The Mexico City Reader

Ambulantes

210 Ambulantes Street Vendors I (1995–2001)   The streets of downtown Mexico City—and their chaotic jumble of people from all walks of life—provide the setting for most of Francis Alÿs’s performance pieces. Ambulantes (1995–2001) focuses on the hurdles faced by those whose livelihood depends on their ability to walk the streets: the thousands of street vendors who peddle everything from miraculous ointments to pirated computer programs. They are known as ambulantes, a term derived from the Spanish verb ambular, to wander. Like their name implies, they wander the streets, pushing their carts until they find an appropriate spot to set up shop for the day. Most of the vendors are unlicensed, unregistered, and uninclined to pay taxes. They form the backbone of Mexico’s “informal economy,” and they are one of the most visible signs of the city’s life (there are no street vendors in generic cities). This kind of wandering street work provides a means of subsistence for several million Mexicans—an impressive feat, especially in times of recession and rampant unemployment. Ambulantes 211 Alÿs’s Ambulantes depicts the variety of ways in which street vendors make a living: there are those who sell food on the streets (they push carts loaded with candies and vats for steaming tamales); others work as bricoleurs, picking and recycling garbage (several photos depict cartoneros—men who collect discarded paper and cardboard and sell it to paper mills); there is a plant vendor pushing half a dozen cacti through the streets, and a balloon vendor whose face and torso are obscured by her colorful wares. ...