Sandra C. Mendiola García. Street Democracy: Vendors, Violence, and Public Space in Late Twentieth-Century Mexico.

Abstract

Democracy, street vending, violence, and public space are well-addressed themes in the literature on twentieth-century Mexico. In addition to my own account (Diane E. Davis, Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century [1994]), among the best works in this regard are books from John Lear (Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City [2001]), Pablo Piccato (City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931 [2001]), and John Cross (Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City [1998]). In most of the writings on these interconnected themes, whether historiographical, sociological, or otherwise, the geographic site of inquiry is usually Mexico City. Sandra C. Mendiola García’s Street Democracy offers a refreshing and important departure from the preoccupation with the capital city, and by so doing provides a new perspective on Mexican democracy and the uses of coercion and violence to control urban social activism in sites outside the capital. Through an examination of a radical alliance of students, professors, and street vending associations from Puebla who founded the Popular Union of Street Vendors (UPVA) in the 1970s, this book reveals the heavy hand of the local state in violently stamping out cross-class political alliances calling for a new form of politics to challenge the oligarchic and clientelistic practices in a city relatively under-recognized in the Mexican national imaginary.