Mexico City's "War of the Sidewalks": The Politics and Economics of Street Vending in Historical Perspective

Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association Meeting

Guadalajara, Mexico, April 17-19, 1997.

Gary Isaac Gordon

University of Chicago

Abstract: The conflict over street vending in Mexico City is fundamentally a struggle among urban interest groups over the use of public space, with established merchants and wealthier city residents on one side and the poor urban population on the other. Since 1929 Mexico City authorities have conducted a number of campaigns to banish street vendors from the city's historic downtown, sometimes with great violence. These campaigns alternate with periods of corrupt toleration by city officials. The cycles of repression and toleration are due to changes in the city's employment situation, the changing interests of the ruling party, and transformations in the urban environment. Periodic surges in the vendor population over time reflect the persistent inability of Mexican economic models to generate adequate job opportunities with attractive wages. In the political sphere, the fundamental obstacles to a resolution of the street vending conflict -- corporatism, corruption, lack of rule of law, lack of accountability, and lack of transparency in public functions -- are the same general elements of democracy that Mexico is currently struggling to obtain.

(Editor's note--this was submitted by Gary Gordon two years ago, but we have not been able to find him since to get the bibliography or endnotes, if there are any. As a result, this should be considered a draft. JC--4/25/00)

In June 1931 an editorial appeared in the daily El Universal concerning the proliferation of street vendors in downtown Mexico City. The analysis it made then is equally valid today: We are in the presence... of a tangled conflict of rights: the right of pedestrians not to have their passage obstructed...; that of the large merchants not to have the entrances to their stores blocked, nor to have competition in their very doorways; that of the street vendors to earn a living; that of the authorities to organize public transit and the exercise of commerce in the best possible way; [and] that of the city to be clean and presentable.

For centuries now, street vendors in Mexico City's historic downtown have been at the center of a struggle over the use of public space. On one side, middle and upper class city residents push for public spaces that project their ideals of modernity and efficiency. For them vendors are an obstruction and an eyesore. Established merchants also oppose the vendors, since they represent a source of unwelcome competition. The vendors, on the other hand, see the street as a place to earn an honest living.

For them, peddling is the last refuge before starvation or criminality, and they claim the activity as an historic and constitutional right. Certain conditions in the city's Centro Historico (Historic Center) have made this clash of purposes particularly acute. The Centro Historico has long been the hub of commercial activity in Mexico City. The neighborhood's centrality in the city transport network attracts vendors, who count on high volumes of traffic to sell their merchandise. The same trait also appeals to the many established retailers in the area (as well as to real estate developers), making conflict inevitable.

The Centro Historico also carries special significance for the Mexican people due to its historic and symbolic value. It contains the ruins of the Aztec capital, hundreds of colonial buildings, the national Cathedral, the Congress building and the Supreme Court, and acts as one of the principal magnets for tourism in the metropolitan region. The area's symbolic importance to the nation (not to mention its commercial value to the tourism industry) gives anti-vendor forces another rationale for maintaining a clean and orderly appearance in the Centro. Although these interests have changed little over the years, the conflict itself has demonstrated a great deal of dynamism. The city government swings back and forth between support of each side, sometimes repressing the vendors and sometimes tolerating them.

This paper chronicles these policy swings in the last seventy years and seeks to explain why they have taken place. As will become immediately evident, the history of the vendors is closely tied in with political issues like corporatism, clientelism, corruption and local democracy, and economic issues like unemployment and urban migration. For this reason the analysis presented here provides a useful window into these areas of concern. In the last fifteen years in particular, the "war of the sidewalks" has reflected the greater changes afoot in the Mexican economy and political system.

An understanding of the ground-level case of the street vendors therefore offers interesting insights into the direction Mexico is currently heading. This paper is divided into two sections. The first contains a condensed chronology of the various crackdowns, regulatory efforts, and periods of toleration that have taken place since the late 1920s. The second section analyzes the patterns that emerge from the narrative in order to draw more general conclusions and offer specific policy lessons.

The War of the Sidewalks: An Abridged Narrative

The periodization that appears below incorporates the visible milestones in the vending conflict -- new regulations and anti-vendor campaigns -- as well as more general economic and political events that have affected the vendor conflict. These events consist of major changes in the economy (the Depression, the Mexican "miracle", the weakening of the import substitution model, the debt crisis and the peso crisis) and the arrival of activist Regents (Ernesto Uruchurtu, 1952-1966, and Manuel Camacho, 1988-1993) who implemented programs to clear the vendors from the streets.

Depression to Miracle, ca. 1929-1951

In February 1929 the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce (CANACO) issued a proposal for a regulation to control street vending in the capital. The city had just been recreated as a Federal District (Distrito Federal), and there were as yet no specific rules on the books concerning the vendors. The Chamber's proposal listed the age-old concerns of downtown shopkeepers and presented a wish list of anti-vendor policies. It began by complaining of the "unequal competition" given by ambulatory merchants by virtue of not paying taxes. Under the proposed regulation these competitors were to be made to register with the government and obtain a selling license.

Furthermore, no vendors would be allowed to sell competing merchandise within fifty meters of an established store, and vendors seeking a license would have to present a letter of recommendation from at least two CANACO members. Curiously, the Chamber's plea made no mention of traffic.

Perhaps the number of vendors in 1929 was adequate to draw customers away from big stores but not large enough to create a congestion problem on city streets. By 1931, however, this was clearly not the case. A newspaper headline from March of that year tells the story: "Growing Invasion of City Sidewalks -- Ambulante Vendors Don't Leave Any Room for Pedestrians." It is impossible to say how many vendors there were on the street at that point, but there is little doubt that the Depression bore principle responsibility for the increase noted in the papers. Part of the complaint also arose from general deficiencies in city infrastructure. By 1930 Mexico City's population had reached over one million, but basic services like street paving, flood drains, and public markets had not kept pace. Mexico City was beginning to take on the characteristics of an industrial metropolis, but much of its infrastructure was stuck in the 19th century. The insufficient number of markets created a demand for the vendors' products and encouraged them to sell, while narrow, unpaved (often flooded) streets exacerbated the congestion problem. The press, the voice of "decent people", sneeringly described the scenes of backwardness and squalor in streets occupied by the vendors. To feed the sense of offense, they also noted that much of the merchandise was imported (showing disloyalty to Mexican industry) and that many of the merchants were middle eastern or eastern European immigrants, groups which were particularly suspect for harboring "international Jews". These concerns gained the attention of the authorities and were incorporated in a forthcoming regulation. In March 1931 President Pascual Ortiz Rubio issued a decree which regulated street vending in Mexico City. The introductory passages recognized that "the so-called comercio semi-fijo y ambulante has increased extraordinarily without having been regulated up until now, with this omission occasioning genuine problems, as much for transit in the city as for competition with legitimate merchants." The regulation adopted many of the recommendations from the 1929 CANACO proposal. It prohibited puestos (stands) in public parks, near competing stores, and within a limited perimeter of streets in the downtown core. In addition, it required all applicants for vending licenses to show official documents attesting to their legal residency and, in the case of immigrants, confirming that they did not enter the country under the false pretense of wanting to work in agriculture. CANACO congratulated itself on having gotten a regulation so favorable to itself, and newspapers announced with satisfaction the imminent removal of the vendor "plague". But within a few weeks it became readily apparent that the vendors had not budged from their downtown haunts. Some of the semi-fijos (vendors who operate from collapsible stands) had been forced to remove their structures, but many of them simply became ambulantes (itinerant vendors). The vendors fought the implementation of the regulation through the political system, the courts, and on the street. By the following December the city had enacted a temporary but official policy of toleration. In subsequent years the vendors continued to be a fixture on downtown streets. What had gone wrong? According to Armando Cisneros Sosa,

In the case of the street vendors, the intentions of the city government went beyond the possible. The pursuit of an impeccable, organized Centro... brought the authorities to propose the expulsion of the ambulantes... [But] the economic reality of the country, the lack of adequate employment, and the political networks that had been established prevented such a goal from being realized.

How did the vendors use the formal political system to defend their interests? The first step was to form associations. Guild-like vendor associations, formed for mutual aid and defense among merchants in one location or selling one type of product, are quite old in Mexico, dating back to the colonial era. In the 1920s some of these vendor associations integrated themselves into the newly formed Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR, the precursor to today's PRI) through its labor affiliate, the CROM. At first the vendors tried to use this affiliation to press for cancellation of the 1931 regulation, but they had to abandon this strategy in the face of opposition from the public market vendors who were also affiliated with the party and who supported the regulation. Nevertheless, the vendors could still make an emotional appeal directly to the President based on their status as economically disadvantaged citizens. In one instance a vendor organization sent a telegram to President Ortiz Rubio which stated, "Small merchants Dolores street puestos taken... Fifty families no means subsistence. Belong PNR, have fought favor your Government. Ask you use influence, restore [puestos] or indicate new location, avoid misery homes..." The vendors also sought satisfaction in the courts. Through the legal instrument of the amparo many vendor groups attempted, sometimes successfully, to obtain a type of waiver from city actions against them. Failing this, it was frequently possible to bribe the officials responsible for licensing, assignment of selling space, or enforcement of regulations in order to keep selling. The 1931 regulation, while failing to solve the street vendor problem, succeeded in creating an ideal environment for graft and extortion. The arbitrary powers it gave to city officials to allow or restrict street commerce and the leverage it gave police and inspectors quickly led to a corrupt bargain between vendors and the authorities. As one editorialist lamented, "This problem with the street vendors... has turned into an irresolvable problem for the simple reason that... those who are responsible for solving it are the same people who have in large part encouraged and created it." From time to time the authorities carried out an operativo to clear the vendors from a particular area, but the city had no comprehensive plan for dealing with the vendor problem. This state of affairs continued for twenty years before a new regulation came into effect. In the meanwhile, conditions in the economy and in the city continued to change. The 1940s saw not only the beginning of the Mexican "miracle" of fast growth and low inflation, but also the rapid physical and demographic expansion of the capital. The manufacturing-led boom that began in the 1940s meant that industrial jobs in the capital were plentiful, attracting hundreds of thousands of migrants from the countryside.

At the same time the bulk of the city population, including wealthier residents, was beginning to shift away from the city center to the quickly developing peripheral areas. By 1950 the urban population stood at over three million, but a third of this number lived outside of Mexico City proper.

The expansion and modernization of city infrastructure transformed the face of the city, turning it into a bustling, polluted metropolis. In 1951 President Miguel Aleman saw fit to update the city's outdated market regulation, which also dealt in passing with the street vendors. The 1951 regulation specifically superseded all previous measures, but it did not address street vending in a holistic fashion. Rather, it merely authorized the city to give permits for "puestos located outside of public markets", provided that these operated in specific "market zones" under certain conditions.

The new regulation also designated a downtown perimeter where it was illegal to sell live animals, but it was silent on the question of puestos semi-fijos, except to say in a general way that it was illegal to block public streets or set up puestos in school zones, in front of fire stations, and the like. The prohibition on selling competing merchandise in front of an established store disappeared, as did the special instructions for immigrants.

Another innovation in the 1951 regulation was that the city recognized vendor associations and imposed the requirement that they have at least one hundred members. This measure allowed the authorities the administrative convenience of interacting with the vendors in large groups rather than as individuals, but it further cemented the primacy of associations over individuals in dealings with the government.

In the event, the 1951 regulation, as far as the vendors was concerned, was a dead letter. Shortly after it was issued its impact was entirely washed out by the administrative intervention of the new Regent, Ernesto Uruchurtu.

Uruchurtu and After, ca. 1952-1970

Mexico City street vendors remember the administration of Ernesto Uruchurtu (1952-1966) as a dark time. Under the "Iron Regent" repression -- not only of street vendors, but also of prostitutes, beggars, and political dissenters -- became the order of the day. Uruchurtu also implemented an impressive public market construction campaign, building over 160 markets to house more than 50,000 vendors. Half of the public markets standing in the DF today, including the immense La Merced complex, were built under his watch.

The market program entailed a huge drain on city resources.

At its peak, in 1957, construction outlays reached 170 million pesos (a quarter of the city budget that year), but a few years later annual revenue from market rents had only reached 27.5 million pesos. The Uruchurtu administration justified this expenditure with the argument that market construction helped fight inflation, since official price controls were more easily applied in city markets. The lines of merchandise that were sold in the markets reflected this rationale. With a few exceptions, they all specialized in the "basic necessities", principally food and secondarily clothing. Nevertheless, the markets became a cause of inflation rather than a remedy for it, both because the construction expenses entailed deficit spending and because the city market inspectors extorted bribes from the stall holders, the cost of which was passed on to consumers. The more likely explanation for Uruchurtu's activism had to do not with price controls, but with local and national politics. The PRI had lost in the DF in the 1952 elections and Mexico City's middle class voters, many of whom had voted against the PRI, favored the policies of repression and market construction. As John Cross points out, market construction in the Uruchurtu era peaked just before elections. In the 1955 mid-term congressional elections, the PRI won back a majority of the votes in the DF, and in 1958 the PRI vote topped 68%. The removal of the vendors from the streets was popular because it met a genuine need. We know that there were at least 50,000 vendors on the street before the markets were built, since the new buildings had space for that many merchants. The presence of these vendors cannot be explained by a recession, since the Mexican economy was booming at the time. GDP growth surpassed six percent annually in the 1950s and 1960s, and Mexico City benefited from a disproportionate share of national job growth in industry.

Nevertheless, even this robust growth proved insufficient to absorb the flood of poor migrants from the countryside. As the city grew, the weight of the downtown in the city's total population continued to decline. Uruchurtu relocated many government institutions, including the National University, to more distant areas. The downtown became increasingly an area to pass through and to shop, rather than a place to live, although a solid working class and middle class element continued to hold on. These groups, along with developers and construction companies, formed Uruchurtu's main constituencies. According to social critic Carlos Monsivais, "Uruchurtu was supported by the middle classes who were anxious for respectability, the traditionalist sectors, those already here facing those who might come, and, most importantly, groups of the economically powerful." It may seem surprising, in light of these allegiances, that 40,000 former vendors came out to rally in support the ruling party in the 1958 elections. In fact, Uruchurtu's policies presented a double edged sword to the vendors. Those who received spaces in the markets gained a stable, clean, low-rent, full-service facility in which to earn a living, while sacrificing the commercial advantages and freedom of operating in the street. The granting of market space served as a political tool for the PRI, much as the recognition of squatter settlements did. The authorities could extend or withdraw the offer of market space at its convenience, and vendors who were shut out faced violent treatment by the police. This situation made vendor leaders entirely beholden to the government and the governing party, and willing do their bidding. The same relationship obtained within vendor organizations, and vendor leaders extorted advance payments from the rank and file in exchange for the promise of market stalls. Once in the markets, rank and file vendors still relied on their leaders to intervene with the authorities for repairs and services, which assured continued dependence on the leaders. Nevertheless, the move to enclosed markets transformed the organizations from ambulante associations to associations of market stall holders. Once inside a market, a vendor became for all intents and purposes an established merchant. Back on the street few ambulantes remained, although the city never entirely succeeded in eradicating them. Uruchurtu was forced from office in 1966 due to differences with then president Ruiz Cortines. Immediately, the repression of street vendors eased and market construction slackened. Gradually, the downtown streets that had been cleared with so much violence and coercion once again became choked with commercial activity, and the lucrative game of corrupt toleration returned. In 1967 the authorities issued a new vending decree with the justification of keeping transit "comfortable, expeditious and safe." The regulation traced a new zone of prohibition in the city center and placed penalties of up to 36 hours in jail for violation. Nevertheless, the new Regent, Alfonso Corona del Rosal, did not apply it very vigorously. For the time being the vendor population was still recovering from its decimation, allowing Corona del Rosal to appear generous with the economically disadvantaged. Eventually the authorities fell back into the pattern of the 1940s -- corrupt toleration, periodic crackdowns, and no long-term plan for dealing with the problem.

The Modern Vendor Organizations and the Debt Crisis, ca. 1970-1988

While the number of vendors in the city in the 1970s is a matter of conjecture (one estimate put the figure at 32,000 in 1971), by the reckoning of vendors, academics, government officials, and businessmen, there was a notable increase in the middle of the decade, coinciding with a deceleration of economic growth and a shortage of adequately remunerated jobs in factories and established businesses. The number again grew dramatically in the wake of the 1982 debt crisis. Estimates of the number of vendors in 1988 varied from around 100,000 to over 700,000 in Mexico City, and from 9,500 to 40,000 in the Centro Historico.

In addition to these changes in the economy, other developments contributed to an increase in vending activity during the 1970s and 1980s. First, city planners had failed to build new markets to keep pace with increasing demand from millions of new city residents (the DF poplation grew from seven million in 1970 to nine million in 1980). While this failure assured the popularity of informal markets around the metropolitan area, the construction of the Metro system, with its hub in the downtown, and the abandonment of the city center by both residents and established businesses made the area particularly vulnerable to invasion by street vendors. The transformation of the centro from a destination or a place to settle to a place to pass through accelerated. Vendors thrived on vacant lots, empty storefronts, and neglected streets through which millions of commuters passed every day. Thousands of peddlers also invaded entrances, passageways and cars of the Metro system itself. Efforts to remove and relocate the vendors began to gather speed in the mid-1980s. The two Delegaciones (the administrative units created under a 1971 revision of the DF charter) that contain the Centro Historico, Cuauhtemoc and Venustiano Carranza, began moving groups of vendors from more congested to less congested streets. This initiative responded partly to public concern over the obvious decay that had been taking place in the nation's most revered urban terrain. In addition, established businessmen, themselves hurting from the economic crisis, had pushed for action.

The establecidos, both in the official CANACO and in independent neighborhood associations, blamed the vendors for a host of ills, including tax evasion, disloyal competition, health and safety hazards, and unseemly appearance. The traffic problems caused by vendors, an especially sensitive issue at a time when air pollution had reached critical levels in the capital, also aroused the ire of many city residents. Recognizing that economic revitalization of the Centro Historico would be impossible without the cooperation of the established businessmen, the city gradually began to take action. For many years, however, the city's actions against the vendors were half-hearted and inadequate to please the Chamber of Commerce and middle class city residents. Powerful forces impeded real and thoroughgoing suppression of street vending. First, the government apparatus set up for dealing with the street vendors lacked coherence and logical organization. The sixteen delegaciones in the capital failed to coordinate their activities either among themselves or with the various branches of the central government that dealt with vending matters. Within the DF administration a diversity of agencies, including the treasury, the judiciary, and the Metro administration, as well as COABASTO (the federal agency in charge of food supply and markets in the capital) claimed jurisdiction in the matter of street vending, adding to the confusion. The legal muddle in which the vendors operated made permission to sell entirely discretionary on the part of the authorities. For instance, the tax code contained a category for street vendors, but city ordinances prohibited the obstruction of public ways by vendors. Similarly, the Mexican constitution protected the right to engage in economic activities that do not harm third parties (a condition that is open to interpretation), but Regents had nevertheless issued decrees banning vendors from certain parts of the city. Since the city did not have a single list of the permits it had issued, vendors often got away with forgeries. This situation allowed city officials both room for policy maneuver and opportunities for corruption. For 25 years after the 1967 regulation the legal status of the vendors remained unchanged. Another pressure favoring the toleration of street vendors came from the PRI popular sector (CNOP, Confederacion Nacional de Organizaciones Populares). Both in the wake of the 1968 student movement, and in the aftermath of the 1982 debt crisis and 1985 earthquake, the party had serious concerns about its support in the capital among the lower and middle economic strata. To promote the party's image as the defender of the "popular" classes, the CNOP publicly decried the repression of street vendors. At the same time, delegational officials encouraged the vendors to align themselves with associations that were organized under CNOP tutelage. These organizations grew to immense size and sophistication, and came to represent an important source of support for the party.

They served as foot soldiers in the PRI's battle to maintain political support in the capital. In the 1980s it became common for thousands of rank and file vendors from these organizations to be mustered out for public displays of party support or for good will missions. These activities included flag-waving for PRI candidates at electoral rallies, cheering for the Regent at public appearances, and even planting trees and providing disaster relief in other states. In addition, critics allege that vendor leaders provided funds to the party for political campaigns. In return for this assistance, the vendors expected their party patrons to champion their cause before city officials. One vendor expressed this quid quo pro simply: "We expect the support of the PRI because we have given it to them when they call us to attend their events." Several of the powerful vendor organizations that exist today, such as those of Guillermina Rico, Alejandra Barrios and Benita Chavarria, originated in the late 1970s as a response to city operations against them. With the economic dislocations of the 1980s, the membership of their organizations soared, reaching over 10,000 in Rico's case. The city government facilitated the growth of the organizations (all of which were affiliated with the PRI).

Vendors seeking permits could not approach the city government directly, but rather had to go to an established leader. While rank and file members were not formally forced to join the party, they were indeed forced to attend its rallies and other acts of support. Vendors who failed to attend lost their selling privileges for three days, and those who attempted to become independent often met with violent attacks from the organizations' enforcers. The balance of forces in the Centro Historico was becoming increasingly unstable by the end of the de la Madrid sexenio (1982-1988). More militant elements of the downtown business community began to defect from the Chamber of Commerce, dissatisfied with the leadership's moderate stance on the vending question. The economic crisis continued to add hundreds of vendors every week to the already ample population in the city. Additionally, progress with plans to revitalize the Centro Historico increased pressure on the authorities to act against the vendors. The relocation program had bought time for the city government, but under the conditions of the late 1980s a new approach was necessary.

The Camacho Administration and After, 1988-1996

The 1988 elections marked a turning point for the street vendor conflict in Mexico City. Voters in the capital had voted heavily for the opposition FDN (later PRD) and the new Regent, Manuel Camacho, undertook to win back their support. Finding a solution to the vendor problem arose as a key element in this effort. In the first three years of the Camacho administration, city authorities proceeded with caution. The vendors were a lightning rod for middle class discontent and an obstacle to downtown revitalization plans, but they were also an employment refuge for many of the city's poor. Nor could Camacho ignore the fact that "the ambulantes comprise[d] one of the few sectors in the city center in which the PRI still maintain[ed] political power." The Regent had to walk a thin line between these constituencies until the capital was electorally secure. Camacho took advantage of the recently created city council, the Asamblea de Representantes (ARDF), to buy time. In 1990 the ARDF conducted a public forum on the question of street vending, supposedly to allow all parties involved an opportunity to come together and work out a mutually agreeable solution. Some established merchants and opposition party vendor organizations participated, but the overwhelming presence of PRI supporters drowned them out. In the end the forum produced nothing more than a report and vague promises of future action. A combination of events and pressures began to turn the tide more decisively against the vendors by 1991. First, in the mid-term congressional elections that year the PRI beat the opposition decisively, easing pressure on the party to woo the support of the urban poor. In addition, it appeared that the economy had finally begun to improve. During the 1980s the vendors frequently presented themselves as victims of the economic crisis, but the recovery undermined this argument in the public mind. Finally, a militant group of downtown shopkeepers, led by Guillermo Gazal Jafif, began to apply greater pressure on the city to act. Gazal's organization, PROCENTRICO, carried out a number of store closing strikes and demonstrations which increased public attention on the grievances of the established merchants.

The vendor organizations did not help their case by engaging in violent turf battles among themselves. With so many vendors on the street competition had heightened, as had the financial stakes for the associations. Leaders charged their members substantial start-up fees as well as weekly cuotas, and cooperaciones for special events. With memberships in the hundreds or thousands, these revenues became substantial, and the leaders struggled tenaciously to expand their territories. As the press reported bloody scuffles among vendors (and between vendors and city inspectors), public sympathy for the vendors continued to deteriorate. In February 1992 a vendor in the Indios Verdes subway station shot a passenger who stepped on his merchandise. Camacho took immediate advantage of the outrage this act caused to sweep thousands of vendors out of the Metro system. Then in June a group of vendors pelted Guillermo Gazal with tomatoes as he led a pack of reporters and television camera crews on a tour of the city center. The attack gave credence to Gazal's portrayal of the vendors as violent thugs and further disintegrated their public image. These incidents coincided with the implementation of a new program of action by Camacho. Under the Programa de Mejoramiento del Comercio Popular (Program for Improvement of Popular Commerce) the Regent set plans in motion to move vendors off the street and into enclosed plazas, much as Uruchurtu had forty years earlier. Over the course of 1993 and 1994 the city built 28 plazas comerciales with space for 10,000 vendors. These differed from the markets of the 1950s and 1960s in several respects. First, the vendors themselves financed the construction. In all previously built public markets the city paid for construction and vendors rented space at a nominal cost. Under the Programa de Mejoramiento the vendors became "condominium" owners of their stalls and the government provided subsidized credit. In addition, the merchandise sold in the plazas reflected the changes in street vending over the years. Rather than "basic necessities" like vegetables and meat, the large majority of vendors who moved into the plazas sold manufactured consumer goods like video cassettes, plastic toys and costume jewelry.

Within the government bureaucracy the plazas still fell under the category of markets and food distribution (abasto), but the new markets were designed not so much to feed the city as to accomplish the more pedestrian task of clearing the vendors off of the streets The plazas met with differing degrees of success. While a few enjoyed commercial prosperity, several were obvious and immediate failures. The unsuccessful plazas became abandoned hulks and the vendors inside soon returned to the street. Many suffered bankruptcy when their diminished incomes proved insufficient to pay their "mortgages". The plaza construction program did benefit the leaders of the vendor organizations, however. The city government negotiated directly with the leaders, almost all from the PRI, in the relocation and construction program. This exclusive power made rank and file vendors even more dependent on their leaders, since only they could guarantee a spot in the new buildings. Once built the plazas added to the leaders' prestige and provided them with both an official base of operations and an additional enticement to hold out to potential members. In order to gain the compliance of the leaders Camacho had to promise that he would not allow rival vendors to occupy the streets that the new plaza recipients had vacated. To aid in this effort, in 1993 the ARDF issued a decree (bando) which prohibited vending in the A perimeter of the Centro Historico.

Like past regulations, this one gave the city executive great latitude in implementation and enforcement. In the first months after its passage it seemed to be a success. For the first time in recent memory vendors vacated downtown streets in the capital.

The city had not planned adequate space to house all of the vendors in the city center, and residents and merchants in areas outside the forbidden perimeter complained that the Bando had simply pushed vendors into their neighborhoods, but the Camacho administration received praise for making apparent progress in resolving a situation that had appeared beyond help. The Programa de Mejoramiento helped feed Manuel Camacho's popularity and his prospects of becoming the PRI presidential candidate in 1994. When President Salinas chose Luis Donaldo Colosio instead, Camacho quickly stepped down from his post in the capital. Salinas appointed a replacement, Manuel Aguilera, to finish out Camacho's term, but the new Regent could not maintain the policy momentum of his predecessor. Aguilera talked tough about the ambulante issue, but his administration coasted on the initiatives started by Camacho. It was also clear that Aguilera had a less firm grip on the city government apparatus than Camacho had, and allegations that inspectors were using the Bando to extort money from vendors immediately arose. Conditions became much worse following the December 1994 peso devaluation. Millions lost their jobs throughout the country, and the vendor organizations in the capital began to re-invade the downtown streets they had so recently abandoned. The new Regent, Oscar Espinosa, quickly demonstrated his lack of experience in city government. His heavy-handed treatment of protesters, his ill-advised public security program, and his legally questionable bust of the city bus driver's union all earned him negative marks with city residents. The one policy area in which Espinosa was able to win approval with the application of public force was the vendor conflict. In August 1995 and again in December Espinosa launched massive operations to clear the vendors from the Centro Historico. The violence was so great that in January 1996 the US State Department warned travelers against visiting downtown Mexico City. Yet in spite of this repression, the PRI still relied heavily on its affiliated vendor organizations for a variety of political functions. One example took place in November 1995 when the city held elections for a new "Citizen Council" (consejo ciudadano), a redundant assembly with no real powers. The PRI, nevertheless fearing an electoral embarrassment because of the peso crisis, rigged the election rules so that candidates would stand as independent citizens, rather than as representatives of political parties. This arrangement allowed the PRI to exploit its advantage in controlling "popular" groups like the vendors. A number of vendors, including daughters of Alejandra Barrios and Guillermina Rico, ran for office. Turnout for the election was minimal, but most commentators agreed that candidates loyal to the PRI won the majority of the seats. The PRI also deployed the vendors to meet new needs that arose from the more open post-1988 political environment. After 1988 opposition parties in the capital became more vocal and activist in making demands, especially through street demonstrations, and the PRI began to make use of the vendors for preemptive strikes against such demonstrations. As Juan Jose Castillo Mota, a PRI official, recounts, There were still many political practices in Mexico that were very rudimentary. So, for example, if you behaved yourself properly, in a modern way, when the Regent would go to the Assembly -- he had to go in through the front door -- the PRD would come and take over all of the streets. Then we would have monstrous brawls (zafaranchos)... [Therefore] the PRI had to get there first and take the streets before the PRD. Who were the ones who would lend themselves to this? Well, the ambulantes.

PRI vendors, sometimes accompanied by squatters or pepenadores (garbage pickers), would camp out over night to assure that no opposition protesters approached (the common term for the practice is hacer valla, "make a barrier"). When the Regent arrived the supporters would cheer enthusiastically and make way for his triumphal entry into the Assembly. The vendors apparently understood that the crackdowns would be temporary and that the city government was willing to return to the corrupt toleration of the past. By the same token, city officials realized that they could have it both ways, making a public show of repression while still being able to count on the captive support of the vendors. Conclusions and implications After seventy years, four regulations, two rounds of market construction and an untold number of police operations against the vendors, Mexico City authorities continue to search for a solution to the street vending conflict today. What lessons can be learned from the history of the war of the sidewalks? Explaining cycles of repression and toleration First, it is important to appreciate that some aspects of the street vending conflict have remained almost unchanged over the years and are likely to remain unchanged in the future. Most fundamentally, the war of the sidewalks has been a contest among different class-based interest groups over the use of public space all along. The opposition of established merchants to competition by the vendors has also changed little over time. In addition, the vendors have operated in a consistently ill-defined legal environment throughout the decades, despite periodic regulatory efforts.

The vendors have never wavered from their contention that their activity should be tolerated because the only other options open to them would be starvation or criminal activity. Nor have the vendors ceased to defend their interests in the formal political system. City authorities have regularly made use of the street vending conflict as a political football and as a source of graft. The city government has alternately attacked vendors in order to gain the support of middle class city residents and businessmen, and tolerated them to gain illicit income and the support of poor city residents. A variety of influences have helped shift government policy back and forth between repression and toleration. In the absence of strong direction from above, lower city officials have persistently reverted to a policy of corrupt toleration, since such a policy means private gain for them. But from time to time the Regent, or even the President, has taken a stand against this state of affairs and acted on behalf of interest groups who oppose street vending. Several events and conditions have triggered such action over the years. Most obviously, the government has responded when the number of vendors (and the complaints of residents and merchants) has increased dramatically. At some indefinable threshold the vendors become not just an irritant, but a genuine obstacle to the functioning of the city. This means not simply that traffic is bad, but that investors and wealthy shoppers shy away from the affected districts. Efforts to control vending took place following the Depression and the 1982 debt crisis because those events caused the vendor population to increase beyond tolerable levels.

In some instances the vendor population has also surged in the absence of an economic crisis, for example in the early 1950s. In this case the increase arose from the growth of the city's work force beyond the capacity of the formal economy to absorb the additional labor. This phenomenon has many causes, and they are difficult to identify precisely, but the high rate of migration from the countryside to the city in the late 1940s and 1950s obviously played an important role. This observation offers some insight into the dynamics of the informal sector. The case of the vendors indicates that informal activity is often counter cyclical (increasing during recessions), but GDP growth is not the most important causal factor. It is common sense that informality grows when there are insufficient opportunities for formal jobs with adequate pay. Sometimes this condition coincides with recession, as in the 1930s and 1980s, but other times it doesn't. In certain instances factors unrelated to the vendors per se have intensified the dissatisfaction of residents and businessmen over the presence of the peddlers. For example, in the 1930s and 1950s vendor opponents complained primarily about traffic congestion and sanitary problems, but their agenda went beyond these administrative issues. For many critics, the vendors also represented an unwelcome invasion by outsiders, both from foreign lands and from the Mexican provinces. Some commentators have characterized the Uruchurtu administration as a "last stand" by better-off occupants of the city center against the onslaught of urban decay and megalopolis. The campaign against the vendors fits in well with this interpretation. A similar story can be told for the 1980s, when the unmistakable deterioration of the Centro Historico caused a national outcry. As efforts to restore historic buildings and monuments got underway, vendor opponents could add the desecration of national treasures to the list of the vendors' sins. This argument received an unexpected boost in 1991 when Mexican screen idol Maria Felix came to visit the city center. Felix declared that she was disgusted by the way the vendors had transformed the quaint, orderly streets of her memory, leading to much hand-wringing and shame among residents.

The changing interests of the PRI The interests of the ruling party have played a critical role in swaying government action throughout the decades. Major changes of course in 1952 and 1988 corresponded with alarmingly poor election results for the PRI in the capital. In both instances the subsequent campaigns to control street vending formed part of the PRI's strategy to recover an electoral majority. In both instances the government's efforts met with the approval of large sectors of the city population and contributed to PRI victories in subsequent elections. On occasion the PRI has sought popular support by backing away from a policy of repression. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the party recognized that it had alienated many of the city's poor and educated middle class. The party wished to present itself as progressive and sympathetic to the poor in order to diminish the kind of popular discontent that led to student demonstrations and urban guerrilla movements. The city government softened its stance toward the vendors in pursuit of this objective. A similar set of circumstances appeared in the early 1980s.

The austerity measures implemented in the wake of the debt crisis dealt a heavy blow to the PRI's image. With the national economy reeling and popular discontent rising, a frontal assault on the thousands of vendors who were beginning to flood onto city streets would have been dangerous. Throughout most of the decade the city tried to mollify critics with grand relocation programs that simply shifted vendors from one street to another. Officials fended off complaints that they were not moving fast enough against the vendors by pointing out that they were trying to avoid a "social explosion." Along the same lines, in 1990 Regent Manuel Camacho publicly attacked PROCENTRHICO, which had been militating for a stronger hand against the vendors, for "attitudes that verge on fascism." When the city has come around to repressing the vendors, it seems logical that such actions would entail the sacrifice of vendor support for the PRI. In fact, the campaigns to control vending have brought the vendors even more securely into the party fold. The PRI can accomplish this feat because of the vendors' uncertain legal situation and lack of solidarity. They have few other options but to pursue what concessions they can through their connection with the ruling party. The arrival of the PRD in 1988 opened a new route through which vendors could promote their cause, but the PRD's lack of influence in the government has kept the number of vendors pursuing this option small. Once the authorities have established that they are about to pursue a new campaign, they present vendors with a carrot and a stick. Those who cooperate receive preferential treatment in the assignment of market space, and those who do not face repression on the street. City officials explicitly favor PRI-affiliated organizations in their planning and negotiation, which helps push new members into those organizations. As a result, at the end of the campaign the party has more affiliates than it did before. In recent years the ambulantes have become especially important to the PRI's political operations in the capital, since the party has been losing its grip on its traditional bastions of support, the CTM and the CNC. Ilaon Bizberg has written of a "crisis of Mexican corporatism" dating back to 1982, caused by the state's inability, in the face of the debt crisis, to continue providing the economic enticements of populism. Neoliberal programs of trade opening, wage suppression, privatization of state enterprises, and encouragement of foreign investment also contributed to the erosion of party support among the industrial and farm unions. "It can be said that the PRI appears to have abandoned not only its original project, its ideology and its discourse, but also its bases [of support]." Several scholars have identified a general decline of corporatism in Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. But within this general decline, there was a relative advance in the importance of the popular sector. This advance did not come from the middle class elements of the CNOP, such as the teachers and bank employees, but rather from "lumpen" elements like the vendors. In spite of the disjointed and self-contradictory nature of the PRI's popular sector, through the ambulantes (as well as other groups in a similarly tenuous legal situation, like squatters and pepenadores) the CNOP provided the party with an important weapon in its effort to win back Mexico City. In the words of one party official, the popular sector had become the "spinal column" of the party. Policy implications City officials who participated in the 1993/94 plaza construction program recognized even as the program was underway that it was only a temporary solution. One planner stated frankly that street vending is "a permanent, historic and recurrent. phenomenon... rooted in the culture... The solution has always consisted of two things: one, construction of plazas and two, regulation. It's been a totally cyclical phenomenon, but the time frame has become increasingly shorter" as the city has grown.

As for a permanent resolution of the conflict over street vending, the most obvious solutions are also the most difficult to implement. First, the Mexican economy needs to provide more job opportunities in formal settings with attractive wages. Jorge Mendoza's survey of Mexico City vendors indicated that while social and cultural factors contributed significantly to the individuals' decision to become street vendors, economic factors were even more important. "Street traders would be more prone to leave their current job if an adequate' salary were offered." While many vendors would not be likely to leave the street under any circumstances, either due to personal preference or inelegibility for formal work, an improvement in the Mexican economy's job generation capacity would certainly reduce pressure on city streets.

A second "structural" recommendation for resolving the street vendor conflict would be to break up the system of political clientelism that characterizes relations between the vendor organizations and city authorities. Now that the large vendor organizations have been created they have become an entrenched element in city (and national) politics. Of course, the regime of clientelism and corruption rests on the undefined legal status of the vendors. Clearly delineating the legal parameters under which the vendors operate would eliminate the vendors' dependence on political patrons for protection. It would also help diminish the exploitation of rank and file vendors, both by city officials and by their own leaders. In the past, interested city officials and PRI politicians have thwarted efforts to establish a transparent regulatory structure, and this resistance would have to be overcome if progress is to be made. A solution to the economic problems that power the war of the sidewalks lies outside the analytical scope of this paper. The political issues, however, all lead directly to the same central problem, which is one of political culture. Columnist Andrew Reding has written that Mexico's recent economic problems have less to do with currency markets than with the system of presidentialism in the country. To paraphrase Reding ("It isn't the peso. It's the presidency,"), it's not the peddlers, it's the political culture. Clientelism, corruption, lack of rule of law, lack of accountability, lack of transparency in public functions -- all of the elements that lie at the heart of the street vendor conflict are the same elements of democracy that are missing in Mexico. On this count the story of the vendors offers some cause for cautious hope. The current head of the ALDF committee that deals with street vendors, who is a member of the PRD, claimed that the corporativization of the vendors is doomed to disappear because political culture is indeed changing. "The consciousness of the people is changing. They are fed up. People are tired of being manipulated... We are now engaged in this struggle."