapter 8, because buyers’ preferences, they rightly believe, continuously change. More significant changes affected the morphology of the marketplace. The managers’ arrest meant a breakdown of existing informal

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agreements between them and the gangs of hooligans who used to stake out spots on the streets, set up rudimentary wire-mesh structures, and rent small selling points to sweatshop entrepreneurs. Once these agreements were broken and several hooligans were also arrested, the political authorities managed to remove the metal street stalls and made the streets passable again. However, the elimination of street stalls has not led to a significant decrease in the overall number of stalls available in the marketplace. The reason is that the entrepreneurs’ sustained demand for stalls incentivized many neighbors living in the immediate vicinity of the marketplace to internally subdivide their homes, set up stalls, and rent them to garment entrepreneurs. Thus, many of the eliminated street stalls appeared again within properties close to the marketplace. La Salada continues to be Argentina’s largest informal wholesale marketplace, supplying low-cost clothing to hundreds of resale centers scattered throughout the provinces. This means that the transformations have not been an obstacle for hundreds of buses transporting weekly wholesale buyers from all corners of the country to come to the marketplace. At the same time, the ongoing demand for pieces of clothing means that thousands of sweatshops are still channeling their production through La Salada. The everyday work of entrepreneurs remains the same, although now with a less chaotic work schedule. Indeed, according to my last interviews in January 2019, the marketplace is no longer open at midnight and is generally open from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. Thus, the traditional entrepreneurs’ demand for the market to have fixed opening hours, as I describe in the first chapter, seems to have become a reality. The transformations in the marketplace have not significantly affected either its functioning or the web of interests favoring the status quo. As I analyzed elsewhere (Dewey 2018a) and as this book describes in detail, it is a constellation of actors with few incentives to promote far-reaching changes. The illegal manufacture of branded garments continues to be a profitable business for entrepreneurs and an illegal source of income for the new managers and police forces, actors who never stopped collecting the informal marca tax. More generally, La Salada continues to be an informal economic enclave offering informal employment and income opportunities to a significant portion of the population. La Salada is still a source of aspiration to a regular income and access to goods and services on the condition of hard work and

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hostile living conditions. At the bottom of La Salada’s social pyramid, for instance, young men continue to aspire to work as cart-pullers for a monthly average income of $250. In chapter 2, Wilson, the political broker who still works as advisor to the mayor of Lomas de Zamora’s district and was previously the right-hand man of one of the imprisoned managers, explains that nothing important happening in La Salada is decided in the marketplace itself. “Everything that happens there,” he told me on a cold winter evening, “doesn’t depend on the shed markets or neighborhood leaders but on decisions taken here [in the municipality].” If Wilson is right, which is very likely, and if the existence of La Salada continues to be beneficial to the interests of politicians at different levels, we can expect this economy to continue working for many years without suffering changes that would make people abandon precariousness and exploitation.

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Methodological Appendix

How do we study a marketplace whose workers are reluctant to speak about it? How do we investigate a marketplace that is not a relic of the colonial era, but a modern product directly related to the global transformations in the garment industry? How do we gain access to sweatshops, where new garment collections are conceived and produced with the intent to capture buyers’ attention and interpret their tastes? In focusing on a marketplace, this study was constantly confronted with these questions. Reflected to a certain extent in the structure of the book, the strategy that I pursued was twofold. On the one hand, given that the phenomenon of La Salada has an indisputable political and economic relevance, I assigned explanatory value to La Salada’s political economy in order to “identify the actors and interests underlying, or hiding behind, the ‘laws of movement’ of ‘the economy,’ translating economic relations into social relations and showing the former to be a special case of the latter” (Streeck 2012:2). With this purpose in mind, the focus was on the role of state agencies (police forces, inspectors), different levels of government (municipal, provincial, and national), the historical trajectory of the garment industry, and the socioeconomic and political history of La Salada marketplace and its surroundings. I therefore interviewed several textile and garment entrepreneurs, members of security forces (Federal Police, National Gendarmerie, and Police of Buenos Aires Province), local politicians, political brokers, directors of microcredit institutions, and key informants such as former state secretaries of public infrastructure and scholars specializing in migration and the garment industry. Alongside analyzing La Salada’s political economy, I also conducted ethnographic research for seven months in 2013, accompanied by successive individual interviews and follow-up visits to the market in 2019. The ethnographic fieldwork did not begin in the marketplace itself but

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in the neighborhood in which it is located. A substantial majority of those who work in the marketplace and know this social environment well live in the vicinity of the marketplace and have been privileged witnesses of La Salada’s skyrocketing growth. Aware of the importance of reducing the distance between myself and potential interviewees, I volunteered for an NGO that offers field hockey classes to teenage girls as an incentive to attend different types of educational courses in La Salada’s local neighborhood. Thus, taking advantage of my experience as a former hockey player, I worked for five months as a coach, a unique opportunity that allowed me to learn people’s life stories, conduct interviews, and, above all, make direct observations. Through these contacts, I became close to a Bolivian family who manufactured garments in a home-cum-sweatshop and ran a market stall, both locations at which I spent a great deal of time hanging out and talking with people. After several months of being in contact with this family, I was able to gain access to other sweatshops. Such visits to the field were always followed up with detailed ethnographic notes. In all cases, the purposes of the investigation were communicated to the people I was in contact with. Throughout these months, an assistant and I spent at least three days per week in the marketplace, mostly spending time with stallholders and entrepreneurs, chatting at length with cart-pullers, and interviewing people doing jobs directly associated with the marketplace. In total, I conducted 109 in-depth interviews covering every role in the marketplace: cart-pullers, entrepreneurs, managers, warehouse owners, parking-lot owners, stall owners, social leaders, stallholders, security guards, sellers, and residents of the area who do not work at the market. In addition, I conducted fieldwork in four other settings. First, in what we might call an open-street labor market located in the south of the city of Buenos Aires. This is a weekly open marketplace visited by sweatshop producers in order to hire cutters, button makers, ironers, and seamsters. In this environment I was able to interview and follow the trajectories of migrants who work long weeks in sweatshops. These interviews with people that the literature would define as modern slaves were crucial because they showed me that the “sweatshop” actually adopts very different forms—some less exploitative and others with very abusive labor conditions. Second, once I realized that a significant number of La Salada workers previously worked as garment manufacturers in the formal clothing industry, I started interviewing several current “legal” garment manufacturers who could

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provide a complementary perspective on the sector. Third, to provide a contrast to La Salada workers’ experiences, I took advantage of contacts provided by another NGO, La Alameda, and conducted interviews with activists, lawyers, and former sweatshop workers. Fourth, I interviewed several entrepreneurs who are microcredit takers, a group I became interested in after listening to a number of stories about manufacturers’ experiences with obtaining credit. Such interviews were relevant because they provided a perspective from outside the immediate vicinity of the marketplace. If the phenomenon of aspirations is at the very center of this study, it is because of the content of the interviews: positive and enthusiastic expectations permeated all conversations. There was frequent mention of phrases like “there are plenty of jobs,” “here you can get good money,” “if you work hard you’ll find opportunities,” or “this is a great opportunity,” and numerous descriptions of La Salada as a place where “everyone may have an opportunity,” as “a chain of people doing different jobs,” and “a chain that benefits everyone.” I remember thinking of La Salada as a sort of American Dream in Buenos Aires. Thus, aspirations as a widespread phenomenon throughout the marketplace became an emergent category that helped to order and systematize the fieldwork, as proposed in the Grounded Theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1997): data was compared at different times, links with other phenomena were sought, and categories were compared and integrated. Overall, elements pertaining to the Grounded Theory approach helped to sharpen the analytic edge of this study and provided “systematic procedures for digging into the scene” (Charmaz and Mitchell 2001:162). However, this study only partially rests on Grounded Theory. For the most part, I conducted ethnographic work that privileged a narrative resulting from paying attention to stories of failure and subsequent economic progress, projects to be fulfilled, and plans for new fashion collections. In this view, this study should be considered to a large extent the result of ethnographic fieldwork, here understood as “social research based on the close-up, on-the-ground observation of people and institutions in real time and space, in which the investigator embeds herself near (or within) the phenomenon so as to detect how and why agents on the scene act, think and feel the way they do” (Wacquant 2003:5; see also Auyero and Swistun 2009:15). A particular structure that greatly influences garment entrepreneurs’ decisions is the informal taxation system described in chapter 2.

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The description of its workings is supported by two specific types of data: the accurate number of stalls and the different sums of the fees paid in different sectors of the marketplace. I counted the stalls one by one, a task that took several months given the extent of the marketplace and my interest in gathering information about the different “tax zones” within the marketplace. Additionally, spending time regularly at entrepreneurs’ stalls and visiting their sweatshops gave me a privileged position from which to observe how this informal tax structure interacts with entrepreneurs’ business calculations, complaints, and aspirations. Further interviews with political actors revealed the links between this “tax structure” and state and governmental agencies. As scholars have already established, it is through ethnography that power structures can be properly studied and “clandestine connections” accurately reconstructed (Auyero and Joseph 2007:5; Kubik 2009:31). Patterns of conduct and repeated information provided by market actors, as we see in standard ethnographic research practice described by Katz (2001; 2002) and Becker (1958), allowed me to assign evidentiary value to data. I further used standard procedures such as cross-checking and member-checking to trace and confirm links. It is through these methods that the informal taxation system and its central role in market life came to light and that the beneficiaries of the fees collected could be confirmed. The latter—namely, ten state agencies at various levels of government—were explicitly identified by several interview subjects (a fee collector, a former manager, and a local politician) with no links to one another. Finally, it is worth mentioning that all names of interviewees contained in this book have been anonymized.

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Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. On opportunity structures, see the classical approach in Merton (1963). On the role of entrepreneurship in capitalism, see Deutschmann (2011). 2. Recent research tends to assign a more nuanced role to the deindustrialization that resulted from the mass import of garments in the 1990s. Based on statistical data from the periods before and after the peso was paired with the US dollar, Montero (2018b) contradicts the “employment destruction” thesis used by companies to justify the high levels of sectoral informality and suggests that bad labor conditions need to be seen as the result of a reorientation of local companies’ businesses. 3. This assertion is especially true in Gambetta’s concept of the mafia and its followers (Campana 2011; Varese 2001), in which the state’s inability to secure economic transactions is solved by the mafia’s capability to exert violence and gain a reputation as protectors. 4. There are several definitions of sweatshops and, for the most part, these are reflections that take the emergence of the concept in the context of the American clothing industry, as well as its current position in the context of value chains, as a point of reference (see Bender 2002; Bender and Greenwald 2003; Esbenshade 2004; Green 1997; Fernández-Kelly and García 1989; Fernández-Kelly and Shefner 2006; Waldinger 1986; Waldinger and Lapp 1993).

CHAPTER 1: The Garment Market and the Marketplace 1. La Salada’s only connection with national or global processes, as I describe in chapter 8, has been the adoption of fashion tendencies due to laborious monitoring work (through the internet and shops) performed by entrepreneurs. 2. The declining general trend described in this section, including pressure on wages and the drive to seek out cheaper labor costs, has been addressed in several studies. See, for example, Waldinger (1986:54). 3. This type of market segmentation as an opportunity for underground income

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generation was first identified by Waldinger (1986) and Waldinger and Lapp (1993) in their studies on the New York garment industry. 4. Lieutier (2009:90), for instance, holds that by 2008 between 70 and 80 percent of employment in the garment sector was unregistered. Using the official Censo Económico of 2004, Coatz (2010) points out that 73 percent of the labor force in this sector was unregistered, a figure similar to the estimate (73.9 percent) provided by the Cámara Argentina de Indumentaria de Bebés y Niños (CAIBYN 2010) (Argentine Chamber of the Baby and Child Clothing Industry). Similarly, based on the Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (Permanent household survey), Tavosnanska et al. (2010) note that 76 percent of the labor force was unregulated in 2004 and 2005. In addition, the Cámara Industrial Argentina de la Indumentaria (Argentine Apparel Industrial Chamber) also estimated unregulated labor to be at over 70 percent in 2013 (personal communication). 5. Toward the end of the 1980s and during the entire decade following, new commercialization formats transformed the market for garments. In the city of Buenos Aires, in the Conurbano, and in the main urban centers of the country, shopping malls, outlets, department stores, and transnational chains of supermarkets emerged, providing spaces in which garment companies, targeting specific social groups and segments, aimed to create brand identities. These companies’ behavior was not only a reaction to cultural tendencies following the dictatorship years, but also a protection mechanism against the decline in sales (Saulquin 2008:185). 6. Interview with a former secretary of land issues of Buenos Aires Province. 7. Interview with the director of the Bolivian microcredit institution OMLA. 8. Newspapers periodically allude to the prices of La Salada stalls and compare them with rent prices of upmarket neighborhoods like Puerto Madero. For example, see La Nación 2009. 9. It remains the premier destination for fresh food producers, many of them members of the Bolivian community traditionally specialized in the production of vegetables (Benencia 2012; Benencia and Karasik 1994; Feito 1999), and a hub for wholesale buyers like supermarkets.

CHAPTER 2: Governing La Salada 1. Although not completely unconnected, this discussion about the relationship between state capacity and alliances between state and illegal actors is different from the debate about state capacity under conditions of global trade and liberalization (see Scott 2018; Vogel 2018; Weiss 1998). 2. Denyer Willis (2015) makes a similar argument alluding to a “consensual practice of sovereignty,” meaning an informal alliance between organized crime groups and security forces, in São Paulo. 3. The average number of associated sweatshops and seamsters per sweatshop was calculated based on the author’s own interviews with entrepreneurs and two reports (D’Ovidio 2007; INTI 1995).

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CHAPTER 3: With God and the Devil 1. As I discuss in chapter 8, recent anthropological scholarship has addressed alternative understandings of the terms “original” and “copy” as well as associated notions such as “piracy,” “fake,” and “real” (Nakassis 2012; Thomas 2015, 2016; Chu 2016, 2018; Luvaas 2013). This scholarship has opened up new understandings about what is considered right or good.

CHAPTER 4: All I Want Is a Sweatshop 1. The scene is from a video available on YouTube. See C5N (2013). 2. Translation by the author.

CHAPTER 5: The Garment Entrepreneur at La Salada 1. As a vast body of literature confirms, decisions about outsourcing are deep-rooted in the garment industry. Given the tendency for instability in this industry, subcontracting arrangements allow manufacturers like Leo to limit investment in fixed capital and thereby reduce risk (Green 1997, chap. 1; Waldinger 1986). 2. In his theory of migrant enterprise and drawing on Piore’s (1980) studies on economic dualism, Waldinger (1986) makes a similar point centered on the segmentation of markets. He argues that product markets like La Salada that are “prone to instability and unpredictable changes” are suitable environments for immigrant firms. The reason, he argues, is that this unstable type of production requires less initial investment and is organizationally less complex. 3. Similar strategies of diversification and upgrading are discussed by Waldinger (1986:65) in his study on the New York garment industry.

CHAPTER 8: Taste, Credit, and Bullets 1. The orientation toward European fashion tendencies is also documented by Isik in relation to the carpet manufacturing market in Turkey (Isik 2010:55). 2. The rapid replacement of garment items may have different underlying causes, and entrepreneurs may be less aware of it. If we assume that the quality of fabrics and the manufacturing process we observe in the context of La Salada are of middling or poor quality, we could put forward a similar hypothesis to Crăciun’s (2015). In her ethnography on “bobbling” garments, she postulates that the devaluation of garments, manifested in bobbled, discolored, deformed, or faded fabric surfaces, should be seen in relation to changes in the presentation of the self and in the emergence of anxieties. The replacement of garment items, in that sense, would be closely related to materials used in manufacturing and their impact on the self.

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3. Figures about counterfeited and not counterfeited garments are provided in chapter 2. 4. On envy in economic settings, see also Foster (1972).

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Index

abuse: of alcohol, 113; of power, 94; at sweatshops, 108 access: to a better life, 16; to capital, 109; to clothing, 6, 10, 12, 27, 33–34, 65, 136, 208, 228; to credit, 28; to formal job market, 51; illegal, 20; to goods and services, 9, 15 addiction, 106, 112–114 Adidas, 123–124; monitoring of, 174–175; new models of, 178 aduana paralela, 31, 44 adventurism, 16 alcohol abuse, 113–114 alertness, 200 ambition of having a sweatshop or factory, 88, 91 Angola, official visit to, 50, 63 anxiety, 113 Appadurai, Arjun, 15 arbitrariness, 108 Aspers, Patrik, 102, 104, 106, 121, 179 aspirations: capacity to have, 106, 138–140; at the marketplace, 4, 9; origins of, 132; and permission, 52; political, 235; structural conditions of, 102–105, 136, 139 Auyero, Javier, 96, 155, 199 banking system (formal), 190 bazaar. See marketplaces Beckert, Jens, 15 Bourdieu, Pierre, and sense of the game, 17

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brand logos, 58–59, 120, 176, 183, 189. See also counterfeiting Brazil, 35–36, 44 bribe, 62 buttonholes, making, 92, 98, 244 buyers, 179; and brand logos, 76, 81–82, 120; and downstream entrepreneurs, 116, 120–125; and fashion input, 104–105, 119; and monitoring, 177, 179, 183–185; and police forces, 60, 75; security of, 216–217; symbolic representations of, 5, 119, 148, 205; wholesale, 6–7, 25, 29, 33, 174–175, 208–209, 240 California Gold Rush, 16, 222 capital, 14, 31, 91, 95, 109–112, 137, 191, 195, 217, 249n1 (chap. 5) capitalist reproduction/dynamics, 11, 15 cart-pullers, 76, 211–216; association of, 215–216; and drug abuse, 47–48; and past experiences, 78; and safe routines, 199–200 cash, 62, 190; and protection rackets, 56, 58; and rotating credit association, 192–193, 196; and Urkupiña Virgin, 131 causal relationships, 15, 18, 89, 97 Ceccagno, Antonella, 36 certainty, 66, 137, 139, 151, 181, 210, 234 chain, fiction of, 146 chop shops, 57

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INDEX  271

clandestine connections, 56. See also politics: and clandestine connections cocaine. See paco (cocaine) collections (fashion), 94, 116, 233; and copying, 81 collective action, 73, 157 collective hope, 235. See also aspirations; fictions; future commercialization: and deindustrialization, 236; and downstream entrepreneur, 105, 116; first link of, 37; informal, 28, 117; and shopping malls, 29, 33–34, 248n5 commercial networks, 33, 35, 217, 223, 237 competition: and monitoring, 181, 190; for price, 182; and subjectivity, 166; unfair forms of, 19, 95, 203 Confederación Argentina de la Mediana Empresa, 6 conflicts: avoidance of, 9, 172–173, 199–200, 215; and copying, 88; interpersonal, 167 confusion, climate of, 77, 83 consumers, price orientation of, 30. See also buyers; entrepreneurs: downstream Conurbano, 7, 37; and robberies, 155; and the state, 56–57 coordination: of expectations and interests, 228; and mafia, 18; at the sweatshop, 121–124; problems with, 8, 12, 16, 18, 25, 142, 145; and upgrading, 119 copying, 118–121; and monitoring, 175–177 corruption, 54–57 counterfeiting, 51; and ambiguity, 81–83; and creativity, 118–121, 189–190; and learning, 182; and marca fee, 52, 57–63; as strategy, 229; and upgrading, 100. See also copying coverstitch, 110–111, 124 creative destruction, 223 creativity, 66, 77, 181, 230. See also copying

Dewey_7102_BK.indd 271

credit, 9; and cart-pullers, 214–216; creditworthiness, 196–197; illiquidity function, 196; through marriage, 109–112, 172–174; microcredit institutions, 197–198; rotating credit associations, 90–91, 191–197; through suppliers, 191, 197–198 cutters (of fabric), 92, 98, 244 decision-making, 3; and buyers, 121–123; and imaginaries, 15; and upgrading, 121 deindustrialization, 7, 41, 42, 236, 247n1 (intro) demand, 7, 28, 32, 51, 128, 136, 146, 181, 183, 230; and production, 139, 185; of stalls, 217–218; structurally determined, 158 depression and anxiety, 113 disarticulation, 7 disinvestment, 7 Disney, 58, 59, 81, 119, 120, 167, 181, 189. See also copying; counterfeiting distrust: and attention, 157; interpersonal, 2, 12, 73, 77–81, 199; and mafia, 54; in state authorities, 167–169 domination, 52, 65–67, 111, 114 dreams, 143, 150; American, 4, 265. See also aspirations dressmaking, 95, 104, 106 drugs, 78; and police, 155 Durkheim, Emile, 151 economic crises, 37 economic liberalization, 27, 29, 36, 40 economic opportunities, 28, 47, 160, 165; and credit, 190–191; and monitoring, 205; perception of, 145–147, 172–173; and protection rackets, 52–53, 77, 128; and routines, 199–200; and sweatshop workers, 108 economic sociology, 8, 11, 205 embroidery, 116, 184, 189 emotional climate, 72–74, 78, 81, 199

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272  INDEX

employment destruction, 40, 247n2 (intro) endangered species, 13 enforcement, 18; and aspirations, 66, 788; autonomous, 232; nonenforcement, 6, 8, 16, 20, 51–52, 55; of normative practices, 233–234; topdown, 16, 76 entrepreneurs, 55; cultural explanations of, 5; downstream, 5, 10, 28, 33, 51, 117–118; and ethnicity, 6; and failure, 162; and luxurious life, 162; and monitoring, 177–178; resilience, 160; and sacrifice, 158–159; and secondary markets, 207–208; and upgrading, 119–120; upstream, 92–93, 114–115; values, 4; and waiting, 93–94 ethnic enclave, 26 ethnographic research, 243–245 ethnography, 53 exclusion, 13 expectations, 17–18. See also aspirations; dreams explanandum, 228 explanans, 228 exploitation, 10, 20, 94, 109, 142 export-led countries, 49 export-processing zone, 7, 21, 230 extortion, 65–66, 81 fabric cutters. See cutters (of fabric) fabric shop, 134–135, 186–187 Facebook, 89, 178, 186 fashion cycle, 119 fashion input, 104–105, 119–120 fear, 4, 72–73, 136, 199–200 fictions: of a chain, 146; as shared beliefs, 141–142. See also aspirations; dreams Fischer, Edward, 15, 139 Fligstein, Neil, 11, 56, 171 Foros de Seguridad, 70 fraud, 73, 56–77, 108 frula. See paco (cocaine) future: as disciplining force, 230–235;

Dewey_7102_BK.indd 272

as explanatory phenomena, 15, 27, 243; as one-shot possibility, 16, 234; perceived causal relationships in the, 15–16, 89, 97; positively evaluated, 17, 167, 178; as social construction, 231; as source of normativity, 14–15, 233–234; as vision, 9, 149 Gambetta, Diego, 53–54, 247n3 (intro) Gap, 17, 82. See also copying; counterfeiting Garfinkel, Harold, 26 garment production: formal industry of, 9, 30–34, 92, 236; structural conditions, 5–7, 10, 27, 209, 230; theft of, 216; wholesale, 25, 33–38; informal and illegal, 28, 33–34; and outsourcing, 32–33, 102; and counterfeiting, 123; and downstream entrepreneur, 34–38, 115–125; and monitoring, 179, 189, 185. See also entrepreneurs: downstream; entrepreneurs: upstream Geertz, Clifford, 150, 193 Gelblung, Chiche, 87 Giddens, Anthony, 157 global dynamics, 26 globalization as explanation, 27 governance structures, 51–53, 65–66, 229; negative consequences of, 70–71; top-down perspective, 66, 231–232 Grounded Theory, 245 Hamilton, Gary, 16 health problems, 112–113 hooligans, 218–219, 220 Horatio Alger (literary character), 87 horizon of experience, 200 housing, 42, 113, 224 human trafficking, 13, 36 illegality: and ambiguity, 96; and aspirations, 77; and state agents, 20–21; tolerance toward, 205

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INDEX  273

imagination, 111, 150, 233. See also aspirations; dreams imagined future, 91, 97. See also aspirations; dreams imitation, 118, 182. See also counterfeiting indifference, 75–76 industrial decline, 39–41 informal credit, 109, 197, 205, 214 informal employment, 13, 33, 37, 51, 100, 211, 229, 240 informal health and pension system, 211–216 informalization, 32–34, 35 informal permission, 8, 51–53, 65–66. See also enforcement; permission informal rules, 13–14, 66–65 informal taxation system, 57–63. See also permission; protection rackets information-gathering practices, 121; “calling friends,” 200; “making friends,” 200–205; “retreating from dangers,” 200–205 infrastructure of La Salada, 208–211 Ingeniero Budge, history of, 38–57 innovation, 77, 96, 188 insecurity, 14, 72–78, 124, 172, 201 Instituto Químico del Departamento Nacional de Higiene, 39 integration in the formal economy, 211 interactionism, 18 interdependencies, 146 intermediaries, 6, 47, 117, 237 ironers, 98, 103, 244 islands of trust, 191, 202 job market, 98–99, 111 Jujuy, 100 just-in-time logistics, 123 Keshavarzian, Arang, 26, 55 kinship networks, 37, 100, 112 knowledge: and aspirations, 138–141; about fashion trends, 104–106; practical, 17

Dewey_7102_BK.indd 273

labor: code, 114, 160; costs of, 19, 236; private standards for, 35, 118, 227 La Matanza, 40–41 landlords, 130–131, 140, 210 La Salada: as chain, 18; and commercial networks, 217; as goose that laid golden eggs, 4, 147; and health resort, 39; history of, 27, 38–48, 87–88; as hostile place, 5; as informal/illegal, 28; and local garment industry, 27; as meeting point, 6; as one-product market, 27; origin of, 8; as place of business opportunities, 3; and resellers, 6; as shopping mall, 6; structural determinants of, 6; as wholesale marketplace, 25–26 Las Leonas, 81, 174–175, 183 laziness, 90, 165 learning process, 231 legal definitions, manipulation of, 20–21, 52 legitimization as performed by managers, 90 Ley de Contrato de Trabajo, 20 Ley de Trabajo a Domicilio, 20 Lieutier, Ariel, 103 lockstitch, 19 Lomas de Zamora, 42, 49, 155, 218, 241 low-cost garments, 8–9, 25–26, 117, 184 low-wage countries, 5, 236 Luhmann, Niklas, 16, 137 managers (of shed-markets), 3, 56, 61, 90, 218–219, 239 marca fee, 50, 57–63 Marixa Balli, 87 marketplaces, 55; culturalist approaches to, 26; as one-product, 27; political value of, 236; Prato, 35–36; as relics of the past, 235; Sao Paulo, 27, 35–36 markets: architecture of, 8, 11, 171, 205; competition in, 11; coordination problems in, 12; expansion of, 14, 218; positive externalities of, 51

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274  INDEX

marriage, 109–110 mass-consumption, 6, 27, 32–33 master-apprentice relationship, 106 Mercado Central de Buenos Aires, 26, 78 Merlo, 37 Merton, Robert, 96, 129 methodology, 243–246 Mexico, 96, 129 microcredits, 197 migrants: arriving at La Salada, 41; as ethnic enclave, 26; and health, 113; undocumented, 44 mineral springs, 39 Mische, Ann, 96–197 Möllers, Christoph, 17–18, 178, 232 monitoring, 174–188; and buyers, 179; definition of, 177; of prices, 180–182 Montero, Jerónimo, 103, 247n2 (intro) moral ambiguity, 81–82, 199 morenada, 129–138 Moreno, Guillermo, secretary of commerce, xiii, 50 multinationals, 5, 33, 35, 117–118 mutual dependency, 140, 144–145 narratives: of economic independence/ autonomy, 91, 166–167; of rags-toriches heroes, 87–88; of suffering and sacrifice, 156, 166 National Gendarmerie, 62–63 neutralization techniques, 186 Nike, 58–59, 64, 81, 119–120, 146. See copying; counterfeiting nonenforcement. See enforcement: nonenforcement no return, feeling of, 149 normative expectations, 16–17, 232–233 normative practices, 17, 232–233. See also normative expectations normativity, ideas of, 15–16, 233–234 ocean, 7, 46 offshore production, 10, 227 opportunities: extralegal, 52–53, 96; structures of, 6, 230

Dewey_7102_BK.indd 274

original designs: and influences, 177, 182; knowledge about, 76, 82, 177; as templates, 119–120 Ossona, Jorge, 41, 44–46 outsourcing, 32–33 overlock, 19, 110–111, 124 paco (cocaine), 49, 57, 75, 155 Paraguay, 44, 164 parallel markets, 10 pasanaku. See credit patronage networks, 65, 229 permission: expectation of, 16, 52; nonenforcement and, 16, 51; and visions of the future, 51–53. See also informal permission Peronist party: and clientelism, 42, 64; renovación, 42; and secretary of commerce, 50, 63–64 Peru, 37, 41 petty capitalists, 89 piecework, 88, 103 Polanyi, Karl, 11 police: distrust of, 2; and politics, 7; and illegal confiscations, 223, 225; at local level, 27, 45; and permission, 51; and politicians, 225–226; and protection, 55, 155; and warehouse owners, 120 political calculations, 13 political economy, 21, 56–67 political resources, 54–57 politics: and brokers, 49–51; and clandestine connections, 219; financing of, 49; and land invasions, 42, 45; and local deliberative council, 49–50; and political campaigns, 45, 62, 229 pools, 40–41, 46, 224 predictability, 157, 199, 204 preferences: of buyers, 33, 104–105, 174–175, 227–228; and entrepreneurs’ strategies, 118–125; and prices, 182–183 pressers. See ironers private security staff, 48, 56, 203–204, 218

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INDEX  275

product differentiation, 184 professional skills, loss of, 34 projects: long-term, 128; and practices, 233; rise of, 65–66; in sociological research, 91 property deeds, 43–44 property rights, 11–12, 42 protection: lack of, 2, 73, 199; symbolic, 63 protection rackets: as informal taxation system, 57–63; state-sponsored, 7, 13, 51–52 protest (organized social reactions), lack of, 202 Provincial Land Use Law, 42 Puma, 59–60, 174–175 Punta Mogote, 7, 25, 45, 46, 87, 143 purchasing power, contraction of, 31 ransom, 70 reputation, 163–164 retailers (formal), 10, 125, 179, 229 retaliation, 77, 203 robbery, 1–2, 69, 165, 179, 201, 203, 211, 225 romantic partners, 102, 109 Ropa para Todos (social program), 64 Ross, Robert, 20 rotating credit associations, 109, 174, 196–197, 205; definition of, 191–192 routines, 199–201 sacrifice, 178–179 Saladita, 6, 79 Santa Fe, 79 Schumpeter, Joseph, 173, 223 seamsters, 30, 33, 92, 103, 143, 213 secondary markets, 48, 208–209 self-limitations. See self-restrictive behaviors self-protection. See self-restrictive behaviors self-restrictive behaviors, 202 sellers, 139, 166 sense of the game, 17, 109 sense of obligation, 17, 232

Dewey_7102_BK.indd 275

shadow economy, 33–34, 41, 56, 134 shame, 13, 193, 234 shared beliefs, 141–142 shell game, 74 Shibutani, Tamotsu, 18 smuggling, 31, 44 social norms as possibilities, 18, 178, 232 social order, 231–233 social structure, 16–17, 29, 67, 90, 228, 245; and entrepreneurs, 91 sociological case, 4 Southern Cone, 25, 237 squatters, 216–223; and violence, 220–221 stalls: and the Central Market of Buenos Aires, 47; distribution of, 59–60, 137; managers and, 46; and squatters, 216 stamping, 108 state: capacity, 54, 254n1; disaggregated view of, 54; and garment industry, 28; and governance, 13, 44; informal presence of, 43; and legal definitions, 20; loss of legitimacy, 167; and mafia, 12, 50, 53; and moral climate, 77, 200; and warehouse business, 70. See also enforcement: top-down state intervention: as extortion, 81; and removals, 161; as unnecessary, 166–167 storage business, 223–224 strategies: business, 6, 32, 35; deployed by sweatshop workers, 105–109; electoral, 42–43; for obtaining capital, 109–112, 190–191; and practices, 208; as response to the future, 158–190; upgrading, 10, 118–119 subcontracting, 5, 10, 29, 91, 96, 117–118, 227–228 success: and agreements, 144–145, 200; and aspirations, 127–128; and autonomy, 167–168; and conflict, 9; and ethnicity, 6; and monitoring, 177–178; as promise, 88–89; and reputation, 161; and sacrifice, 18, 158

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276  INDEX

sweatshops: definition of, 18–21; downstream, 105; upstream, 116–118; working for La Salada, 5, 7–8 taller clandestino. See sweatshops taxlike collectors, 58–63 technology: investment in, 33–34; in sweatshops, 116, 181 thick description, 53, 237 third parties, 200 Tilly, Charles, 45, 53, 203 trademarks, 61, 66, 120, 227–228 trade networks, 33, 217, 223, 237 traders, 6 transport. See cart-pullers trust, 191, 202. See also distrust uncertainty: and aspirations, 15; and decision-making, 97, 155–156 uniformity in dress-making, 188–190 unions, 7, 36, 40, 202 unpredictability, 204

Dewey_7102_BK.indd 276

upgrading through creative copying, 118–121 Urkupiña: and cart-pullers, 212–213; shed-market, 45–46; Virgin of, 46, 129–130, 160 value chain: detachment from, 10; and Ministry of Commerce, 64 vests, 212–213 victim blaming, 73 vision of the future. See future Volkov, Vadim, 218 vulnerability, 48, 75, 95, 158, 203 Wacquant, Loic, 3, 127 waiting strategically, 91, 149–150 Waldinger, Roger, 5 warehouse owners, 225 White, Harrison, 189 wholesale businesses, 6, 25, 28, 135, 181, 223, 240 wire-mesh structures. See stalls

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