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The recent relocation of about 10,000 ambulatory vendors from the streets of Mexico City's Historical Center into newly constructed markets, has been compared by officials to the massive market construction program carried out by Ernesto P. Uruchurtu during his regency from 1952 to 1966. This article investigates this parallel by looking closely at the policies and practices of Uruchurtu with reference to street vendors. It is argued that these policies had the effect of politicizing street vending by forcing vendors to organize within the PRI and established a series of practices that essentially guaranteed the rights of such organized vendors to markets. Once the market program was halted for economic and political reasons, these policies and practices combined to create the subsequent enormous growth in street vending and the powerful street vendor organizations that continue to elude government attempts to control them today.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the support of David Lopez of UCLA and Francisco Marmolejo and Fernando Gonzalez of the Universidad de las AmÚricas. I would also like to thank Lic. Alcantara of Coabasto for providing valuable information from that institution. Support for this research was provided by the UCLA Program on Mexico, the National Science Foundation, The U.S. Mexico Fulbright program and the Organization of American States.

This recent success seems all the more remarkable in the face of the consistent failure of the city's attempts to control street vending in the last decades as the number of street vending has grown despite dozens of administrative proposals to limit or reverse that growth. Even the refusal of the city to grant new permits to street vendors since 1984 and the formation of the Coordinaci¾n de Abasto Popular (COABASTO) the following year to organize and reduce the phenomena did not prevent the number of vendors from doubling over the subsequent decade, usually with the knowledge and even the support of elected and administrative officials.2

The difficulty of controlling vending has led many observers to claim that street vendors are a "mafia" that is able to manipulate officials to do their bidding (Baca 1990), and many officials admit in private that street vendor leaders are so well organized politically that it is extremely difficult for city agencies operating alone to take any effective action against them. Street vendor leaders proudly boast of their relations with high level politicians and officials, while some have themselves been elected to office or are invited with other local dignitaries to presidential receptions.3 The power of leaders is based upon the fact that, possibly more than any other city in the world, Mexico City's vendors are extraordinarily well organized, since city policy is to only provide "tolerances" for vendors who have joined a preexisting organization or formed a new one. Thus, the leaders of the diverse organizations, some with up to 7,000 members, can compel their members to pay high fees and to attend political rallies by threatening to suspend or cancel their membership, which would effectively prevent them from selling on the streets at all. These practices have been observed on numerous occasions by the author and are a constant source of comments and complaints by vendors themselves.4

While the relocation in the Historical Center appears so far to be successful, it still leaves some 180 thousand vendors on the streets of the Federal District between "fixed stalls", "semi-fixed stalls", "toreros", and "tianguis" of the colonias and comercial zones in the rest of the city.5 If the DDF wants to eliminate street vending in all its territory, as seems to be the case according to my own personal interviews with high-level officials of the DDF over the last two years and as Lic. Albores Guillen, Director of COABASTO, commented to the Wall Street Journal in 1993 (November 16, 1993, p A18), it will have to confront this greater problem. And whether it can do so will depend as much on its understanding of street vending itself as on the history of the relations between street vendors and the state.

This article will focus on the second question. By analyzing the last historical period in which street vendors were effectively relocated from the streets to market buildings, during the regency of Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, I will show the limitations of the state's policy towards street vendors. The central questions in this analysis are the following: How did state officials manage to relocate street vendors into market buildings? and, Why did these policies fail in the long-term? These questions are important not only because they illuminate the problems that city officials faced in this earlier period, but also because, as this paper will argue, the difficulty of controlling street vending today stems to a large degree from the very mechanisms by which the state attempted to control street vending during the Uruchurtu period.

Many have noted the historical parallel between the present market construction program and that of the government of Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, the so-called "Regent of Iron" who dominated the Federal District during an unparalleled 14 years between 1952 and 1966. Appointed to the post of Regent of the Federal District by three presidents in a row, Uruchurtu left his mark by, among other things, building 150 market buildings to house almost 55,000 street vendors during his regency. Uruchurtu's methods in "modernizing" Mexico City were frequently brutal, involving the harassment, illegal imprisonment and beating of street vendors and "paracaidistas", land invaders who's illegal occupation of land was spurred by the strict limits that Uruchurtu put on the growth of the urban area of the city despite its rapidly growing population (Cornelius 1977). Indeed, Uruchurtu was finally chased out of office after ordering the razing of a "invasion" community, suggesting the high level of conflict between his administration and the "informal" subsistence activities of the poor.

Still, while his authoritarian actions towards the poorest members of society eventually led to his downfall, he was still seen as an ideal political figure by the middle and upper classes for whom the order imposed by Uruchurtu, however brutally, had its own merit. As the Excelsior editorialized after Uruchurtu's resignation was demanded by a Congress stoked by public opinion:

"We remember that before Uruchurtu we metropolitans came to believe that the ever-present dirtiness in our markets and the quality of "z¾cos" (open air markets) that were in our most central streets were just part of our national idiosyncracies..." (Excelsior 9/15/66)

It is this image of Uruchurtu that today's political leadership wish to be compared with--the Uruchurtu who cleared the city's sidewalks of vendors. But the failure of Uruchurtu's legacy is evident in the fact that, while the markets he built still stand, the city's streets are again filled with vendors. Is this fact simply the result of later bureaucratic incompetence, or did Uruchurtu's policies themselves help create the basis for the powerful vendor organizations that make the control of street vending so difficult today?

But the law was never implemented as such. Upon entering office in December of 1952, Uruchurtu simply outlawed street vending by administrative fiat. Within a week he ordered the city center cleared of its 2,100 vendors, who were required to relocate into a recently constructed but empty market building, despite the fact that the 1,000 stall market was far from sufficient to handle all the displaced vendors. Still, as newspaper editorials trumpeted, the new Regent appeared to accomplish in a few days what previous administrations had been claiming for years could not be done--he had cleared the downtown area of vendors, and before his first month of office was over he extended the ban to the rest of the city as well. His authoritarian style gained the new Regent the reputation of a decisive leader--and earned him the moniker of "Regent of Iron". The press acclaimed him profusely--an editorial cartoon in the Excelsior showed him as an American football player rushing a football marked D.F. (Federal District) irrepressibly towards the end zone, while the caption read, "May he never stop!".

But the decision to abolish street vending had been made without any negotiation or planning, and the resultant backlash forced the city to modify its plans subject to the availability of suitable alternatives. 2,000 of those affected by the city-wide ban staged an occupation of the city offices and the Director of the Market Office, Gonzalo Pe±a Manterola, was compelled to personally lead a search for "alternative" sites for the displaced vendors (Excelsior 12/18/52). In fact, the city was forced to allow street vending in most areas until markets could be built to accommodate the vendors in adequate facilities.

Like the government today, Uruchurtu made use of a number of rhetorical claims about the "evils" of street vending to justify his strong action against them in the face of recent legislation that basically legalized the activity. Today street vendors are accused of everything from causing "disloyal" competition for "legitimate" stores, avoiding taxes, to causing air pollution and a general public health threat. Foremost among the rhetoric used against street vendors by Uruchurtu was that they caused traffic congestion and were the cause of inflation because of the purported effect of "intermediarism".6

Rather then simply forcing street vendors to give up their trade and replacing them with modern supermarkets, which would have dealt efficiently with the perceived problem of "intermediarism", Uruchurtu began an ambitious program for the construction of covered market buildings to house the vendors who were displaced by the above orders. The markets were built from public funds and rented to the vendors at a symbolic cost, officially in order to reduce the cost to the final consumer but, more importantly, to "bribe" vendors into moving off the streets without resistance. As an official who entered public service at the time explained, in order to entice the vendors into the markets Uruchurtu gave them refrigerators, scales, "...and even then he gave them the maintenance and care of their merchandise with guards, the light, the water..." and many of their other needs included in their nominal rents.

In the market area of La Merced, at that time the largest outdoor market area of the city, market space was constructed for 6,727 vendors. In the area known as La Lagunilla, 2,036 vendors were accommodated and in the commercial area of Tepito 4,488 vendors were placed in market structures. All of these were inaugurated in 1957, although in some cases previous market structures for far fewer vendors had existed before and been replaced. Altogether, in 1957 alone 18,414 vendors were relocated into 36 markets, and between 1953 and 1966 a total 174 markets were constructed or reconstructed for 52,070 vendors raising the number of markets in the Federal District from 44 to over 200. This level of market construction has never been repeated, and the markets built during this period accounted for 77.6% of the 67,066 market stalls in the city in 1993, 26 years after Uruchurtu.7 Even these figures underestimate the contribution of Uruchurtu to the present-day public market system in Mexico City since over a dozen markets were in the process of final planning or construction when Uruchurtu was removed from office.

But if the market construction program, with their refrigeration units, childcare centers, security, lighting, running water and other "modern conveniences" were the carrot designed to entice vendors off the street, Uruchurtu also wielded a big stick--street vendors who refused or were unable to enter the markets were faced with the most severe police repression in the modern history of the city. Guillermina Rico, who was too young to qualify for a stall in La MercÚd when the market was constructed there in 1957, explained what happened as she stubbornly continued to sell on the street to help support her family:

"Then those of us who were left out stayed to suffer: 36 hours, 15 days, draggings, kickings and beatings... They threw us in jail for 36 hours, and the children were sent to the orphanage... Many of the (street) merchants didn't know prison, but they got to know it for being merchants, for earning their living honestly."

"... there was no permission to sell, so since the (street inspector) trucks arrived, we had to find a way of working early. We worked from 5 to 7:30 in the morning because the trucks arrived and removed us. At first they just took the people, and the things were left thrown on the ground. But later, since the government saw that some kept selling, they changed their system again. Then they came back and they took all the merchandise. They let us go free, but they took your merchandise. Everything, they took everything, whether it was money or the merchandise, everything there was..."

Uruchurtu was a close friend of President Miguel Alemßn with whom he went through college and served as campaign manager and confidant. In 1952, he was appointed to head the Federal District by President Ruiz Cortines in a move that is largely seen as a compromise between the outgoing and incoming presidents to attempt to maintain some powerful positions within the cabinet for Alemanistas (supporters of Miguel Aleman). There is less agreement as to why he was reappointed by Adolfo Lopez Mateos 6 years later. One argument is that it represented continued power on the part of Miguel Aleman. An alternative explanation would simply be that Uruchurtu--who himself was a pre-candidate for the presidency--had become so powerful that Lopez Mateos couldn't get rid of him. 10

Lopez Mateos was selected as a compromise candidate over Uruchurtu because the latter was too identified with Aleman's supporters within the government, and thus was rejected by the supporters of Cßrdenas, the powerful left-wing president of the 1930s. But he was a weak president who was dominated by the Alamanistas and Cardenistas in his cabinet. Uruchurtu, on the other hand, had a long history in administrative positions in the PRI and in state and national government, and had a powerful cadre of allies.

In 1964 Uruchurtu was again a pre-candidate for the presidency on behalf of the PRI, however, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz was elected and many argue that tensions between the two figures were apparent from the beginning, although Uruchurtu was again reappointed to the position of head of the DDF. While Uruchurtu's conservative stance was similar to that of Diaz Ordaz, his power as Regent and behind the scenes became a threat to the President's authority. As one scholarly work in its discussion of the conflict between these two political figures notes:

"A President generally guards the expectation that his collaborators will not exceed him in power, so that he can shine (destacar) personally." (Lerner de Sheinbaum & Ralsky de Cimet 1976: 395)

It is highly significant, however, that the final downfall of Uruchurtu was precipitated by his continuing policies against informal-economy linked movements within the capital city. Besides his attacks on street vending, Uruchurtu was also known for his harsh repression of land invaders, who thwarted his attempt to limit urban growth and imposed high costs on the city for the purchase of land and provision of urban services in areas that were often only marginally habitable or virtually unserviceable due to topographic features or soil conditions. But his practice of ordering such communities to be razed was an unpopular one which provoked many ideological problems for the PRI. When the city bulldozed a community of 400 land invaders during a downpour four days before the "grito" of independence (September 15, 1966), members of congress lined up to denounce the act and the PRI skillfully distanced Uruchurtu from the President before censuring him and forcing his resignation. During the congressional debate, land invaders and street vendors were both held up as noble victims of the cruelty of Uruchurtu's policies. One columnist argued that the attacks on street vendors had formed part of the Uruchurtu's "dictatorial pattern" against "...the poor indigenous women who in the use of their inalienable right of survival sold their miserable merchandise on the urban sidewalk." (Carlos Alvarez Acevedo, Excelsior 9/15/66:7A) Four powerful worker unions affiliated with the PRI, including the CTM and the Federation of Revolutionary Workers (FOR), also attacked the "...injustice that is committed against the humble merchants, ambulatory vendors, who are imprisoned and whose goods are confiscated." (Excelsior 9/15/66:1A)

The paradox here is that Uruchurtu's policies towards street vending--the construction of markets and the resultant necessary repression of vendors--was originally a key component of his power base. Not only did the policy please the middle classes and provide a substantial source of lucrative contracts for the Mexican construction industry, it also enabled Uruchurtu to organize and manipulate street vendors politically for his own purposes.

Administratively, the civil associations enabled city officials and market administrators to negotiate with a single body of vendors that represented--or at least could be held accountable for--all the vendors in a given street or market. Politically, the civil associations were also obliged to affiliate with the PRI and support political actions on behalf of that party.11 More importantly, Uruchurtu used the associations to advance his own career. The skillful manipulation of the market construction program was already paying off powerfully in the political realm by 1958. On February 12 of that year a rally of 40,000 market stall-holders and their families showed up for a huge political rally in support of Lopez Mateos, and the head of the PRI in the federal district, Rodolfo Gonzalez Guevara, noted that the 1958 campaign was the first in which small merchants had played a substantial role--something he attributed directly to the market construction program. More significant was the fact that leaders of the market vendors overtly connected their support for Lopez Mateos with his promise to continue Uruchurtu's policies within the city. (Excelsior, 2/1/58 and 2/15/58)

The timing of the inauguration of markets during the two presidential terms in which Uruchurtu served as the Regent of the Federal District further indicates that the inaugurations were calculated to garner immediate good will and support for himself and the PRI. By comparing the number of vendors who received a stall during each two-year section of the sexenios of Ruiz Cortines and Lopez Mateos, when Uruchurtu was in full charge of the Federal District, it becomes clear that the last two-year period of each sexenio--the period directly before the presidential elections--were the object of a much higher than normal level of market construction.

It was in fact this very politicization of the market program and of street vending that ultimately spelled the doom of the program itself. Because while the markets were used to entice vendors into the PRI, this practice was self-limited by four factors. These will be mentioned here, and will be discussed in depth in the next section. First, while the policy of market construction had created a large pool of associations loyal to the PRI, this was obtained at a huge financial cost. Secondly, by 1966 the vast majority of street vendors were either in market structures, or had rejected them in favor of a return to the street. Thirdly, there was a tendency for support from market vendors to decline over time. Finally, the enormous subsidy of market vendors led to profiteering by vendors and actually led consumers to request the return of street markets.

THE REJECTION OF MARKETS

Constructed on available lots or areas of cheap land values, the markets were usually not as centrally located as the streetmarkets they replaced, meaning that fewer clients came to them. While new clienteles were built up over time, many vendors seem to have left during this initial phase.12 In addition, the symbolic rents were by no means the only cost of entering the markets: besides the continuation of corruption (many of the administrators were ex-police officers, and highly susceptible to such activity (Eckstein 1977)) city officials also used the markets to gain control over the commercial activities of the vendors in ways they found difficult or impossible to control in the street, such as imposing regular hours and regulating "giros" or product lines. A third factor was that the simple change of locale from the public thoroughfare to a market changed the nature of selling. Because of its location in public space, a street market is not just a place of private economic transactions: it is a place of socialization, a place to eat, to see and be seen, to chat with neighbors and friends, and a place to see what is available, and what takes one's fancy. On the other hand, public markets are more constraining in the sense that the closed space gives a sense of alien proprietorship, and one must therefore have a specific "purpose" to be there. Again, this required vendors to adapt their marketing strategy, an adaptation that few were prepared for.

For these and other reasons, the relocation of thriving streetmarkets into closed markets damaged the commercial allure of whole neighborhoods. By mid-1953, even the established merchants of swanky Polanco were urging the city to let street vendors come back, because they claimed their sales had dropped by 50% while other neighborhoods where vendors had remained experienced an increase in sales ("Distrito Federal" in Excelsior, 6/20/53). Many vendors from this period whom I interviewed claimed they suffered even greater losses and their savings were depleted. Some took to selling door-to-door, some had to get factory jobs, while others simply went to areas where markets were under construction to make a business out of getting a stall for free and reselling it after a few weeks.

A good example is presented by the working class area of Tepito which, located near the downtown area and one kilometer from the Z¾calo, had grown into a major streetmarket area since late in the last century (Vßzquez Torres 1991). Used goods of frequently dubious legal origin--giving the area the name of the "thieves market"--were sold from wooden shacks constructed in the middle of the street that in many cases also doubled as homes. These vendors presented few protests when the markets were constructed and their stalls and homes were destroyed in 1957,13 but Alfonso Hernßndez Hernßndez, a Tepito historian and an official in the Cuauhtemoc Delegation, maintains that after three years vendors began leaving the markets, faced with the prospect of complete financial ruin if they stayed in them. In some cases they sold their rights to their stalls,14 in others they just left the stalls vacant--giving up all right to them. One of the Tepito markets--which now successfully bills itself as the "worlds largest shoe market" after each of its 700 stalls began specializing in shoes--is now reportedly controlled by seven families who bought out most other vendors as they left the market.15

THE DECLINE IN SUPPORT FROM MARKET VENDORS

SUBSIDIES AND PROFITEERING

The above factors reinforced each other to produce a steady reduction of the political rate of return from the market construction program over time. While the construction and administrative costs mounted, the political benefits dwindled until the fantastic expenditures no longer made sense. At the same time, the market construction program implied a massive enforcement campaign to force street vendors into the markets on the one hand and to prevent them from competing with the markets on the other. Thus, even while the market construction program produced steadily reduced political benefits in terms of decreasing support from market vendors, it produced more and more political liabilities on the other hand in terms of its attacks on street vendors. In a word, these policies were no longer politically or economically viable. The street vendors that existed were no longer amenable to entering markets, and by enforcing stiff laws against them the PRI only succeeded in alienating them while the city administration--and by extension the national administration--merely looked authoritarian and dictatorial on the national and international level.

One must also consider the broader political aspects of the Mexican political scene. A decade and a half of growth had woken hopes of improvement in both political and economic aspects of the Mexican domestic scene--neither of which were nearly as fast coming as had been anticipated. At the same time, political control had been virtually monopolized by the right-wing of the PRI with a succession of anti-populist presidents. Growing political unrest began during this period, particularly among the middle-classes. The student movement--which ultimately was repressed by the army in a massacre costing hundreds of lives in July of 1968--already had a strong and growing presence. As Cornelius notes (1975), it was simply not possible for the state to continue alienating a growing proportion of the "popular" classes during this period. Just as the PRI became intimately involved in land invasion issues during this period, so it also needed to find allies, not enemies, among the street vendors.

Thus, Uruchurtu's market construction program had changed from being a political asset to the PRI in 1958 to a financial and political liability of huge proportions by 1966. The razing of a community of land invaders was not simply an excuse to get rid of a political rival, but a symptom of the very danger that Uruchurtu posed for the regime. He now got in the way of the PRI's attempts to cement support among the lower classes because of his refusal to allow land invaders or street vendors to become incorporated within the political-administrative structure.

But the market construction program, as it was implemented by Uruchurtu, established two precedents that are crucial in explaining the power of street vendors today. First, by requiring street vendors to be members of a civil association in order to be considered for a market stall or to be "tolerated" in the street, Uruchurtu laid the groundwork for today's powerful street vendor unions. Instead of the "voluntary" civil associations envisioned by the 1951 market regulation, Uruchurtu's policies gave complete power to association leaders over their members, since it gave them, rather than the city, the ultimate power over the livelihood of the individual vendor, who could not get a stall or a "tolerance" without the leader's blessing.

Secondly, Uruchurtu's policies not only firmly centered the market vendors within the PRI, they also provided a model which future associations could follow of exchanging loyalty to a political patron (usually within the PRI, but later also within other parties) for reciprocal support of their "right" to a market or a street. Above all, street vendors learned that if they could hold onto an area for long enough, the city would recognize their "right" to it, or, the next best thing, construct a market for them nearby.

But the more important legacy of Uruchurtu is the way that he helped pattern the relations between street vendors and the city that later allowed street vending to re-emerge with a vengeance. It was never the intention of the new city officials who replaced Uruchurtu to allow the spectacular growth of street vending that occurred in the following three decades. Rather, they simply wanted to reverse a situation that had become politically untenable for the PRI and economically untenable for the state. However, Uruchurtu's policies had radically politicized street vending by using the market construction program as an incentive for street vendors to organize within the PRI and as a reward for loyalty towards his own political objectives. His successors, in order to capitalize on the political benefits of organizing street vendors in the same way that Uruchurtu had organized market vendors, made the fatal mistake of continuing to apply the letter of his policies without their spirit, and thus continuing to foment the creation of street vendor organizations.

What occurred soon after Uruchurtu was forced to resign from office is that the market construction program was scrapped in favor of new programs, such as the Metro. But officials continued to compel groups of vendors to organize into associations that had to prove their loyalty to the PRI in order to be "tolerated" in the streets. For example, by 1968, already over 10,000 vendors were authorized to sell in "tianguis" (Pyle 1978). Officials hid the fact that they were allowing street vending to re-emerge with the fiction that the groups were being "tolerated" only until markets were built, essentially applying the letter of Uruchurtu's policies but denying the spirit since neither the officials nor the vendors had any interest in the construction of the markets. Still, as noted at the beginning of the article, by compelling street vendors to form or join associations, the city gave the associations the ultimate power over individual vendors, allowing the leaders of the associations to use their members in any way they saw necessary in order to defend their interests--increasing their memberships, increasing their space on the street, and ultimately increasing the "phenomena" of street vending to a level unprecedented in Mexican history.

1. Compare, for example, the recommendations of a report in 1990 which would have left most streetvendors in the street (DDF 1990) with later proposals for market construction (DDF 1991; 1992: DDF-Secretaria de Gobierno 1992). For a political commentary on the change of attitude after 1991 towards the "popular" sector as a whole, see Monge (1993).
2. For example, the number of "Tianguis", periodic markets that often operate in a circuit operating in a different neighborhood each day of the week, increased from 669 to 1061 between 1985 and 1991, while the number of stalls in the markets increased from 84,586 to 152,003 over the same period, despite constant efforts and programs on the part of Coabasto to prevent any growth at all (DDF-Coabasto 1985 and internal reports).
3. All the major leaders boast pictures taken at rallies, meetings, and conferences with Federal Deputies, Senators, and in some cases even the President. Partly this is to impress their members, but a large part is also real. Guillermina Rico, the most important leader in the Historical Center, has been actively wooed by the PRI with invitations to "Los Pinos", the Presidential residence, as well as with the position of "Alternate" to the Asamblea de Representantes del Distrito Federal. Several other leaders have also held public office, some for the opposition such as Celia Torres, whose Confederacion de Comerciantes y Organizaciones Populares (CCOP), with an estimated 5,000 tianguis members, was a powerful supporter of the 1988 campaign of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.
4. The political importance of street vendor organizations has been mentioned but not systematically studied elsewhere, for example in Colombia (Bromley 1978), Peru (De Soto 1989), and Hong Kong (McGee 1973). Sanyal (1992) and Escobar Latapi (1990) both provide a general discussion of the political significance of the informal economy as a whole.
5. "Fixed stalls" are metal kiosks that typically sell prepared food. "Semi-fixed" stalls are metal frame stalls that can be taken down overnight but are set up each day in the same location. "Toreros" are truly ambulatory vendors, most of whom sell to cars at traffic stops. "Tianguis" are periodic markets that usually operate in a circuit, setting up in a different neighborhood each day of the week. The approximate number of street vendors is a conservative estimate based on data from Coabasto and INEGI (1990).
6. The argument used by Uruchurtu, and still repeated by officials, is that since streetvendors often purchase from semi-wholesalers and even retailers, they must be less efficient commercially since they create a larger number of "intermediates" between the consumer and producers and thus presumably higher prices. However, this overlooked the fact that street vendors are highly competitive with large retail outlets, including supermarkets.
7. All information concerning the number and construction dates of markets and concentrations was compiled from DDF-Coabasto (1991). This document lists the date in which markets or concentrations were first "inaugurated" as well as information on the number of vendors they hold.
8. Usually, concentrations are located in the poorest areas of the city. Some operate in the street, although most of them have moved to empty lots that they can build on. As noted, some eventually are "re-designated" as public markets. Whether they do so depends as much on the concentration vendors and leaders themselves as upon city officials. Public markets operate under much stricter rules than concentrations, and are administered by city officials rather than by leaders. In many cases, leaders may not allow concentrations to become markets in order to continue exploiting the vendors within them by renting or selling the stalls at high prices.
9. Later, however, such vendors became the nucleus of today's powerful street vendor organizations, which helps explain why many of today's leaders are women, and why all of them seem to have such string characters. They have lived through repression and won.
10. See Camp (1976), Davis (1994), Hofstader (1974), Gomez Castro (1963) and Ward (1990) for more information on Uruchurtu's career. For information on the Mexican political system as a whole, also see Camp (1980; 1993), De la Pe±a (1992), Gonzalez Casanova (1965), Smith (1979), and Story (1986).
11. As far as I can tell, every single one did.
12. Pyle (1968) pointed to low vacancy rates in many markets to argue that they were a failure.
13. More significant protests were carried out by the residents in areas set to be demolished to make room for the new markets.
14. This supposedly is illegal, since the market stalls, like ejido land, were designed to be "inalienable" for the sole benefit of the vendor originally assigned to it. In practice if a vendor found someone who wanted their stall, they could charge them for allowing the stall to be transferred, giving a substantial bribe to the market administrators to change the names on the official roster. In this way, some vendors have amassed a large number of stalls that they purchased from others. Since individuals are only allowed to have one stall, vendors use "name-lenders", usually family members who are listed as stall-holders, but who actually have no control over the stalls at all.
15. See Couffignal (1987) and Tomas (1990) for further details on streetvending in Tepito.