Men, women and children walk the streets, avenues, dusty marginal areas, supermarkets, squares and vehicles offering different types of products, like packets of playing cards, fruit, vegetables, prepared food, clothes, music tapes, etc. We sell from door to door in residential areas, to pedestrians, housewives, office workers.

This journey is not easy. We have to start at three or four in the morning and continue until five or six in the afternoon. This is an endless routine.  

We are forced to do it every day of the year. On the days we don’t work, we don’t eat.  Furthermore, we have to carry the products on our hardened backs or shoulders, or in a wooden handcart or a rickety tricycle or wheelbarrow.

Meanwhile, there exists another group of informal vendors, who have been luckier and through negotiations by street vendor organisations’ management, they have persuaded the town municipalities to grant them a place on  pavements at the roadside, no bigger than two square metres each. These street vendors  start at five in the morning, and when the sun’s  light fades, they pack and store their goods in improvised warehouses overnight.  

The street vendors and informal vendors have to overcome many barriers. Many things are not within our reach. Life is a real odyssey. However, the reward for effort is a piece of bread for our family, especially for our children. We believe that just the struggle will change us and will improve our families’ life circumstances, so that we will be able to give our children a better education, and be able to prevent unhealthiness.  

Because these activities have no fixed timetable or time limits, they make us vulnerable to many abuses. The city police, the so-called security agents and health inspectors, amongst others, have ill-treated us with physical and psychological violence. The mestizos humiliate the indigenous people. Therefore, it is understandable that there exists a great deal of racism, delinquency, assaults, frauds, traffic accidents, etc.