Report: Street Vendors

When you think of Salinas, you usually think of the beach, sun, friends, a delicious bollo, a tasty cake or a well-served empanada. But… does anyone ever think about the people who sell these products? This report will allow us to analyze what life is like for street vendors in Salinas, how they manage to have economic stability when they are not in season. Before continuing, it is important to emphasize the meaning of a street vendor. According to the website “Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing” the term street vendor means “ an integral component of urban economies around the world. As distributors of affordable goods and services, these workers provide consumers with convenient and accessible retail options and form a vital part of the economic and social life of a city.”

Many times street vendors are looked down upon because of the prejudices that have been established about them, for example, it is believed that they are thieves and bad people, and for this reason people do not always approach them to buy something that they sell, when they do this they do not take into account that they are the main source of income for themselves. But the truth is that they are not bad people or ill-intentioned at all, obviously there are individuals of all kinds everywhere and in the area of ​​street vendors there are many people with good hearts. An example of this is Oscar Dario, he is a Colombian-Venezuelan, he is a husband and father of a family and he gets up every day at dawn to buy flour in the Libertad market to prepare and sell churros with chocolate or manjar and cotton candy, this is located on Chipipe beach in Salinas. He says he earns approximately $80 a week during the beach season, such as Carnival or New Year's Eve, but when it's not these times, he earns only $30 and even said, "I have to work from Monday to Monday, because as we are foreigners we have to work every day to pay for the room, rent, electricity, water."

But Oscar is not the only one like that. On the same beach, Chipipe, there is Manuel “El Salteño” Solano, he is a veteran resident of Santa Elena who goes out every day to sell empanadas salteñas to the entire beach. He has been doing the same for almost 40 years and there is no person more proud and happy than him. Manuel earns approximately 120 dollars when it is season but when it is not, he earns 4 times less, and how does he manage to survive? He saves everything, from water to sometimes trying not to turn on the lights for hours.

There are many more cases, such as Juan Andrés, who rents tents on the beach of Chipipe for 10 dollars. He normally earns 150 dollars during the season with a clientele of about 44 people, but in the months when there is less demand he rents about 4 or 5 tents. Also the artisan Stalin Choest, who has a family bakery and said “We have to survive waiting for the season.” Or if on the other hand we analyze what sales are like in a meat restaurant, Francisco Camacho, indicated that he has to cut staff when demand is not great, because he cannot pay everyone. On a good weekend he earns around 600 dollars but 200 dollars when he does not have the clientele that he normally would have.

To conclude, according to the newspaper El Comercio, the underemployed earn approximately USD 151.73 per month according to a study by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). This figure is quite similar to that of the street vendors mentioned above. The situation of the underemployed is not the easiest, so prejudices should be put aside, and reflection should be made so that next time things will be different.