Meet the Mercaditas Fighting for Fairness in Mexico

In a garden in the Metropolitan Autonomous University at Iztapalapa (UAM), one of Mexico City’s universities, Fernanda Meneses sells crochet sunflowers and tulips. A few steps away, Teresa Bernal sells vegan coffee and pastries. On the other side of Mexico City, beside a subway station, Alesh Flores sells secondhand glasses, Plumita displays punk necklaces, and Elizabeth Torres Barranco delivers secondhand clothes to customers who bought them online.

These street vendors, who call themselves tiangui sellers (street marketers), bazareñas, or mercaditas, are mostly women and nonbinary people. They fill their tiny street shops with drapes, small tables, or suitcases and display their secondhand or handmade products without official permission from local authorities.

In 2021, the National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relations found more than 16% of girls and women over the age of 15 had experienced economic, patrimonial, or labor violence in Mexico City in 2020, while 20.8% were victims of workplace violence and 9.8% received less than pay their colleagues doing the same job.

As Carla Carpio, sociologist and investigator in the gender research center at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), explains, mercaditas aren’t interested in getting approval from the government for street vending because they’ve experienced so much discrimination and exploitation.

“The mercaditas’ protest is uncomfortable [for institutions] because it questions the patriarchal and neoliberal system,” Carpio explains. “With their activity, these women prove they can be free. … As mercaditas, they run their own business independently. No family members administer their wages and they collaborate among women.”

Typically, street vendors are charged 13 pesos per day or 390 pesos per month ($23) if their stand takes up less than 1.2 meter (or 3.94 feet) of space, and between 1,140 and 2,220 pesos per month if they’re operating a daily stand. But for mercaditas, informal sales are a form of mutual support, a protest against gender-based economic violence, and a network of solidarity.

From the University to the Streets

At the onset of the pandemic, a group of tiangui sellers started Mercadita Vassincelos, a self-managed market at Mexico City’s Buenavista Metro station. Flores, a 25-year-old student who sells secondhand clothes and glasses, says the market was created to make a “safe, separatist, and dissident point” that “formal jobs do not respect women and nonbinary people’s rights.”

Street selling is a risky activity in Mexico City, especially for women and nonbinary people. Beyond the potential for exploitation, several mercaditas told YES! they have experienced physical and verbal aggression from potential customers. However, these sellers have banded together to create solidarity networks that allow them to work safely. 

“In 2023, after the sexual assault on a student, dozens of university street sellers organized months of protests and strikes,” says María Azucena Feregrino Basurto, a postdoctoral fellow in social studies at UAM. “Thanks to these protests, the university authorities accepted street sale activities in the garden as long as it is done only by students.”

Now, street vendors at UAM typically sell goods on weekdays and they are able to manage themselves. “At the beginning, to feel safer, a group of our colleagues was in charge of the surveillance, but now we do not need it anymore,” says Meneses, an economics student at UAM who sells stationery and crocheted homemade flowers. “There is extensive communication between us; we support each other.”

Bernal agrees, adding that selling at UAM has been essential to ensuring her safety. “Selling here is fundamental for us because carrying out the activity outside the university means a waste of studying time and puts us in danger, since attacks on street vendors are a very widespread phenomenon,” she says.

UAM street sellers organize through Facebook groups, some of which have more than 5,000 members. “I sell biscuits and sweets with a friend,” says Perla Lima, a biology student at UAM. “When I’m attending a lesson, she is in charge of selling, and I do the same for her.” Lima has been a street vendor since she was 8, selling goods to help her family. Now, as a student, she is able to afford her meals, some bills, and the transportation needed to travel to and from her college every day.

This commitment to fighting against repression is a hallmark of the mercaditas’ movement. “The mercaditas’ objective intersects moral and ethics through the reappropriation of public space and an explicit breaking of the stigma linked to informal jobs,” explains Basurto. “All those factors are combined with feminism and creation of solidarity networks.”

For Teresa Bernal, a 22-year-old UAM student majoring in Spanish literature, community is essential to her ability to sell goods. “I prepare everything that’s needed for my vegan café the previous evening, then I get up at 5 a.m.,” she says. “It takes me 45 minutes to arrive at the university and set up my stand. I have to do this with the help of my friend because I have a physical disability, and then I have to get to class on time.”

Ana Patricia Serrano Herrera, a literature student at UAM, sells K-Pop products, including photos, stickers, and posters. “I live with some roommates, and I pay 2,200 pesos per month [around $130],” she says. “My family helps me, but they cannot afford all the expenses. I don’t earn a lot with my business, but it’s a flexible job, which gives me time to study and follow the lessons.”

Collective Prosperity

Outside of UAM, street sellers work in different universities, the metro station, and public squares, and they are informally organized. In Mexico City, there are five collectives with between 30 and 40 women and nonbinary sellers. These collectives go beyond organizing sellers around safety.

“In some cases, the groups of mercaditas not only deal with selling, but organize workshops and training courses on reproductive health, solidarity economy, self-handling,” explains Carpio. “On certain occasions they organize events, photographic or artistic exhibitions. The bazaars become places with a cultural and political [purpose].”

Many of these sellers dream of opening a shop of their own. For Plumita, selling handmade punk collars and feather earrings is crucial to caring for her three children. “My income goes from a minimum of 1,500 to a maximum of 10,000 pesos per day [$89 to $596],” she says. “My dream would be to have my own shop where I’ll be free and not exploited or discriminated against.”

Elizabeth Torres Barranco, an anthropology student, sells secondhand clothes online, in the neighborhood she lives on the outskirts of Mexico City, and at the Chabacano metro station, a famous delivery point for online sellers.

Torres dreams of converting her experience as a bazareña into a thesis for her anthropology degree thesis. She wants to share the stories of women like her, who use street sales to create bridges of solidarity, balance care work, and fight economic violence.

Some of the mercaditas hope that organizing through collectives will make street selling more appealing to women and nonbinary people in Mexico City looking to earn income for themselves. “For me, selling here is liberating,” Torres says. “We are organized; we have a group on social media with [more than] 4,000 participants. I feel safe here, and I have also made some friends. That’s the reason why I would like to involve more women in this type of work. I feel that our actions have a strong feminist component because we collaborate and show solidarity among women sellers.”