Evicted Informal Subway Vendors Make Noise at Mexico City Hall Times Leader
go to original March 20, 2014

A Mexico City subway vendor, known localy as "Vagonero" protests in Mexico City, dressed as a clown with a sign that reads ins Spanish "If you legalized marijuana, legalize informal work". (AP/Eduardo Verdugo)

MEXICO CITY — Boarding the Mexico City Metro once meant squeezing in with dozens of vendors hawking everything from anti-bacterial gel and Jolly Ranchers to a global CD selection. They hawked their wares with painfully loud speakers carried on their backs, sometimes alongside bizarre "street" performances: Shirtless, homeless men being walked on as they lay on a bed of broken glass; off-key singers so bad they ought to have been paid to stop.

It wasn't a subway ride. It was an adventure.

Now the system that ranks among the world's 10 largest, carrying more than 1.6 billion riders a year, is downright civilized by comparison since authorities started cracking down on the side show that was the Metro. Authorities of the Collective Transportation System started in December kicking vendors off some cars. As of Wednesday they were banned on all 12 lines and 162 stations.

"It's the way it's supposed to be," said Jaime Lemus, a rider from Mexico City. "It was horrible, people coming in and bothering people."

In response, several thousand informal vendors — no one has an exact count — have taken their loudspeakers to the streets and to city hall, marching to complain that the Mexico City government is removing their livelihood without providing an alternative.

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