Co-optation, Competition and Resistance: State and Street Vendors in Mexico City

Abstract:
This article examines the relationship between street vendors and the state in Mexico City in the early 1990s. As a result of neoliberal policies, an increasing number of people started to look for livelihoods in the informal economy. Faced by clampdowns and state offensives the street vendors started to organize themselves in order to defend their right of self-subsistence. City officials would agree to sporadic individual meetings with leaders of the established associations, influencing clientelist relations. In defending their rights to public space the vendors also used protests and sit-ins to promote their cause. While the associations tried to play the politicians against the competing associations, the politicians attempted to use competition between associations to weaken the cause of the vendors. However the article shows how competition between different associations in fact aided the vendors‟ cause by compelling the leaders to work hard for their associations, thereby creating more space for vendors. In order to increase the influence of their associations, the leaders allowed more vendors to enter the areas they controlled and join their associations.