The Bolivian People 63works of art. A whole street-based service industry fl oats
among the vendors—plumbers and electricians with tool
cases, street-corner typists with old portable Smith-Coronas
preparing legal documents.
Street vendors have guilds; political and the commercial
street demonstrations overlap when a guild protests against
shoddy treatment by government bureaucrats.
Some of these street vending scenes are simultaneously
sad and humorous: a woman sits with her preschool daughter
under an umbrella, selling plastic bottles of petrol by the litre.
This is a ‘convenience’ petrol station. For a small mark-up,
bus drivers low on petrol buy enough to get them through
crunch periods. The woman is lucky to make US$ 2 a day.
As they brush the dust from their suits, some city
dwellers complain that their streets have been taken over
by the masses. But most residents understand the dynamics
that caused this situation and learn to live with it, taking
advantage of it in the form of either convenient services or
lower prices.
In his pavement offi ce, outside City Hall, an independent typist waits for
his next assignment. Street vendors are the enterprising face of the
Bolivian economy.