Mexico City (dpa) – Each day, a play is acted out on the intersections of Mexico City.
When the traffic light turns red, street merchants rush out and wind their way amid the stopped cars, trying to sell any and everything under the sun: candies, cigarettes, flowers, lottery tickets, and even man-sized crucifixes.
Others are dressed up like clowns and perform a brief sketch before asking for some money.
Still others among these “esquineros” – those who hang out on the street corners – will go washing a car windscreen, a service for two pesos.
While Mexico’s economy is growing at an annual pace of seven per cent, making it the leader among the Latin American nations, but 300,000 people have to scrape a living out on the streets.
By official estimates, for nearly 300,000 people, many of them children, the streets and squares of Mexico City are their place of employment. The state family welfare programme DIF estimates that the number of under-age street vendors in Mexico is 128,000, with nearly 15,000 of these in the capital.
Poverty is what drives many people in Mexico into the cities, where they try to find their fortune on the streets. For many people, the street is the only chance to earn money.
“Nobody wanted to give me a job when I lost my hand 40 years ago after a snake bit me while I was working in the fields,” says one such street vendor, Gerardo. Originally from Oaxaca, he has been selling undershirts on the capital city’s streets ever since.
Many of the “esquineros” prefer the street to other work places.
“I would not even earn the minimum wage in a factory or enough to support a family,” says Enrique. The 26-year-old has spent the past 16 years cleaning car windshields on the Avenido Mario Colin.
According to the daily paper Reforma, the street vendors earn between four and eight times the legal daily minimum wage of 37.90 pesos (4 dollars).
Another phenomenon are the many sales booths set up at intersections and at the entrances and exits of the underground trains. Many residents and shopkeepers are increasingly complaining about mobile sales teams which suddenly descend on a neighbourhood and block up the sidewalks. Authorities are also stymied.
“The many booths are a problem,” says Raul Enriquez Prado, press spokesman for the labour and social welfare department. “Above all there are too many in the historic city centre where setting up stalls is actually prohibited.
“But when they are told to leave, they do so but then return a short while later again. They are leading us around by the nose, and they are very mobile. One week they are here, another week somewhere else,” Prado says.
On the other hand, the street vendors help out the city’s budget. Depending on the location, they must pay five to 15 pesos per day for their booth. Even though many are not registered, the city this year has taken in some 20 million pesos in such fees so far this year.
And other city authorities also can benefit from the jugglers, fire-eaters, and windshield cleaners: namely traffic police, who are known to bolster their meagre salaries by taking in a small “mordida” or bribe, in return for which they will hold up traffic a little longer at the intersections.
This does not deter the street vendors. Many got started early in life and they feel a deep attachment to their work out on the pavement.
“I am never going to leave the street. This is my life here and I am going to remain here until I die,” says Eleazar, the son of undershirt salesman Gerardo.
