Informal—Says Who? Policymakers’, Historians’, and Vendors’ Perspectives

Informality is at the center of discussions of Latin American urban economic, social, and political dynamics, and those of the global south more broadly. It usually comes with negative connotations, reflecting the double burden of precarity and clientelism. Historians, however, can offer a different perspective. Drawing on my book Vendors’ Capitalism: A Political Economy of Public Markets in Mexico City I explore how archival research and historical methods can shed light on the nature and challenges of informal urbanism. Despite being subject to regulations and paying fees and taxes, Mexico City’s market vendors can be considered as part of the informal economy because they operate small enterprises in which the business is generally indistinguishable from the family unit. At the same time, their enterprises are carried out in public spaces, be it market halls or city streets, and their ability to earn a living depends on constant negotiations with the authorities. This means that their politics also cannot be neatly separated from their economic lives. By examining episodes of urban transformation spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I uncover how vendors’ economic relations, in particular competition within their ranks, involved them in political practices that demarcated patterns of (individual and collective) social inclusion/exclusion, and established legitimate/illegitimate forms of claim-making over public spaces and resources. Historicizing these processes allows me to trace the creation of social differences and hierarchies between locatarios and ambulantes that underlie contemporary conceptions of informality.