Street scale authorities

The way management tasks are structured, especially by the local government, place the trader leaders as authorities at street level. The role of leaders and vendors was defined over time through the interaction of the authorities with the leaders. Over time, these interactions have formed a highly specific system of codes that defines the roles, tasks and limits that concern each of the actors of the management structure. In this part, I look at the leaders’ and vendors’ position, tasks and decisions they can make regarding the street and the market.

As mentioned before, once an area is given to the union, members can decide who can sell in the streets, the distribution and the allocation of spaces. This is an internal process and varies from one group to another. In fact, when two different unions occupy a street, it is frequent to find one side of the street more organised and clean than the other. The leaders can negotiate the use of some extra centimetres beyond the ‘working area’ with the authorities, which in some cases is accepted, but the permission is negotiated on a daily basis and depends on current circumstances. This shows that some aspects are clearly defined such as the ‘working areas’, but the system allows some room for manoeuvre to negotiate smaller concessions on a daily basis.

The physical appearance of the street market is particularly important for the municipality. The local government asks the unions to improve the organisation of the market in terms of garbage collection, the way goods are displayed, respect for the limits of the area, etc. Authorities pressure the leaders to pay particular attention to these

198 aspects; otherwise, they can take the areas away from the unions, or punish the group by preventing them from using the street for some days, which in reality rarely occurs.

The management tasks of the leaders sometimes overlap those of the municipality. For example, during the electric grid repair in Aztecas Street, the municipality asked the leaders of the ASVA to coordinate the work in the streets, which is a task that corresponds to the municipality. Thus, the leaders play a role as street managers, in some cases beyond the organisation of the vendors, in order to facilitate the tasks of the formal institutions as a kind of ‘favour’.

Each union organises meetings to discuss the markets’ issues, as major decisions require the agreement of most members so that they can be considered by the city government.

However, the leaders have the authority to make certain decisions on behalf of the members; for example, set the amount of the weekly fee collected directly by leaders. To legitimise their actions, they try to inform the members and make decisions by consulting them in their meetings; this is evidence of their political ability, not only to mediate with authorities, but also to mediate tensions and interests within the union. The leaders also organise social activities, such as parties and festivities, and ‘tandas’ (group saving pools), which is the unions’ system of savings that can be used to provide financial support to the vendors. They save a weekly amount of money, and when they need some money or after a certain amount of time, they receive their savings all at once. Street vendors don’t have social protection, so in case of an emergency they could find themselves in trouble. They have developed this kind of system as a way to promote savings and to have an alternative source of support in case of need.

Some of the leaderships are inherited and others emerge during times of political reorganisation. In the case of the ASVA, the leadership has been inherited from generation to generation. Tony gave her daughters this responsibility. At some point this was contested by other members of the union, but Tony’s daughters’ political power was already consolidated. In fact the leaders establish relations with city authorities and cliques; this requires time and personal investment. It is difficult for other members of the union, who only work as street vendors, to become leaders of the union. The main source of power of the leaders relies on their political connections, which ensures their position in the group. It is worth to consider that city administrations only last a six-year period in power, while the leaders remain in power for longer periods. The leaders are in a suitable position to be able to consolidate both the unions’ political power and the physical form of the street market over longer periods of time.

199 There are women and men leaders, and the role they play within the structure is not affected by their gender, they have equal control of their areas and face the street conflicts in Tepito in similar ways. However, gender is a variable, and the difficulties they may face and the relations they establish with other leaders and vendors are not the same. Women leaders have developed strong personalities through their daily experiences in the streets.

Leaders establish collaborative relations with neighbours as a strategy to minimise the negative effects of the market in the neighbourhood. They also use their political connections to work as intermediaries between residents and the local government. For example, the street market attracts thieves because clients bring cash to spend in the market. In Aztecas Street there is a public school and thieves used to get in through the windows and hide inside the school. The school principal complained to the ASVA leaders, who decided to collect money among the vendors to install metallic protections on the windows in order to prevent the thieves from getting in. The school administration and the ASVA were satisfied with the solution. The street vendors build relations with local groups, which can be considered an ability to manage conflict and create bonds with local actors in order to compensate them for their appropriation of the street and build legitimacy.

The distribution of the sitting places is organised by the unions. Space in Aztecas St. was allocated for the first time through an internal process. In the case of the ASVA, the leaders got the street corners, which are privileged places for commercial activities. The

‘original vendors’, who had been sitting in Aztecas St. for a long time, were also given good locations. Vendors considered that the process was fair to a certain extent, since the leaders had negotiated with the authorities and so they deserved better places. Allocation of space is a difficult task, space is highly contested and sitting places have different commercial potential. The fact that the unions themselves organise the allocation reduces the municipality’s political risks, but at the same time it decreases the authorities’ control of the street vendors’ distribution and practices on space.

Street vendors decide, independently, the kind of goods they distribute in the market.

Leaders do not interfere with the individual businesses, even if goods are illegal such as pirated copies of CDs. In some cases, problems within the vendors arise because one vendor may start selling a new product and doing good business, but later others may start selling the same thing. Then they are forced to establish a price and share the clients. In these cases, the leader helps to solve the conflict, which is not an easy task. The

200 leaders are frequently threatened; managing the situation requires a strong character and courage. Carmen, one of the leaders of the ASVA, explained that she was once threatened with a gun for a conflict like this; she was scared, but she had to act as if she was in complete control of the situation (interview held on 02/12/2010). Being a leader is not an easy role, it requires multiple abilities, strength and character to make others respect them. Leaders are given privileges; presumably they make money from collecting the vendors’ individual fees, but street vendors also recognise that not everyone can be a leader; they respect them for their courage.

At street level, the leaders’ role is critical in the functioning of the system; on one hand, to organise the group internally and, on the other, to establish political alliances with the city authorities and with different groups within the neighbourhood. The leaders are to a certain extent ‘urban caciques’, but at the same time they need to win the loyalty of the street vendors. Hence, they have to respond to the traders’ interests and needs. In fact, some of the important decisions are made through participatory processes, especially the allocation of spaces, which is one of the central interests of the street vendors. The places in the streets are allocated individually, and the street vendors have autonomy in the management of their stalls, the goods they sell and the commercial strategies they apply.

In summation, the market management structure is highly codified; tasks, roles and territories are clearly defined. The role of each actor and the limits to their autonomy are regulated by a set of local codes and mechanisms of enforcement. The way the integrated management structure is organised and the codes generated to regulate the market create different layers within the territory at street level. These layers are explored in the following part.