Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 38.2
Street traders in Mexico City
to solve unemployment problems in the Federal District
as well as making an important contribution to urban
economic life.
In July 1993, the Department of the Federal District
passed the enforcement order to clean up and regulate
commercial activity and to relocate street traders to the new
market areas. As well as representing a positive move to
appease the formal retailers, Mexico's imminent accession
to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) had become
an issue. Not only was street trading strongly associated
with crime, but the huge number of street traders in a much-
visited site in Mexico City was felt to be an embarrassment
for the Mexican government, which was concerned about
Mexico's image as a secondary member in NAFTA.
Understandably, however, street traders were unhappy
about the initiative, which meant disrupting links with regular
clientele and having to pay higher operating costs for a pitch
in one of the new markets. This opposition resulted in
demonstrations and marches to the presidential palace.
In light of the above, it is not surprising that a survey
conducted in 1995 indicated that there had only been
partial take-up of stalls in the new markets and that, aside
from an overall increase in ambulant vendors, many of the
street traders had just been displaced slightly outwards
from the Centro Histórico. Enforcing the order has been
limited by the costs of policing and the vigilance and
political links of street trader leaders with government
officials. A crucial element in the street traders'
de facto
victory has been their vital role in providing low-cost goods
during a time of declining incomes.
In recent years, Mexico City's authorities have attempted to
control and clean up street trading in the historic centre of
the capital and, more specifically, to relocate street traders
to purpose-built markets. This initiative has been motivated,
among other things, by the need to resolve traffic
congestion, to reduce fire and pollution hazards, and to
diminish threats to public hygiene and health, the latter
because many street traders operate outside government
regulations on health, safety and quality control. These
problems have intensified with the huge increase in street
trading during the years of debt crisis and structural
adjustment.
A major source of opposition to street trading
practices has come from formal sector retailers in the
centre of Mexico City, represented by the Mexican
Chamber of Commerce, CONCANACO. This group
claims that street traders block access to their own
enterprises and degrade the environment. On top of this,
Mexico City authorities are under pressure to protect the
'Centra Histórico'
, which they themselves designated as
a conservation zone in 1980, and which became a
UNESCO world heritage site in 1984.
In 1987, the Department of the Federal District
recommended the pedestrianisation of various streets in
the Centra Histórico to enhance the environment for
residents and tourists, and to relocate a number of street
traders to thirty-seven purpose-built markets in the
greater down-town area. The new market sites were
created to ensure that street trading became more
regulated and acceptable, and less visible. Their very
creation, however, also represents a tacit acceptance on
the part of the authorities that street trading was helping
Source:
Harrison and McVey 1997.
same token, the idea that the informal sector may
be an arena of 'accumulation', rather than
'subsistence' or 'last resort', differs from Hart's
analysis in that the sector is not seen as originating
from surplus labour supply but from excessive
regulations in the economy (Portes and Schauffler
1993: pp. 39-40).
The work of the Peruvian economist
Hernando de Soto has been critical in this shift in
perspective, with his key topic,
The Other Path,
championing the cause of the informal sector as 'a
grass-roots uprising against unjust and excessive
regulations' created by governments in the
interests of the society's powerful and dominant
groups (Bromley 1997: p. 127). In contexts in
which legal systems are designed to accord with
the interests of the economic elite, de Soto (1989)
challenges that illegality is the poor's only, and
justifiable, alternative. Thus, although the informal
sector is technically 'illegal', it is not criminally so
but is more to do with 'non-conformity' with
bureaucratic rules and regulations. Emphasising
the fundamental ways in which the existence of
the informal sector relieves unemployment,
provides a gainful alternative to crime, and
harnesses the entrepreneurial talent of the
disaffected masses, de Soto suggests that the
governments would be best advised to stimulate
and protect informal entrepreneurs and to grant
them greater freedom.
Although the work of de Soto was grounded
in the Peruvian experience, his policy
recommendations have appealed to both left and
right of the political spectrum and have been
taken up fairly roundly in a more general
development context (Chickering and Salahdine
1991b; Portés and Itzigsohn 1997). Indeed,
enthusiasm for deregulation has grown to such an
