CHAPTER 9 TRANSNATIONALISM AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MESOAMERICA 353characterizes most Latin American cities, including those of Mexico and Central
America. The concentration of elites, industry, and population in cities creates cen-
ters that are spatially divided along class lines, with areas of the cities clearly marked
with respect to specific socioeconomic sectors.
Owing to general population increase, rural areas are also experiencing popu-
lation increases, but at lower rates than urban centers. The general migration trends
have created a new sector of the economy that has been termed the “informal” econ-
omy. This sector is formed by independent vendors of a wide variety of products. It
includes “chain” vendors who function as franchises of some established product,
shoe shiners, and many other occupations whose economic actors were in the past
classified as unemployed. In Guatemala City (Camus 2002) and in Mexico City (Cross
1998), these vendors and workers have caused politicians much consternation and
anguish. Although vendors and others working in the informal economy are merely
trying to earn a living, both the business owners in the formal, taxpaying sectors of
the economy and the political officials often consider informal workers to be
problems.
Oftentimes informal workers and vendors would welcome officially sanctioned
jobs, and sometimes they provide services to urban dwellers that the formal sector
does not recognize: for example, such services as washing and guarding automobiles
in dangerous neighborhoods or establishing marketplaces in underserved neigh-
borhoods. In such urban settings as Guatemala City and Mexico City, businesspersons
and politicians work with the police to fine and forcibly expel informal workers and
vendors from city streets. In 2004, for example, the Guatemala City police seized the
merchandise of informal street vendors who were selling bootleg copies of music
CDs and Hollywood movie DVDs. Although the vendors were removed from the
streets and the vendors themselves acknowledge that the activity is illegal, almost im-
mediately they returned to the streets to sell. Instead of setting up fixed stalls to sell,
they became mobile vendors, carrying their goods in backpacks. These CD and DVD
vendors, many of whom come from highland Mayan villages and speak Mayan lan-
guages, can be found throughout Guatemala and even in Honduras, Mexico, and El
Salvador.
Often underestimated in terms of its importance to the economy, the informal
sector constitutes an important part of the larger economies. Most migrants come to
the cities because of the lack of land and sources of employment in their rural set-
tings. As dispossessed peasants, they have no land and can obtain only a few days of
work as day laborers in their home villages. The only other options for sustenance
are occasional work in haciendas and plantations; migration to the cities; or migra-
tion to other countries, particularly the United States. We will come back to this issue
later in this chapter.
Land Loss and Land Tenure
As in other parts of Latin America, land distribution patterns in Mesoamerica usu-
ally correspond to either the latifundio(large estates) or the minifundio(small farms)
types. Most land in the area is owned by only a few landowners. A small fraction of