So far, there is no way out of the stalemate. The city counters that vendors need the capacitation classes to run the stands. Vendor Rodolfo Aguilera says he wants the government to pool the money it would give in stipends to create permanent stands near the platforms. Vendors caught selling have their wares confiscated and even face short-term detention in what the city uses as a drunk tank. The city has added at hundreds of new auxiliary police to patrol the platforms and cars. Since the fare hike, the transit system not only had a full-on confrontation with vendors, last week it had to close about half the stations on its newest Line 12 because of design flaws. Officials promised the additional money would provide more trains, faster service and better security, including kicking out the vendors. The polls were taken around a controversial fare hike from 3 to 5 pesos, (from about 22 to 38 cents,) which took effect in December.
He pointed to recent polls commissioned by the transit authority in which riders list the vendors as one of their top three annoyances in using the system. "The Metro is a means of transport, not a place for selling," said one transit official who wasn't authorized to speak by name about the confrontation. It boils down to an economic struggle seen in many venues as recent administrations have tried to tame the chaotic city, home to 8 million residents but some 20 million in the greater metropolitan area.īecause the majority of Mexicans work in the informal economy, cleaning up public areas inevitably puts some out of work.īut authorities insist that selling on the subway is inappropriate. But in a quintessential combination that makes Mexico City, people who need jobs create their own, and authorities unevenly enforce the laws. Vendors have always been banned from selling in the subway. "They're offering us locations where there are no people, places other merchants have abandoned because there are no people," said Juan Jose Hernandez Diaz, who has been selling on the Metro for 25 years.
"It was horrible, people coming in and bothering people." "It's the way it's supposed to be," said Jaime Lemus, a rider from Mexico City. As of Wednesday they were banned on all 12 lines and 162 stations. Authorities of the Collective Transportation System started in December kicking vendors off some cars.
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. 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. MEXICO CITY (AP) - 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.
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