From the Field to the Cooking Pot: Economic Crisis and the Threat to Marketers in Peru

Abstract

In recent years the Peruvian government has faced two related and pressing problems: rising food prices and a proliferation of urban marketers and street vendors. The government's solution is to blame the latter for the inflation. This paper suggests that while it has served middle class interests to hold small marketers?among whom a majority are poor women?responsible for soaring food costs, closer examination shows that both high prices and the growth of petty commerce are responses to more fundamental economic problems of dependent capitalism in Peru. The Peruvian case may be understood in the more general context of the situation confronting many third world countries in which economic underdevelopment is accompanied by an expanding informal sector. Of course, there is much that can be said for the irrationality of the present marketing system in Peru?where 99 per cent of retail activity is in the hands of small, independent2 sellers (Esculies Larrabure et al. 1977:181)?and we may imagine a situation in which economic planning might result in far smoother distribution. Certainly, many marketers would be delighted to leave their market stalls and places in the streets were there employment alternatives open to them. But to expect the state in its present form to accomplish successful reform of the system through curtailing petty trade overlooks certain critical factors. First, it ignores the role ofthe Peruvian government itself in generating and perpetuating the current economic crisis and it never considers the broader international implications for Peru's food prices. Second, this view neglects some important features of the work of marketers within the present structure of underdevelop? ment in Peru; e.g., their capacity to keep down prices, their productive contribution to the process of bringing goods to consumers, and their selfsufficiency, which acts to offset the level of unemployment. If small-scale marketers provide essential services in Peru, and if petty commerce offers employment?however marginal?to members of society who might otherwise be unemployed, why then has the Peruvian government taken actions that appear to jeopardize the livelihood of marketers? Following some brief background to the current economic crisis in Peru, I discuss the relationship of small marketers to food prices, counterposing the government policy position with my own view. Developments in 1977 in the provincial city of Huaraz are then presented to illustrate how national policy directives from Lima resulted in tightening control of commerce at the local level. Finally, how national efforts to curtail marketing activity have become an important aspect of repressive government action is considered.