Why Mexico City’s Tepito ‘Exists Because It Resists’
For Over 100 Years, This Neighborhood and Its Black Market Have Thrived by Straddling the Underground and Official Worlds
In 2016, the leaders of several street vendor organizations from the Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito met with local officials with a request: They wanted the capital city’s new constitution to codify their right to sell in public spaces. Street vendors like them, they argued, were an essential sector of the urban economy. In exchange for their legalization, they offered to submit to regulation and taxation.
The image of vendors gathered around a table with officials is not one most would associate with Tepito, best known as Mexico City’s barrio bravo, …
