Breaking down Clientelism: Cross
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BREAKING DOWN CLIENTELISM:

THE FORMALIZATION OF STREET VENDING IN MEXICO CITY

By John C. Cross, Ph.D.

The American University in Cairo (CROSS@AUC-ACS.EUN.EG)

Please do not use this paper for quotes or citations except with the permission of the author. This is a draft of the English version of a paper published in the Revista Mexicana de Sociologia, Vol 59, #4, 1997. The paper is entitled in Spanish: "Debilitando al Clientelismo: La Formalizacion del Ambulantaje en la Ciudad de Mexico".

ABSTRACT

Mexico's Political regime has maintained power largely based on its ability to coopt interest groups in society through a clientelist system in which they exchange support for the regime for tangible benefits. In this way, many groups within the informal economy, such as land-invaders, collective taxi drivers, and street vendors, have been able to organise access to public space to exercise their profession. But, with the Salinas and Zedillo regimežs emphasis on formalising the informal sector, it is argued that these groups have begun to move away from the PRI. In this paper, we analyse data gathered in a survey of vendors who were included in the recent žplaza constructionž project for the relocation of vendors in the Historical Center of the city. We find that vendoržs attributed problems with the plazas and their decline in sales to authorities and the political system, and registered a substantial drop in support for the PRI on both an organisational and individual level.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the Ford Foundation and Norm Collins, as well as the American University in Cairo, for their financial support for the survey. Previous research was funded by the Fulbright-Hayes program, the Organization of American States, and the National Science Foundation.

Mexico's ruling political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has traditionally ruled Mexico through a form of corporative control in which worker's unions, peasant cooperatives, government employees and many urban social movements (including land invaders, street vendors, and other groups) have been coopted into the party in exchange for limited state support of their interests. This system, which most students of the Mexican political structure argue explains the historical success of the PRI in dominating Mexican politics for the last 70 years in Mexico, has been labelled by most of those scholars as a system of "clientelism", and has been defined in the following way:

"Clientelism refers to the structuring of political power through networks of informal dyadic relations that link individuals of unequal power in relationships of exchange. In clientelistic structures of authority, power is vested in the top individual (the boss, sovereign, or head of clan) who personally decides how to distribute resources according to personal preferences. When applied to Mexico, this perspective represents the state as a top-down pyramid headed by the chief of the executive branch, who directly or indirectly dispenses favors to those below through complex patron-client relations that link the top of the social structure to the base. Civil society, in contrast, is perceived as a fragmented set of vertical relationships inhibiting the formation of horizontal interest groupings, whether based on party or social class..." (Brachet-Marquez 1992, 94)

This system of clientelism has worked together with the corporatist form that the Mexican state developed after the Mexican revolution to guarantee political stability among the myriad different interest groups and "caciques" (local leaders). The PRI itself was ostensibly formed as an alliance between workers and peasants, each of which made up a "sector" of the party, under Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s, and which allowed the incorporation of these two powerful interest groups into the PRI on a clientelist basis. A "popular" sector was added later to represent primarily the middle class (particularly government employees), but which also includes urban social movements that take place outside the labor movement, such as informal economic actors (land invadors, neighborhood associations, street vendors and collective taxi associations, etc.). According to most scholars, this structure was held together by the capacity of the PRI's leaders to distribute economic benefits in a personalistic way through patronage networks.

As a noted Mexican scholar explains:

"In Mexico, functionaries become visible to the public as inaugurators of beneficial works: schools, hospitals, markets, multifamily apartment complexes... Among the popular classes many have memories of benefits effectively given to themselves or some close family... that did not derive from the impersonal operation of a system but of the personalised benevolence of a member of the PRI, frequently reinforced by the shared membership in a corporative organization of the official party." (De La Pena 1992:243)

In recent years, this system has begun to break down, partly under pressures from middle class groups to democratise the political structure, partly as a result of the continuing economic crises that have rocked the country since the early 1980's, and partly as a result of elements of the PRI that have tried to change it into a "modern" political party. De La Pe¤a, for example notes that the ability of the PRI to redistribute economic benefits began to erode in the countryside in the 1960s with the end of land redistribution and in the 1970s among workers as industrialisation slowed and new jobs became scarce. The "popular" sector then became the key base of support for the regime, but was itself heavily affected by inflation.

One symptom of the breakdown was the formation of a left-of- center opposition party, the Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD), that formed after Cuauhtemoc Cardenas broke from the PRI in the 1988 presidential elections to run against the PRI's designated presidential candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari. After he won the elections under a cloud of charges of electoral fraud, Salinas attempted to placate the opposition by recognising the victory of the right-of-center Partido de Accion Nacional (PAN) in Baja California Norte and several other states and cities. Internal elections were also instated for some positions within the PRI itself. But the PRI's elite remained in firm control of national political offices and legislatures, largely due to continued reliance upon its corporatist membership that could be mobilised to show support for the PRI and to commit or cover up fraud when necessary.

STREET VENDORS AND CLIENTELISM

Street vending in Mexico City has traditionally been tied to the PRI in a form of clientelism in which street vendor organisations were allowed to form street markets in exchange for political activism on behalf of officials and politicians of that party. This occurred despite the fact that street vending was officially frowned upon and that city administrators have attempted since the mid-1980s to limit the growth of street vending by forbidding the provision of new permits or recognition of new organisations of street vendors. Indeed, although new permits were banned in 1984, street vending still doubled in Mexico City until over 200,000 stalls were set up around the city, with 10,000 in the one-square kilometer area known as the "Historical Center" around the National Palace.

The pattern of organization of street vendors has its historical roots in the regulation of petty-merchants in the city since colonial times, but was tied into the ruling party formally by Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, mayor of Mexico's Federal District for 14 years between 1952 and 1966. Although Uruchurtu banned street vending effectively for over a decade, he did so by requiring vendors to organise into associations affiliated with the "Popular Sector" of the PRI in order to gain access to over 150 new markets that he constructed for almost 60,000 vendors during this period. When he left office, market construction was halted as funds went into other urban projects, but the practice of organising street vendors within the PRI continued. As a result, despite the complaints of established merchants and neighbors of street markets and although periodic attempts were made to control the growth of street vending, the interests of PRI politicians usually allowed vendors, organised by leaders who could mobilise their members to show support for the PRI at rallies and often to collects funds for electoral campaigns or "gifts", to continue to increase in numbers.

The organisational structure, moreover, was reinforced by political-administrative structures that allowed street vendors to operate unmolested only if they were members of such organisations and which tended to solidify the power of the leaders of each organization by insisting on using her or him as the sole representative of the group. These factors gave leaders, rather than officials, the power to regulate individual vendors, since by suspending or expelling them from the organization they effectively remove their permission to sell at all. At the same time, competition between leaders for control of commercial streets- -which gave them space to rent to vendors--meant that they operated under an incentive structure that encouraged them to expand their territories and to resist attempts by officials to relocate their members or limit growth in ways that could allow other groups to take over "their" zones. Thus, while individual vendors were in some sense at the mercy of their respective leaders, the leaders were themselves required to operate in the interests of their membership, as well as of potential new street vendors, by protecting and expanding the amount of public space allowed for them. As a result, not only did street vending grow, but it became a lucrative and secure occupation for many--particularly in the historical center, and nearby areas such as "La Merced" and "Tepito" where spaces on the best streets could be confidently sold for many thousands of dollars for a "title" consisting solely of the recognition of the respective organization.

However, the attempt of city officials to relocate street vendors in the historical center into new "commercial plazas" constructed for them in 1993 may have undermined this system by creating a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the city's administration and the ruling party that has, according to many vendors, failed to protect them. Furthermore, problems related to their relocation into the markets has led many of the affected vendors to question the legitimacy of the leaders who protected their rights while they were on the streets. Finally, the shift from the street to the plazas was carried out on an individual level, with each given the right (or obligation) to purchase a stall that became their personal property, meaning that neither the city nor the leaders would be able to take away their vending space, thus undercutting the ability of either the leaders or officials to force individual vendors to participate in clientelistic activities.

HISTORY OF THE PLAZA PROJECT

The plaza project, as it will be referred to in this article, was in many senses a very old one in conception. Historically, the city has typically responded to the growth of street vending by the construction or expansion of fixed markets since the colonial era, and the largest such project was carried out by Uruchurtu in the 50s and 60s. In response to the growth of street vending since Uruchurtu, urban renewal plans for the city center had since the early 1980s envisioned removing the vendors into buildings, side streets or other districts in order to reduce traffic congestion, permit free access for tourists and others to the historical sites in the area, and to raise the value of commercial properties. After the 1985 earthquake, which reduced a large number of buildings in the area to rubble or hollow shells, several studies were commissioned to see if the large number of vendors could fit on these vacant lots. But despite this planning, top officials continued to court the support of the leaders in the area--several of which counted among the most important representatives of vendors in the city. Two women leaders were offered electoral positions in the city's legislature (the Asamblea de Representantes del Distrito Federal--ARDF) during this period when the appointed official in charge of the area reported to the ARDF in July of 1990, he spoke favorably of street vending, emphasising that "it is obvious that such an important commercial supply corresponds to a similar demand," and criticised those who, "with a baroque vision, feel that the Historical Center should be a reflection of the greatness of our ancestors, but not a mirror of the social reality that we live in." Street vending was praised as a "reliever of social tension, an alternative employment that closes the door to poverty and opens the possibility of new economic perspectives that come to better the quality of life." (DDF-Delegation Cuauhtemoc 1990) The power of street vendor leaders seemed unparalleled when 10,000 vendors marched to the ARDF building in April of 1990 to demand more spaces for their activity in the downtown area. (Baca 1990:33)

But after the August 1991 mid-term elections in which the PRI made a surprise electoral comeback, winning back many of its lost positions with few charges of fraud, the tide suddenly shifted. In my own interviews with officials during this period, the change was very noticeable. Within a month of the elections, a new regulation designed to legalise street vending that the ARDF had been writing for two years was shelved and rumors began to circulate of a crackdown. Preparing a well- planned operation, officials in the central administration of the city began collecting information on the 5,000 vendors within the city's metro system, including files of police reports on their leaders, who had never been supported by the PRI. At the same time, they began to coerce the leaders in the historical center to attend "negotiations" on the future of the city center. It had been planned to remove the metro vendors in a lightning operation after the historical center leaders signed a vaguely worded agreement to "resolve" the issue of street vending in the area and to keep the metro free of vendors. But the negotiations dragged on, and when a metro passenger was shot by a vendor in a dispute, the city used this as an excuse to unleash over 500 riot police on the metro stations which the vendors had turned into market places. The timing was perfect from a public relations point of view. Not only did the city give the appearance of an immediate response to a "sudden" crisis (the shooting), by its very response it connected the individual criminality of one vendor to the entire category of metro vendors, and by extension to street vendors as well. Public support for the city's policies was high, and leaders hurriedly signed the agreement to avoid appearing like criminals themselves.

Nevertheless, while the city administration began to plan the construction of markets, the project proceeded slowly, largely due to problems of finances. To speed up the process, PROCENTRICO, a group of medium-sized merchants in the area radically opposed to street vending, began to stage symbolic "strikes" --closing their stores for an hour on a scheduled basis. The leader of the group took to "inspecting" the closed shops in the company of journalists, and when he was met with a group of enraged street vendors who splattered him with tomatoes, the scene was televised nation-wide and plastered on the front pages of the sensationalist press. Within days, President Salinas ordered the reassignment of the officials in charge of the project and the creation of a new agency to carry it out with full financing from government owned development banks.

RESULT OF THE PLAZA PROJECT

One of the biggest differences between the plaza project and that carried out by Uruchurtu was that, in keeping with the neo-liberal policies of Salinas (and the belief of officials that vendors were wealthy) the vendors were to pay the full cost of their stalls whereas Uruchurtu, in the social democratic days of the 50s, had built the markets at government expense and then leased them for life at symbolic rents to the vendors. As a result, while the old market vendors paid less than the cost of maintenance for their market stalls (generally less than one dollar a month), the new market vendors were expected to pay between USD $3,000 and USD $6,000 for theirs in addition to maintenance and utility costs. Furthermore, Uruchurtu's markets were planned and constructed over the period of many years--the first markets were finished in 1957, five years after Uruchurtu originally banned street vending--while the new markets were planned and built in less than two years, leading to a number of planning and design problems. The only support vendors received in the plaza project was a credit plan in which, after paying a 10% mortgage, payments were spread over a 6 year period at an interest rate tied to inflation, which initially was fairly low. The financing was provided by government banks and provided without security other than the stalls themselves.

While some vendors were sceptical about the new markets, many were initially excited by the prospect of "owning" a permanent stall that would give many of them their first commercial property rights. But disillusionment rapidly set in at many of the markets after they were officially opened. Poorly planned and located, with little input from vendors or their leaders, most of the markets were complete commercial failures. The largest--with 1,500 stalls packed into a rabbit warren of narrow corridors--never attained more than 20% occupancy, even though all the vendors had paid their down payments. Another market was built across a major thoroughfare three blocks away from its original street market zone, which had been a prime selling area next to a metro station. As a result, it lost all its clientele and was unable to build up a new one.

Thus, although the initial phase of the project appeared highly successful, with the Christmas season of 1993-94 the first in recent history in which the historical center had been free of street vending, by the summer of 1994--on the eve of new presidential elections-- discontent rose to a crescendo. While officials promised to resolve financial problems and constructions defaults in the markets after the elections, vendors as well as their leaders started talking of returning to the streets. Finally, as the new president was sworn in and the Salinas "economic miracle" collapsed in December of 1994, many carried out their threat. By the summer of 1995, approximately 4,000 vendors were again selling in the area. While some of these were new vendors, most of them, appeared to be vendors in the new markets who were outside to supplement their earnings. At the same time, most of the vendors fell into arrears on their mortgage payments in the face of threats on the part of officials that their new stalls would be repossessed. A common complaint, in fact, was that earnings that before the relocation had been sufficiently high to pay their anticipated monthly payment, had now fallen below the level of the payment itself.

RESEARCH QUESTION AND HYPOTHESIS

If street vendors had been coopted into the PRI based on their collective need to protect their vending territory, how would the relocation into plazas which they would now own individually affect their previous "loyalty", particularly in light of the economic hardship that they suffered as an immediate result? In qualitative interviews carried out in the summers of 1994 and 1995, both leaders and vendors vocally attacked the PRI and often harshly criticised the government for the problems that they encountered in the new plazas. To test the hypothesis that the economic problems faced by vendors combined with their ownership of their stalls did indeed lead to a decline in loyalty towards the PRI and in the ability of their organisations to compel them to support the PRI, we decided to carry out a small survey of vendors who had bought stalls in the new plazas.

THE SURVEY

For this purpose, in the summer of 1995 we selected six of the new plazas--two which had been relatively successful, two with a limited degree of success, and two which had been the least successful. The goal was to conduct a systematic survey of vendors in each of the plazas (a random survey was ruled out because of the difficulty of locating all the owners of stalls since many had gone back to the streets) of every 10th open stalls. At the same time, we systematically surveyed every tenth or twentieth (depending on the total number) stall in surrounding streets to get a sample of vendors who had left their stalls or simply never purchased stalls. Given the short time of survey application, it was not always possible to return to closed stalls to find their owners, nor in other cases to wait for owners to arrive. As a result, we often had to skip closed stalls or to request information from employees. This means that the data cannot be claimed to be fully representative of the population of vendors under study, but we argue that the opinions and difficulties that were described to us are indicative of the problems and opinions that vendors have towards this project.

The survey included baseline question on age, sex, level of education, etc., as well as information about their organization. Most important was a set of questions on earnings and political participation before and after the plaza project. Since the historical data relied on memory, some reliability problems were anticipated. Reliability problems were also anticipated on the earnings questions, in which vendors tend to give estimated information. Finally, a further set of questions probed feelings of political alienation, opinions about the project, their leaders, the PRI, and their preferences about selling in the street or a plaza. In the following discussion, we will focus on the changes in income and changes in political participation.

THE DEBT CRISIS

One of the most dramatic indicators of financial stress was the number of months that vendors were behind in their mortgage payments for their stalls. The collapse of the Peso in December 1994 created an enormous jump in interest rates which, combined with their low sales, led many vendors to simply give up paying their mortgages for the time being. Indeed, of the 123 plaza vendors who answered this question, only 41 (33%) reported that they were current in their payment--and 12 of them had paid their stalls in advance. Two-thirds reported that they were from two months to over two years in arrears..

Figure 1: Months overdue in morgage payments

Figure one shows the level of the debt problem for both men and women by six month periods. As can be seen, gender has little effect on the degree of arrears. Indeed, women were slightly less behind on average than men in their payments, although the difference was not statistically significant. Lateness in mortgage payment was significantly related to the cost of the stalls themselves, however. The more expensive the stall, the more likely vendors were to fall behind in their payments.

CHANGE IN INCOME

Income had changed radically according to reports by vendors themselves. In order to measure income changes, we asked for an estimate of monthly sales before the plaza project took place (1992) and at the time of the survey (summer, 1995). Such estimates are notoriously unreliable, but we were primarily interested in relative changes-- whether vendors were earning more or less--rather than in exact figures. Again, underlining the sense of financial stress that resulted from the program, we found that reported earnings had dropped by slightly over half over the period--from an average (in New Mexican Pesos) of NMP 8,333 to NMP 3886 per month. Given the high inflation that had occurred during the period, this figure actually represents a real drop of approximately two-thirds. The effect for women was approximately the same as for men, although they began with somewhat lower earnings on average to begin with.

Figure 2: Average monthly income before and after plaza project...

Respondents were placed into four categories based upon whether they were, 1) selling only within their new plaza stalls, 2) selling in the plaza and on the street, 3) selling only on the street although they have a stall, or 4) never entered the plaza program at all. Comparing vendors who stayed inside the new markets to those who had gone outside, we found that vendors who sold exclusively inside the new plazas showed the largest drop in earnings--from an average of NMP 9232.5 to NMP 3718.9 (a 66% drop)--while plaza vendors who also sold on the street at the same time showed the highest earnings at the time of the survey after a drop of only 30%. Vendors who had not entered the market program showed a drop of 50% (from NMP 7515.9 to NMP 3852.3), while the poorest vendors both before and after the project on average were those who purchased a stall but then closed it to return outside.

These results suggest two conclusions, although it should be noted that due to the large standard deviations of all the group averages and the small sample sizes, none of these comparisons between groups are statistically significant, although the overall drop in income for the entire sample is significant. First of all, if appears clear that the higher the income vendors enjoyed before they entered the plaza, the more likely they were to stay in the plaza. This could be because they could sustain losses over a longer period of time, or it could be because they have a greater interest in "formalisation" itself which reduces the uncertainty they have on the street. Secondly, the data clearly appears to indicate that selling in the plaza caused a greater economic loss than selling in the street over the same period, despite the fact that earnings in the street declined largely because it had to be carried out in the face of direct official repression, meaning that vendors were reduced to selling from bags or rugs on street corners while keeping an eye out for the patrol.

PROBLEMS WITH PROGRAM

We have so far demonstrated the severity of the economic problems facing vendors due to the plaza construction program. Certainly, the data we have shown seems to verify the claims by vendors that the plaza project was a failure in terms of providing them with a realistic alternative to selling on the streets, and may be a failure in a much broader sense if one takes into account the fact that 10,000 vendors were affected by these changes. But in order to test whether vendors associated these failings with the political system, we included within our questionnaire an open question in which we asked the respondents to list up to three main reasons for the failure of the plazas. The responses fell very neatly into 13 categories, which appeared to reflect five main areas of concern: the economic crisis itself; the continued presence of street vending; specific physical problems with the plazas; problems of administration; and "cultural" factors, including statements such as "clients don't enter plazas", "merchants charge too much", that lay the blame on cultural or psychological features of merchants or clients and the need to "accredit" the plazas. The five main areas of concern and the 13 categories were the following:

Except for the last area of concern, that appears to place the blame for the failure of the new plazas on the cultural characteristics of clients or merchants, all of these categories in themselves reflected implicit critiques of the government, local officials or leaders. The economic problems were, in the eyes of the vendors, largely caused by the policy failures of the national government. The construction, design and location problems of the plazas were clearly caused by the city government's haste and, many vendors argued, lack of concern for the vendor's well-being in the plaza project, while the administrative problems revealed more specific accounts of this same unconcern, as well as in some cases the greed or incompetence of officials and/or leaders in defending their interests. Finally, the renewal of street vending was blamed largely on both the connivance of officials and leaders in failing to live up to the promise of keeping the Historical Center clear of vendors.

Figure 3: problems identified by vendors

Tables three and four give the totals by category and the areas of concern that they appear to reflect. As can be clearly seen, most of the reasons given by the vendors for the failure in the plaza project appear to be indictments of the government: only 20% of the reasons mentioned fell into the last, politically neutral, category. 20% of the reasons given blame the failure on the economic crisis, 15% on the resurgence of street vending, while the remainder of the reasons pointed to the location and designs of the plazas themselves or specific administrative problems in the plazas or in the project. Interestingly, the data shows that women are far more likely to give neutral reasons than men, and less likely to give reasons that suggest direct criticism of the government. For example, not a single woman mentioned "corruption" directly as a reason for the failure of the plazas, and only two mentioned leaders. 15 men gave these reasons, expressing the most direct statements of criticism of the political system..

Figure 4: problems mentioned by main area of concern

CHANGE IN POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

We have so far given evidence of the economic problems caused for individual vendors by the plaza project, as well as evidence that vendors identified the government as primarily responsible for these problems. Our hypothesis was that the problems associated with the plaza project as well as the change in status from street vendors--who need to remain organised within organisations affiliated with the PRI in order to maintain their areas--to independent stall owners, would result in a shift away from individual political support for the PRI as well as the ability for their organisations to compel vendors to show support. As with income, we wanted to see if rates of political participation had changed due to the plaza project. In particular, we wanted to see if vendors felt less need to show loyalty towards the PRI, and whether the organisations themselves were still requiring the same level of participation. Thus, we asked 4 sets of questions about political participation before and after the plaza project: 1) Were they required to be members of some political party? 2) Were they required to actively support a political party? 3) Who did they vote for in the last elections, and who would they vote for at the time of the survey? and, 4) Which party most supports their interests? Respondents were given eight options--six listed political parties, a "none" box and an "other" box. A "Don't know" box was coded as a missing value. What we discovered was a fundamental shift away from the PRI not only on the individual level, but also on the organisational level.

To simplify the presentation of the data, we reduced each question to binomial variables in order to illustrate the shift away from the PRI. All answers other than "PRI" were listed as "non-PRI." As can be seen in figure five, the resulting data shows a significant movement away from the PRI over the course of the plaza project. The first two sets of questions measure the degree of organisational pressure put on vendors to support the PRI. The first set of questions asked specifically if they were required to be a member of a political party before and after the plaza project, while the second asked whether they were required to support a political party during elections. The fact that almost half (42%) said that they were required to be a member of the PRI and that almost two-thirds (61%) were required to support the PRI during elections before the plaza project demonstrates the important role that street vendor organisations carried out for the PRI. And the fact that both these figures drop substantially after the plaza project (to 28% and 33% respectively) indicates that the street vendor organisations are either less able or less willing to require their vendors to support the PRI to the same degree.

Figure 5: Loyalty to the PRI before and after plaza project

The second two sets of questions were designed to measure individual support for the PRI before and after the plaza project in terms of their voting behavior and preferences and the degree to which they believed the PRI or some other party best represented their interests as vendors. As expected by a clientelist argument, we found that levels of individual support for the PRI were lower than the levels of organisational pressure both before and after the plaza project. But we also found, as above, that those levels dropped dramatically during the interval. While 44% admitted voting for the PRI in the 1994 elections, only 27% said they would do so at the time of the survey. In terms of their general political orientation, 50% reported that the PRI had been the most helpful political party before the plaza project, but only 23% felt that this was still true at the time of the survey.

Taken together, these four time indicators suggest that the plaza project was instrumental in weakening both individual and organisational support for the ruling political party among precisely those groups that were supposed to benefit from it--the vendors themselves.

DISCUSSION

The small sample size and data quality problems prevent any more sophisticated analysis than that shown here. Nevertheless, the financial pressures felt by individual vendors and the decline in support for the PRI are both clear. At the same time, the fact that most of the problems cited by vendors for the failure of the plazas clearly implicate the authorities indicates that there is a causal pattern between them. In open-ended interviews with vendors and leaders, these patterns were even clearer.

Leaders affiliated with the PRI pulled no punches in their criticism of the relocation program and the city administration. Guillermina Rico and Alejandra Barrios, the two most important leaders and supporters of the PRI in the area, both accused the city of allowing a new class of "toreros" (unregulated vendors) to exist on the streets who were responsible only to the market inspectors: "They can't sell in the markets so they are 'toreando', and the (market inspectors) are the leaders now," collecting daily bribes to allow them to sell. A legal advisor to one of the leaders affiliated with the PRI complained that the government consistently snubbed them, but favored opposition-affiliated groups to re-invade areas under the ban: "We can give the system 80% of the seats (in upcoming elections for "Ciudadanos Consejeros"), but they don't seem to realize how important we are," he argued, and added darkly, "If we became members of the opposition, we would probably be better off."

Another leader went even further, asserting that "Nobody is affiliated with the PRI out of conviction--we are all with the system out of convenience. And there may come a time when it is no longer convenient." While he remained loyal for the moment, he noted that militants of the leftist opposition Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD) and even the RUTA-100 union (one of the most radical trade union movements in Mexico that is allied with the rebel Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) and in active conflict with the city administration over the mass firing of its members and the arrest of its leaders), had approached them to discuss the possibility of joining forces. "If we were to join the opposition, just imagine what would happen," he added.

Among vendors, feelings towards the programs were mixed with feelings towards the city administration, the PRI and their own leaders, who many argued had abandoned them by agreeing to the market relocation program. One older couple, after telling an interviewer about the problems they had gone through with the program (they had to sell their house to pay for their stall and could barely afford their rent) and with their leader appealed to her to tell the principal investigator to be careful that he wasnžt attacked or worse because of the investigation. Another vendor emotionally told an interviewer that:

"She feels very pressured. One day when she came from her house to the plaza it came to her mind to commit suicide: she was decided! But she couldnžt and she went to pray. When she doesn't sell she feels desperate. This week she has to pay the electricity and she has no money. She says nothing to her brothers so as not to worry them. There are days in which she doesnžt want to eat and wakes up with headaches." (from field notes)

Many vendors noted that they no longer had any obligations towards the leaders now that they had their own stall, and had stopped paying fees to their association. Paradoxically, however, those vendors who felt the most economic pressures continued to rely upon the association for certain types of protection. For example, the fact that so many vendors were able to stop their monthly payments without having their stalls repossessed was largely due to protection extended by the leaders, who told the vendors that they could suspend payments pending negotiations with the city about lowering interest rates. At the same time, in order to sell outside in the street to supplement their income they also needed the protection of leaders who in many plazas staked out areas around the markets and charged fees to vendors who wished to use them. Thus, only the most successful vendors could be truly independent of the leaders.

Politically, the drift away from the PRI was clear in almost all the interviews, whether or not the vendor continued to support or need their particular leader. Support for the leader was often couched in terms of their opposition to the government, while attacks on the leaders were often couched in terms of a perceived alliance between them and the government. The fact is that leaders were trapped in the uncomfortable position of having identified heavily with the political system that now appeared to be the principal enemy of their members.

CONCLUSION

The Partido Revolucionario Institucional of Mexico is today facing an unprecedented political crisis that is born primarily out of the collapse of the corporatist system that sustained it for over five decades. In many ways, the policies of ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari accentuated this collapse, partly due to its economic policies and partly due to an attempt to change the nature of the party itself. Economically, Salinas dealt two major blows at the system of corporatism by passing modifications to the agrarian code that would allow for the dismantling of ejidos in the country side and by the privatisation of state firms and the opening up of the Mexican market to outside competition that have resulted in massive layoffs among the urban working class.

The plaza project, seen in the context of these broader policy moves, appears on the one hand to part of a much larger program of žmodernisationž of the countryžs economic system that has negatively affected the PRIžs corporatist base. Certainly, this interpretation would appear to neatly fit the argument of those critics of the PRI who see it as a "dinosaur" that must be cast aside in order for Mexico to "Modernise".

On the other hand, it seems paradoxical that market construction, originally a mechanism for incorporating street vending into the PRI in the 1960s, is now seen as a mechanism for disincorporating street vending from the PRI. What resolves this paradox is the fact that the market project of the 1960s was designed to directly stimulate organization among vendors and provided significant incentives to vendors to organise within the PRI. While the plaza project was also designed around the existing street vendor organisations, the individual ownership of the stalls served to undercut group interests. and thus undercut the authority of the leaders. At the same time, the lack of adequate planning showed that the vendoržs interests were clearly not primary in the process.

Modernisation and democratisation in Mexico has usually been interpreted as a matter of attacking and dismantling the corporatist structure of the PRI. In this regard, the fact that vendors turned against the PRI as a result of the plaza project may be seen as a progressive step. On the other hand, the manner in which the plaza project was carried out--with almost total disregard of the interests of vendors and of their organisations--may reveal an even greater danger: the fact that the interests of street vendors and others in the informal economy may be completely ignored if the corporatist system breaks down. That is, vendors are turning against the PRI in this case because they are finding that the PRI no longer ždeliversž the goods. But the question remains: in terms of their interests, who else can? As žmodernž regimes begin to preach a new age of efficiency and cleanliness in the urban centers, who will stand up for the rights of those groups who stand in the way of these visions of modernity?

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