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Street Vending in Los Angeles

A Cultural Economic Innovation

In front of the hundred-year-old abandoned Jewish synagogue in Boyle Heights, an array of about eighty street vendors from México and Central America are reviving this urban landscape with elaborate food stands where they sell food from their country of origin.1 On selected nights, local immigrants and foodies can enjoy authentic food from Latin America such as tamales and pozole from México and pupusas from El Salvador and Guatemala. Some also sell American junk food such as hot dogs, hamburgers, and chips. This snapshot captures the ongoing historical demographic transformation of Boyle Heights, a community wedged between downtown Los Angeles’s iconic buildings, with factories for nineteenth-century immigrants on one side and the storied neighborhood of East Los Angeles on the other.2 But before the synagogue, East Los Angeles was the home and property of a few wealthy Mexican families in the nineteenth century, most of whom lost the majority of their land along with their political and economic power after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848. Since its foundation in 1781, East Los Angeles has been a predominately Mexican community, when California was still Mexican territory.3

According to historian Ricardo Romo, there was relatively little social and economic change from its foundation up to the U.S. conquest in 1848. A year later, as a result of the Gold Rush in 1849, Anglos, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Germans, and African Americans made Los Angeles their new home, while Mexicans became a disenfranchised minority. In the early twentieth century the Los Angeles population grew exponentially, and by 1930 it was already a large metropolis.4 However, low wages and poor living conditions dissuaded Anglos from settling in this barrio.5 These same factors attracted new immigrants from México and former Mexican agricultural workers who did not return to México during their off-season in the winter. By 1929, East Los Angeles had already gained national fame as the largest “Mexican barrio.”6 Meanwhile, the established Jewish population in Boyle Heights plummeted after World War II due to out-migration, leaving behind structural reminders of their time in Boyle Heights, such as stores, temples, and even street names.7 The fame of a “Mexican barrio” continues to this day—Latinx residents constitute 95 percent of the nearly 100,000 people in Boyle Heights. Yet East Los Angeles has remained a segregated Latinx community characterized by poor living conditions, with a median income of $35,000, high crime rates, low levels of education, and very few jobs. This is in part due to deindustrialization, White flight, and the influx of new immigrants from Latin America.8

As has been the case so often in American history, immigrants are playing a key role in reviving public life in many American cities. In Los Angeles, and in Boyle Heights in particular, street vendors are at the forefront of this trend. In 2008 cultural geographer Lorena Muñoz observed how sidewalk peddlers in immigrant neighborhoods utilize nostalgia for familiar foods and memory of place to construct what she called new “urban cultural landscapes.”9 Others, like historian Mike Davis, have credited vendors with transforming “dead urban spaces into convivial social places,” blending traditions from the mestizaje of the Spanish plaza and the Meso-American mercado.10 Sociologist Sharon Zukin credits street vendors with bringing authenticity and life to urban places through authentic cultural food.11

Boyle Heights, like other such neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles, features a large concentration of street vendors peddling traditional Latin American foods and other items. While many residents welcome these vendors for their products and convenience, others view them with resentment or hostility. Many academics see that these negative reactions reflect deep issues of culture and identity. In his 2004 study, activist and law professor Greg Kettles claimed that opponents of sidewalk vending reject the practice because “it signifies the rise of another culture that threatens the status of their own.”12 This analysis seems particularly applicable to a neighborhood like Boyle Heights that has experienced such a thorough ethnic transformation. Others, such as Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht, have seen culture clashes extend beyond ethnicity, claiming that the street vendors represent a “Third World imagery” at odds with the First World expectations of more affluent residents.13 Furthermore, as the specter of gentrification looms over Boyle Heights, street vendors are either romanticized as an aspect of exotic ethnic authenticity or demonized as an unacceptable vestige of a disreputable past.

Figure 2.1. Family making and selling huaraches.

Today, street vendors in the Los Angeles area navigate a complex terrain informed by a volatile political context. With the new pervasiveness of Latinx immigrant street vending, we see its embrace not only by Latinx immigrant consumers, but also by a variety of people seeking “authentic” food. Yet vendors—and immigrants and allies writ large—tread dangerously due to rampant xenophobia and hostility. Take the case of twenty-four-year-old Benjamin Ramirez, better known as the “elote man.” On July 16, 2017, Benjamin recorded and uploaded a video that depicts an Argentinean metal musician, Carlos Hakas, violently overthrowing Benjamin’s food cart in Hollywood.14 In less than a week, the original Facebook video went viral with over 3.5 million views. Gustavo Arellano, a famous columnist for the OC Weekly, opened his post with the following sentence: “It hasn’t even been a full day, yet seemingly every food lover, Southern Californian and Mexican in the United States knows about a video that depicted some loser violently overturning the food cart of Benjamin Ramirez in Hollywood.”15 As a testament to the presence of allies and solidarity with and for immigrants, though, the online community responded with positivism and support. A variety of GoFundMe pages opened up to raise money for Benjamin and his family, some raising up to $20,000. Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz created a cartoon that depicted a giant corn shooting from the sky straight toward Hakas, who runs in fear. The caption states, “The Corn Gods are not pleased when immigrants hurt immigrants.” Furthermore, social media commentators showered Benjamin with support. One YouTube commentator said, “If I saw this happening I’d run up and slap that mother fucker. Eloteros are always welcome in Hispanic neighborhoods.”

Benjamin is one example of the complex daily realities of street vendors in Los Angeles. While many residents, particularly recent arrivals and foodies of different nationalities, see food carts as a comforting familiarity offering authentic experiences, others, including Latinx community members, see the carts as part of a Latinx “invasion” and a cultural and linguistic reconquista.16 One of the most emblematic evocations of a reconquista through street vending gained national and international attention during the 2016 U.S. presidential election when Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group Latinos for Trump, equated taco trucks to Mexican culture. Gutierrez relied on cultural explanations to garner support for his candidate’s agenda. Gutierrez famously said on an MSNBC interview, “My culture is a very dominant culture, and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have a taco truck on every corner.” His call to action was actually in support of Trump’s plan to deport undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States. Gutierrez’s statement came a day after Trump delivered a campaign speech in Phoenix, Arizona, on August 13, 2016. In his speech, Trump singled out immigrants from México and warned them about their stay in this country. Trump announced that undocumented Mexicans were living in the United States on borrowed time, and if elected, he would “break the cycle of amnesty and illegal immigration.” This is a threat that his administration has promised to uphold, as we have seen with horrific results so far.

Figure 2.2. Family working together and the author in the field.

As an unintended consequence, the election of Trump in November 2016 motivated the city of Los Angeles, an immigrant sanctuary city, to decriminalize street vending in order to protect its most vulnerable and visible population from deportation.17 As early as December 2016, the Los Angeles Times printed an article with the following opening: “Here’s one small silver lining to the election of Donald Trump: It has forced Los Angeles City Council members to get moving on the long-stalled proposal to legalize and regulate street vending.” For decades, peddlers have been trying to legalize street vending in Los Angeles, “the only major American city where it is against the law to sell food and merchandise on the sidewalk.”18 The city council is expected to have a new street vending ordinance in place that offers street vendors an opportunity to apply and receive a street vending permit.19 Almost two years after Los Angeles decriminalized street vending, California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 946, a bill introduced by Senator Ricardo Lara that expanded the decriminalization of street vendors statewide.20

As much as street vending is a visible and familiar part of urban Latin America, my research found that in Los Angeles, it is by and large not a cultural transplant from México or Central America. Street vending is informed by cultural legacies from México, shaped by structural forces and constraints, and innovated by creative, working-class Mexican immigrants who are striving to make a living for themselves and their families in Los Angeles. My study aligns with a newer body of scholarship that shines attention on the role of human agency in the informal economy while acknowledging the importance of cultural and structural forces. This “actor-oriented perspective” acknowledges historical and macro-structural forces, but focuses analysis on human agency, culture, and social interaction in street vending in contemporary U.S. cities.21

Street Vending Here, There, and Everywhere

The Latinx street vendors in this study immigrated to a society where street vending was already an economic strategy for other ethnic groups in American cities such as New York and Los Angeles since the early nineteenth century.22 In New York, ethnic groups such as Jews, Italians, and Greeks once peddled their wares on the streets. Instead of the tacos and tamales of today’s sidewalk stands they sold oysters, hot corn, pickles, knishes, and sausages, and most recently kabobs. In fact, many travelers today would argue that no trip to the Big Apple is complete without eating a hot dog from a sidewalk vendor. Clearly, street vending is neither new nor unique to Latin American immigrant neighborhoods in North America.

In nineteenth-century Los Angeles, street vending was often done by Chinese men.23 Asian immigrants sold vegetables in Los Angeles and were opposed by middle-class Americans, civic authorities, and merchants. The local anti-vending sentiment against Chinese peddlers was fueled by a nationwide xenophobia that also produced a vast array of exclusionary anti-immigrant laws such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement, and the 1924 Immigration Act, which collectively established a system of racial quotas that excluded labor immigration from Asia.24 This anti-Asian sentiment at the federal level was felt at the local level as well. In Los Angeles, the first anti–street vending ordinance was passed in 1910, making it illegal for Chinese people to sell produce on the street.25

Street vending was not a popular economic strategy for Mexicans during the early twentieth century. Rather, Mexicans in particular were recruited to work in the Southwest in agriculture. The U.S. industrial expansion and the anti-Asian sentiment that developed in the United States during this time provided work opportunities for Mexican immigrants in agriculture, mining, and the construction and maintenance of the railroads.26 Instead of recruiting menial labor from Asia, U.S. employers turned to México as the new supplier of workers. In fact, U.S. capitalists fought arduously to prevent federal restrictions on immigration from México. Thus “when the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed … immigrants from México and other parts of Latin America were exempted.”27 These recruitment efforts continued from 1900 to 1929 as the United States aggressively recruited Mexican workers through U.S. enganchadores (labor recruiters) who sought to recruit Mexican workers to build the railroad line that was extending into the West.

In 1942 the United States once again recruited workers form México through the Bracero Program, a binational agreement between the United States and México.28 The program was initially intended to last only five years, but was extended several times, finally ending in 1964.29 The economic boom during World War II offered employment opportunities to Mexican immigrants. According to Kettles, street vending in the 1940s was less prevalent due to the new jobs available in the manufacturing sector.30

Three years later, and for the very first time, Mexican immigration was subject to numerical restrictions beginning in 1965. Despite these restrictions, networks had been established and there was a built-in demand for Mexican workers. On the one hand, agricultural growers were dependent on cheap labor from México, and on the other hand, U.S. citizens did not want to work in racialized immigrant jobs. The built-in demand, social networks, and new immigration restrictions on México resulted in an increase of undocumented Mexican workers.31 Although many undocumented immigrants were still able to find work, the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) enacted more stringent hiring restrictions for undocumented immigrants. This legislation was the result of an unprecedented compromise between the two sides of the immigration debate. On the one hand, the legislation increased the budget of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and imposed sanctions on employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers. On the other hand, it provided amnesty to 2.3 million undocumented Mexicans. IRCA started a new era of restricted immigration policies and the militarization of the U.S.-México border. Ultimately, the exclusion of formal sector employment gave rise to informal sector strategies.

In the 1970s and 1980s, street vendors became familiar sights in various Latinx immigrant-receiving neighborhoods in California, including Los Angeles, Huntington Park, San Gabriel, South Gate, and Pacoima. This time, Latinx immigrants were at the forefront of this economic activity.32 This reflected the immigration influx of undocumented immigrants from México and Central America, who had limited access to jobs and legal status. By 1991, there were an estimated six thousand street vendors in Los Angeles.33 In 1992 the majority (two-thirds) of the vendors were Mexican and the rest were Central American.34 Today, scholars estimate that there are over fifty thousand street vendors in Los Angeles, and as this study will show, many of them are children and teenagers.35 However, the diversity of street vending and vendors continues to grow. According to Los Angeles Times reporter Tiffany Hsu, African Americans are also turning to temporarily street vending amid the weak economy.36 In addition, Asian American “night markets” in Pasadena, Los Angeles, and Orange County have become very popular.37 As these night markets offer street vendors opportunities to sell a variety of Asian dishes in a designated vending location, it also provides authentic Asian food options to foodies.

Latinx street vendors have always experienced hostility in Los Angeles due to the city’s ordinance that prohibits sidewalk vending, but it likely has to do as much with the economic climate as it does with the cultural transformations the United States is currently experiencing. In their 2001 study, Nora Hamilton and Norma Stoltz Chinchilla noted an increased hostility toward Latinx vendors during the recession in the early 1990s. While I collected data, moreover, I also witnessed increased concerted hostility from the police and health departments in 2008 during the global economic crisis and the collapse of the U.S. housing market.

This type of hostility was evident to me from the first day I went to the streets of Los Angeles in search of street vending families to interview in 2008. On a sunny summer afternoon, I ventured to Olvera Street, an iconic Mexican cultural landmark, hoping to find street vendors for my study. I parked my car in one of the lots across Olvera Street. I took a deep breath and marveled at the history of this landmark known as “the birthplace of Los Angeles,” now reminiscent of an old Mexican marketplace. The music, architecture, colonial-style church, colorful walls, cloth awnings at storefronts that protected the various merchandise, and the abundant potted plants nicely positioned along the corridors, balconies, and stairways gave me a sense of traveling through time and space to an imagined quaint town in México. This was in fact the feeling this space was meant to evoke, since Christine Sterling, a privileged White woman, dedicated her life to turning Olvera Street into an “exotic,” “Spanish-Mexican romance” destination she had dreamt about since childhood.38 William D. Estrada states that since its foundation in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the theme for Olvera Street was an “‘old Mexico,’ pitting a timeless, homogeneous Spanish-Mexican culture against industrialization, immigration, urban decay and modernity itself.”39 This timeless, small-town feel is juxtaposed with the fast-paced traffic that runs through the two major arteries that encapsulate this narrow corridor.

As I made my way to Olvera Street, I immediately saw signs of street vendors. People ate corn on a stick, churros, hot dogs, and raspados. Only a street vendor could sell this kind of food, I thought. In my mind this added a layer of authenticity to a place where being Mexican or Latinx was safe and even celebrated. As I kept walking toward Olvera Street, my thoughts were interrupted by a big commotion, with women screaming and running. A Latina woman in her mid-forties wearing shorts, a plain T-shirt, and an apron walked away from Olvera Street screaming profanity in Spanish while she pushed an improvised homemade hot dog cart. In a loud voice she complained about the “pinches policías” (damn cops) while her young daughter silently followed her, rolling a large ice chest full of half-melted ice, sodas, water, and juice. On that day, the cops were not allowing vendors near this street. The young girl walked toward the parking lot where I had parked. She hid her ice chest behind the parked cars and later joined her mother and a group of female vendors who had also been pushed out of Olvera Street.

Suddenly, three other girls came out of hiding, joined their mothers, and tucked their merchandise away behind the parked cars. I walked toward the group and asked whether they were okay. What happened? I asked, expressing sympathy. Only one woman replied, “Pues aquí nomás trabajando y la policía que no nos deja.” (Well, we are here trying to work, but the police are not letting us.) The other women looked away, annoyed at my presence and my questions. While I did not take offense, I felt uncomfortable prying. The young girls seemed comfortable with the situation, as if this was not their first encounter with police altercations. They talked amongst themselves the way girls usually do during recess at school. When I mustered the courage to ask for an interview, they politely declined. Throughout my research, this was not the first time I was rejected. Gaining the trust of the families that I interviewed took time. The girls told me to go to the plaza and that I was sure to find someone to interview there. After three hours at the plaza, I conducted two interviews and then decided to leave. On my way out, I saw them again still trying to go back to the plaza to sell their bacon-wrapped hot dogs and drinks. “A intentarlo otra vez?” (Giving it another try?), I asked. “Pues sí, mija” (Well, yes, my dear), she replied with a tone of resignation. I left Olvera Street that day reflecting how the same people and culture can be celebrated, commodified, and systematically rejected in one place and time. This was a theme that I continued to see throughout my time in the field.