Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City by Daniel M. Goldstein

8/20/2019 Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City by Daniel M. Goldstein

1/15

Security and Survival in the Informal City

Daniel M. Goldstein

OWNERS OF THE SIDEWALK


2/15

Owners of the Sidewalk


3/15

A series edited by Catherine Besteman and Daniel M. Goldstein

D u k e U

n i v e r s i t y P r e s s

D u r h a m a n

d L o n d o n


4/15

Own ersof theSidewalk

SecurityandSurvival

in theInformalCity

Daniel M. Goldstein


5/15

© Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States o America on acid- ree paper ∞

Designed by Natalic F. SmithTypeset in Quadraat by Westchester Publishing Services

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldstein, Daniel M., [date] author.

Owners o the sidewalk : security and survival in the inormal

city / Daniel M. Goldstein.

pages cm—(Global insecurities)

Includes bibliographical reerences and index.

---- (hardcover : alk. paper)

---- (pbk. : alk. paper)

---- (e-book)

. Street vendors—Political activity—Bolivia—Cochabamba.

. Markets—Government policy—Bolivia—Cochabamba.

. Inormal sector (Economics)—Political aspects—

Bolivia—Cochabamba. . Cochabamba (Bolivia)—History.

I. Title. II. Series: Global insecurities..

'.—dc

Cover art:

Photograph by the author.

Frontis: . Part o the Cancha, looking east. Photograph

by the author.


6/15

For my boys, Ben and Eli


7/15


8/15

Contents

Prologue, ix

Acknowledgments, xiii

1. The Fire, 1

2. Writing, Reality, Truth, 10

3. Don Rafo, 15

4. The Informal Economy, 18

5. Nacho, 25

6. The Bolivian Experiment, 33

7. Meet the Press, 42

8. The Colonial City:

Cochabamba, 1574–1900, 46

9. Conicts of Interest, 54

10. Decolonizing Ethnographic

Research, 58

11. A Visit to the Cancha, 64

12. The Informal State, 74

13. The Modern City:

Cochabamba, 1900–1953, 80

14. Market Space, Market Time, 87

15. Carnaval in the Cancha, 95

16. Security and Chaos, 102

17. The Informal City:

Cochabamba, 1953–2014, 108

18. Convenios, 117

19. Political Geography, 122

20. Fieldwork in a Flash, 131

21. Women’s Work, 139

22. Sovereignty and Security, 148

23. Resisting Privatization, 154

24. Don Silvio, 161

25. Character, 167

26. Exploitability, 175

27. Market Men, 182

28. Webs of Illegality, 190

29. Men in Black, 194

30. At Home in the Market, 200

31. Owners of the Sidewalk, 207

32. The Seminar, 214

33. March of the Ambulantes, 222

34. Complications, 230

35. The Archive and the System, 235

36. Goodbyes, 240

37. Insecurity and Informality, 246

Epilogue, 252

Notes, 257 References, 293

Index, 313


9/15


10/15

Prologue

Don Silvio and I sit across rom each other at a small wooden table in my

offi ce above the call center. The table, scarred with rings o Nescaé, has

one short leg and tilts when either o us leans in. Nacho sits in a chair to my

lef; Don Silvio’s associate, a dark unsmiling man whose name I didn’t catch,

sits to his right. Traffi c noise and the cries o vendors slip through the open

window overlooking Avenida Honduras. Diesel exhaust mixes with the smell

o toasting wheat and wafs up rom the sidewalk below.

The man across the table, Silvio Mamani, is the president o the trade ed-

eration representing the street vendors o Cochabamba. He wears a beaten

brown edora bearing the stains o many years selling juice on the streets o

the city. Beneath it his hair is receding and wiry, not straight, ull, and shiny

black like that o most Bolivians. It is a contrast to his ace, which is a carica-

ture o the classically Andean: rich brown skin, sharply angled brow, hooked

nose, protruding chin. Don Silvio speaks through clenched teeth, his lower

jaw deviating rom the line o his ace, as though it had once been broken

and never properly reset. He wears a blue denim shirt, black pleated pants,

and battered black hal-boots with a zipper down the side. Don Silvio walks

with a limp, dragging his bad leg behind him as he pushes his little juice cart

through the market. He looks like a man with deep damage, like a case o

ruit tossed rom the back o a delivery truck. But there must be iron in Don

Silvio as well or him to have attained the position he now holds.


11/15

x

I have invited Don Silvio here to my little offi ce to talk about the possibil-

ity o doing ethnographic research with his organization, the federación o

ambulant street vendors, or ambulantes. My work as a cultural anthropolo-

gist is based on establishing close, trusting relationships with the people

whose lives I study, to understand their perspectives and experiences. Ihope to discuss my research plan with Don Silvio, to get his blessing on the

project, and to ask or his help in meeting his constituents.

The ambulantes who sell in Cochabamba’s enormous outdoor market,

the Cancha, are notoriously reluctant to talk to outsiders (gure .). This

is not surprising. Ambulantes like Don Silvio can count themselves among

the poorest people in Bolivia, Latin America’s poorest country. The ambu-

lantes o Cochabamba’s sidewalks earn even less than the average Bolivian,

who brings home a meager a year. As street vendors, the ambulan-tes work in daily violation o municipal law, which prohibits selling on the

street. So they are constantly harassed—chased rom sidewalk to street cor-

ner by the police, insulted and abused by motorists and pedestrians, preyed

on by shoplifers and muggers, and threatened with violence by other ven-

dors who have established, legal venues. Yet with no better way to make a

living in Bolivia’s perpetually weak economy, they continue to work on the

streets. I the ambulantes are mistrustul and closed, they have good reason

to be.

I hope to study how market vendors survive amid the many perils they

ace on the city’s streets, through work in what is ofen called the “inor-

mal” economy—the underground system o buying and selling that par-

allels the offi cial economy. I am especially interested in the relationship

between inormality and illegality and with the ways in which inormality

and insecurity correlate in the marginal spaces o the Latin American city.

In a post-/ world obsessed with security and with controlling threats to

it, how do the urban poor, acing unrelenting insecurity, create and main-

tain personal saety and economic stability through inormality? What is

the relationship o the state to the inormal economy and to the people

whose livelihoods depend on it? What role does inormality play in the op-

erations o the state itsel ? These questions rame my research plan.

I explain to Don Silvio that I want to write a book about the lives o the

ambulantes, and he eyes me, calculating, across the rickety wooden table.

Don Silvio is no ool: he is a market vendor, a shrewd capitalist who un-

derstands the value o commodities, including inormation. He is also,


12/15

xi

without contradiction, a committed socialist who knows that struggles

or social justice are best accomplished through solidarity, a concern or the

common good, and the strategic deployment o collective resources. Don

Silvio knows that he can grant me access to the ambulantes, and he has

something to ask o me in return.Don Silvio leans in closer, causing the table to tilt in his direction, and

tells me his dream: to build a market or the ambulantes. His stony coun-

tenance sofens as he talks, his at black eyes kindled by an inner light.

The market will be the ambulantes’ to administer, he says, and stalls within

it will be distributed equitably to members o the ambulantes’ ederation.

“We will run the market ourselves,” Don Silvio says. “It will be our market.”

The market will have two stories—“It has to have two stories, carajo!”— with

cement oors and a good roo to block the punishing sun and the seasonaldownpours. The entrances and exits will be gated, to control access and to

ensure that any delinquent who wanders in will have a hard time getting

out again with stolen property. In that market, Don Silvio believes, the

ambulantes will be transormed rom roving street vendors, poor, dirty,

and despised, into citizens with rights, able to earn a decent, reliable living.

It will be like alchemy.

The other man, Don Silvio’s brooding associate, offers some context. He

says that Don Silvio and his colleagues in the ederation’s leadership have

only just begun talking about a market. For years they and their constituents

have been selling on the streets o Cochabamba, and a market o their own

has never seemed an idea worth entertaining. Too remote, too impossible.

But now they are getting organized. For the rst time, the ambulantes have

ormed their own ederation, with their own elected leaders. For the rst time

they are out rom under the control o the comerciantes de puesto jo, the ven-

dors with xed market stalls who are their direct competitors in the Cancha

but who historically have controlled the ederations to which they, the am-

bulantes, have always belonged. With their own ederation, and with Don

Silvio as their president, the ambulantes can set their own agenda. People

are beginning to think big. “A market o our own,” the brooding man says,

smiling now. “Just imagine!”

We are silent, Nacho and I and our visitors, all o us contemplating the

enormity o this antasy. I, or one, am skeptical. The likelihood o the am-

bulantes’ getting their own market is innitesimal. The costs would be too

high, the real estate too scarce, the political pressures against it too great


13/15

xii

or such a thing ever to come to pass. But in the aces o Don Silvio and his

compañero I can see the light o true believers. They clutch at this idea with

the erocity o men clinging to a lie raf, and they are not going to let go o

it easily.

“Bueno,” Don Silvio says to me, returning to the business at hand. “Howcan you help?”


14/15

Acknowledgments

The research on which this book is based began in and continued

through , the bulk o it conducted between June and August ,

although I continued to make six- to eight- week return visits during each o

the subsequent summers. For their assistance with this project, I thank Rose

Marie Achá, Eric Hinojosa, and Ruth Ordoñez, as well as the pseudonymous

Nacho Antezana. I am, o course, eternally grateul to the men and women

o the Cancha who allowed me to work with them and to write about their

lives. In particular, I am thankul or the collaboration o the men I call Don

Rao and Don Silvio, whose help and assistance, while not disinterested,

was undamental to the success o my project.

The material contained herein is based on work supported by the Na-

tional Science Foundation under Grant No. . Any opinions, nd-

ings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are

mine and do not necessarily reect the views o the National Science Foun-

dation. Portions o chapters , , and previously appeared in the ar-

ticle “Color-Coded Sovereignty and the Men in Black: Private Security in

a Bolivian Marketplace,” Conict and Society (). Some o the data rom

Chapter was also used in a chapter titled, “Aspiration: Dreaming o a

Public Policing in Bolivia,” in Ethnography of Policing, ed. Didier Fassin (Chi-

cago: University o Chicago Press, orthcoming).


15/15

xiv

I appreciate the collaboration and support o my colleagues at Rutgers

University and the Department o Anthropology. Thanks to riends, col-

leagues, and students who have read and commented on parts o this book,

especially Catherine Besteman, Asher Ghertner, Assa Harel, David McDer-

mott Hughes, and Ieva Jusionyte. In Bolivia, I extend my gratitude to Al-berto Rivera, Humberto Vargas, Kathryn Ledebur, Lee Cridland, and Carlos

and Anna Aliaga. I also thank the people who made it possible or me to pre-

sent portions o this work in progress, provided comments, and otherwise

supported me and my work on this project: Asad Ahmed, Carolina Alonso,

Philippe Bourbeau, Pamela Calla, Diane Davis, Tessa Diphoorn, Susana

Durão, Didier Fassin, Catarina Frois, Erella Grassiani, Carol Greenhouse,

Michael Herzeld, Rivke Jaffe, Gareth Jones, Don Kalb, Kees Koonings,

Mark Maguire, Sally Engle Merry, Martijn Oosterbaan, Wil Pansters, Den-nis Rodgers, Ton Salman, and Nils Zurawski. Gisela Fosado and the staff at

Duke University Press have been great to work with on all o my books. Bill

Nelson drew the maps, and Margie Towery provided the index. I thank my

cousin, Lisa Berg, who provided many o the photos in the book. I appreci-

ate the comments and eedback o the three anonymous reviewers, which

were very helpul in shaping the nal version o this text. Love to my amily

or all their support.

Documents

Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City by Daniel M. Goldstein