This past September 14, a driz- zly Thursday pre- ceding Mexico's September 15-16 independence cel- ebration, a few hundred angry-looking pepe- nadores-garbage pickers who scavenge the huge dumps around Mexico City-came to the city's center to begin a three-day occupa- tion of the front steps of the Federal District's Legislative Assembly building. Shouting slogans of soli- darity and defiance, and singing spirited songs celebrating rebellious Mexicans, they began perhaps the thirtieth occupation of the year of those prominent steps. As one of their leaders, an imposing-looking man in a baseball cap, encouraged them through a bullhorn, they hung up two large banners denouncing endors on Juirez Avenue in downtown Mexico City. They were ea in January the city for not complying with its promise to construct public housing near the dump sites. They arrived just before Mexico City's riot police barricaded a ten square-block area around the build- ing. Trucking in their own rudimen- tary cooking equipment, along with two port-a-johns, the garbage pick- ers threatened to stay just long enough to disrupt Saturday's sched- uled "State of the City" address by the city's appointed mayor, Oscar Espinosa Villareal. On Friday, the second day of the occupation of the Assembly steps, a truckload of tor- tillas and a band of nortefia musi- cians were allowed through the bar- ricades to feed and entertain the garbage pickers. Throughout Friday, observers were impressed by how gently the police were han- dling the occu- piers of the Ass- embly steps. That same day, a number of other groups ar- rived on the scene to add their voic- es to the denunciations of the city and federal governments, both dom- inated by the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). They found their way barred, however, by the police barricades. These groups included the dismissed bus drivers of the dissolved municipal bus line, Ruta 100; a militant housing- focused neighborhood organization called the Assembly of Barrios; and an ad-hoc collection of street ven- dors protesting their eviction from the most popular streets of down- town Mexico City. By early Saturday morning, the various outside-the-barricades sit- ins and demonstrations had merged into a loosely organized rally of sev- eral thousand people in front of the 0 U 0 0 u NAC0LA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Fred Rosen is an editor on leave from NACLA. He is working for the Mexico City newspaper, El Financiero International. 10UPDATE / MEXICO city's well-manicured central park, the Alameda. The Alameda demon- stration was small by Mexico City standards, but in this period of eco- nomic crisis, it was angry, threaten- ing, and very anti-Espinosa in tone. It was the Mayor, after all, who had fired the drivers, enforced the ban against the vendors, and dragged his feet on the construction of housing for the poor. Beyond that, as a para- digmatic corrupt and careerist PRI functionary, most likely taking orders from some of the powerful figures held responsible for the country's severe depression, Espinosa was an easy target for the crowd's frustration and anger. As the anti-Espinosa demon- stration outside the police barri- cades grew in size and volubility, the pepenadores were heating tortillas and amiably mingling with the police. By midday, as they began taking up positions around the entire front of the building, their real mission became clear. They were there not to protest, but to protect the building-and' the Mayor's address-from the menacing demonstrators at the Alameda. Had the Alameda group attempted to break through the police barri- cades, the occupiers of the front steps would have been there as a second line of defense. The garbage pickers, in short, had been brought in as "shock troops" for the PRI. In Mexico City, things are seldom as they seem. The genius of the long-ruling PRI has been its ability to organize groups like the garbage pickers, dole out benefits to them, and incorporate them-albeit in a subordinate role-into the ruling structure. The country's worst eco- nomic depression in 60 years, known here simply as "The Crisis," has, however, made this task some- what more difficult. Some of the protesters outside the barricades had their own ambiguous links to the PRI. The street vendors were a heavily priista group, incensed over the shrinking down- town territory in which they were allowed to sell. The dismissed bus drivers of Ruta 100, despite their radical commitments-they have openly supported the Zapatistas in Chiapas-were not long ago mili- tant priistas themselves, and allegedly played the same "shock- troop" role for former mayor Manuel Camacho. When Camacho left the city government in 1993, opening a rift that culminated with his departure from the party in late 1995, Ruta 100 lost its protection, The genius of the PRI has been its ability to incorporate different groul into the ruling structure. The current economic depression has made that task more difficult. and ultimately its existence in a restructuring of the city bus system linked both to privatization and the settling of scores. Now the bus dri- vers were unemployed and on the wrong side of the barricades. Only the neighborhood activists had no evident ties to the PRI. They were either independent, or linked to the center-left opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). "What we see on both sides of the barricades," said a neighborhood activist who gave her name as Filomena, "are groups of the poor, organized for their survival. The pepenadores are desperate just like us. They are our enemies today, but everybody is here for the same rea- son, to survive." Over the long term, all of these groups have been engaged in a struggle to live, to work, and to earn a living. This has frequently forced them to invent and enlarge social, political and economic structures outside the country's formal institu- tions. While the world's attention has been transfixed by events involving Mexicans at the top, the structure of the country's ruling institutions can perhaps best be understood by looking at the strug- gle for this contested space at the bottom. "At the top," said Filomena, "the party could be replaced without a real change in the way we live. The real powers-the rich, the army, the transnational cor- porations, the United States-would continue to rule. At the bottom, the real struggle for the nation is tak- pS ing place, in the form of the creation of an autonomous civil society." his struggle is by no means limited to the politically active. To survive the Crisis, Mexicans are flocking to the cheaper street economy, both as buy- ers and sellers. Long-term vendors are facing growing compe- tition. "The number of vendors is way up," says one vendor. "Where before there were a hundred, now you see a thousand. They say there are now 200,000 in the city." Just as the politics of sit-ins is intricately tied into the country's party system, the logistics of selling-or even begging--on the street can likewise be highly structured, and dominated by the PRI. These local "informal" institutions of economic and social survival are increasingly being fought over by groups in what is loosely called "civil society." In the months leading up to this past Christmas, there were frequent clashes in Mexico City's Historic Center between riot police and street vendors. After a year of mea- ger sales, the vendors saw Christmas as a chance to recoup Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 199611 Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1996 11UPDATE / MEXICO some earnings. The clashes were sometimes spontaneous, as vendors resisted being banned from their tra- ditional-and not-so-traditional-- street corners. Others were out- breaks from formally organized sit- ins and street occupations. Three years ago, the Mexico City government, at the urging of the administration of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, passed a city ordinance which prohibited street vendors from operating in several crucial square blocks of the city's center. Since then, vendor mobilization has been constant, and in the year of the Crisis, it has become desperate and increasingly disorderly. On December 7, police attacked a demonstration that had turned into a market, not because they objected to the street occupa- tion, but because selling on that par- ticular street corner (in front of the Legislative Assembly building) was illegal. Several people, including a few passersby, were injured. Occupations of city space-fes- tive or grueling, depending on the site, the amenities trucked in, and the weather-are so common in the city's Historic Center that for the most part they go almost unnoticed except by those who take part and, if well-organized, by those against whom they are directed. The street sellers' actions attracted public attention, at least in Mexico City, because they highlighted a sector of the country's faltering economy toward which many people-one way or another-see themselves heading. Following the December 7 street fracas, city authorities backed down and allowed 1,200 PRI-affili- ated vendors to sell in the city cen- ter-mostly around the central plaza, the "Z6calo"-from Dec- ember 12 to January 6, Mexico's traditional Christmas season. Vendor negotiators, the traditional priista "leaders," were unable to control the situation, however, and on December 12, more than 10,000 vendors took over the streets around the Z6calo. "It would be unfair to allow only a few vendors to sell their wares," said Guillermina Rico, the most powerful of the priista leaders, making the best of an uncomfort- able situation. Rico's group of sell- ers was allotted nearly a third of the 1,200 official permits, but as a savvy street politician, she immedi- ately positioned herself as the pro- tector of the unorganized, and ended up representing-protecting and collecting tribute from-a good proportion of the politically unaffil- iated. Authorities said they would not- force the unlicensed vendors to move, but that they would evict them, using riot police, from the Historic Center if they remained after January 6. The vendors accept- ed the deal. here are now a number of vendor organizations--called "bandos" in Mexico City- that are not affiliated with the PRI. Most of them date from the post-earth- quake flowering of civic The P institutions in the late social 1980s. They tend to be organized as independent get c groups of mobile street sellers, working in the same place, or selling similar goods. Cirilo Robledo, the leader of a bando called the Civic Association of the Artisans of the Historic Center, says his group came together in 1988 in an attempt simply to be indepen- dent. "The PRI put conditions on our membership-going to rallies, demonstrations, all that," he says. "We have some contacts with the PRD, but they are loose and distant. When we have rallies, it's to pres- sure the authorities [for our own purposes], not to support one of their candidates." These non-affiliated bandos, however, are not out of the reach of the PRI. "The city is making money, even here [in this indepen- dent space]," says Robledo. "The inspectors come around and charge for space, for cleaning, for protec- tion. We don't charge the same quo- tas as the PRI, but our vendors still pay." Those who don't belong to a bando, and who have no official permission to sell in a particular place are called "toreros"-bull- fighters-for the way they provoke and dodge the authorities. "We keep our distance from the authorities here," says Berta Rodriguez, one of the toreros on the Z6calo. "Most people on the Z6calo, even the beg- gars, receive permission and pay a quota, but then all the middle people take a cut. The leaders get permis- sion, credentials from the PRI. I worked with Guillermina Rico, sell- ing shoes and sandals that I bought, but I quit because I didn't like the politics." Although Rodriguez, a leather- and-cloth craftswoman, is constant- RI takes over the space for participation, and people onverted from activists to petitioners. ly on the lookout for the police, she says she is happy to be free of the obligations of the official bandos. "The first obligation is money, and then politics," Rodriguez confides. "Guillermina [the priista leader] manages and manipulates very well. If I want a space with her, she will sell it. She has an understand- ing with the authorities, and takes care of things. You pay a weekly quota of 30-50 pesos-more in the best areas. Then, when a candidate or an official shows up, you are given a green smock that identifies you, you go to the rally, and you 12NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE / MEXICO Street vendors protesting attempts to reduce their selling space clash with riot police in Mexico City in September; 1995. cheer and applaud. 'The greens are here,' they say, and send us to a cor- ner of the crowd. They also call us 'sheep.' That's what Guillermina does for the PRI-besides passing on our quotas to the party after she takes her cut. If you don't accept that, you're out of the bando, you can't sell; you have problems. If you don't belong to an official bando, you pay more to inspectors; you suffer more on the streets; you have less protection. But I got tired. I didn't want to be a sheep any- more." At the center of all this is the world's longest continuous- ly ruling party, the PRI, in power since 1929, and hegemonic since the country's revered presi- dent, Lizaro Cirdenas, established its corporate structure in the mid- 1930s. Recognizing the "informal" nature of urban life in a poor coun- try, Cdrdenas made the "popular organizations" one of the four pil- lars-along with organized labor, the organized peasantry and the mil- itary-of the party. The military, unlike the other three sectors, was never formally incorporated into the PRI, but has remained a crucial base of support. The "popular" wing of the PRI was originally organized as a feder- ation of public employees, but expanded into the National Congress of Popular Organizations (CNOP) in 1946. It was charged with bringing a wide variety of peo- ple, including the street vendors and garbage pickers, and groups as disparate as taxi drivers, tenants, homeowners, beggars, the home- less, and the disabled, into the ambit of the ruling party. The party would protect and defend their interests, and they would pay their dues, vote the right way, get others to vote the right way, and help keep the party in power. In 1993, the Salinas administra- tion, in an attempted intra-party coup, tried to bypass the local lead- ers and power brokers and to install in their place "technocratic" lead- ers-loyal only to the "moderniz- ing," neoliberal projects of the cen- tral government. Mid-level "politi- cal" leaders correctly perceived the threat to their power, resisted the move, and prevailed. The name of the organization was changed to the National Front of Organizations and Citizens (FNOC), but its corpo- rate structure remained essentially unaltered. It is the FNOC to which the pri- ista leaders of the street vendors and the pepenadores belong, and from which they derive their power. The FNOC, in turn, has links to virtually all of Mexico's municipal governments, mediating the needs of local government and the needs of the various non-union "popular" sectors like the street vendors. The structure is now facing mul- tiple challenges, the most vigorous of which have come from the inde- pendent urban popular movements, like the Assembly of Barrios. But "organizing in this PRI-dominated country is a constant challenge," says Francisco Saucedo, a former PRD federal deputy and one of the founders of the militant coalition of neighborhood groups. "A lot of our work has been institutionalized, officialized, incorporated and verti- calized by the party. The PRI learns from us, and makes our programs theirs. The space for social partici- pation gets taken over, and people are converted from activists into petitioners. The Mexican state cor- rupts these struggles. We want to democratize them." Shortly after midnight, in the early hours of Sunday, January 7, the semi-permanent metallic struc- tures used by street vendors in the contested city center were pulled or chopped down by city officials. The action met with little or no resis- tance. Even the most powerful of the vendors' leaders had their places destroyed. Guillermina Rico attempted to call the FNOC and city offices to stop the destruction of her vendors' stands, but, at three in the morning, no one answered the phones. A spokesperson for the city, Jesus Davila Narro, said the early-morning operation showed "the willingness of all parties to comply with the accords," and "live in a society of consensus." Throughout the morning, the streets continued to empty, and the system renewed itself.
