The standoff between ousted street vendors and Guadalajara city hall shows no sign of easing up. Earlier this week, several vendors claiming they were hurt in scuffles with municipal police officers on December 4 filed complaints of abuse with the State Human Rights Commission.
Showing off their injuries, the vendors then marched in protest to city hall, where they placed a coffin outside the entrance. Vendors’ leader Teresita Gonzalez described the symbolic act as the “death of democracy.”
The rights agency has received more than 230 complaints since Mayor Enrique Alfaro instructed municipal police to remove all vendors from the downtown core last month.
Guadalajara city hall this week published a list of 150 people who will be given licenses to work as ambulant vendors in the city center at various times of the year. They will be tightly regulated and only allowed only to sell certain items. Selling contraband will result in the loss of their licenses.
Gonzalez has criticized the list, calling it selective and filled with the names of people who have never worked in the downtown area, as well as the “rich and the dead.” Many vendors whose families have worked in the center for generations are omitted, she said. “The mayor doesn’t want traders, only slaves.”