Carlos Martínez García: The Alameda Tianguis

B

revealed and blunt was the Hopscotch Monday: Waters converting the historic center into a tianguis! Nine words warned about a process that has been growing in the heart of Mexico City: the overflow of street trade in streets and squares of the country’s capital.

Not just the Hopscotch He dealt with the tianguis that increases in the Alameda, on the same day on the back cover of The day The issue came to light with the title Ambulantaje without control in the Central Alamedaand a photograph with several positions in the vicinity of the Palace of Fine Arts. Interior, the reporter Nayelli Ramírez Bautista realized the matter with the header Informal commerce invades the Central Alameda again (https://www.jornada.com.mx/2025/08/04/Capital/029N1cap).

Ramírez Bautista interviewed the leader of the Union of Marches in Movimient That they do not have a history in any area, or in the ordering programs of 1993, 2006 and 2007, and since the latter, the city government has lacked a popular commerce program. The leader said that the new street merchants pay quotas, whom she called pseudolids, between 200 and 300 pesos a day.

Although thousands of people dedicated to the noble trade of street sales are exemplary due to the dedication and efforts with which they are made of economic income, it is also true that such characteristics are exploited by leaderships that take the spaces to exercise trade on public roads and impose quotas to those who wish to offer their products and services to passers -by. That is, street trade is increasingly an corporate activity and less result of a personal impulse that should not account for those who control the sellers for their benefit. The leaderships that protect their affiliates negotiate with authorities of different levels so that, against the regulations of public spaces, its members of streets, avenues and squares are not removed.

In Mexico City proliferate tianguis of all kinds. There are weekend, one day (the markets on wheels so popular and beneficial that are installed throughout the city) and, as in the Alameda, those that are street/permanent. The latter have multiplied in the historic center and, in doing so, they alter and problematize what I consider should be the main function of a singular space for its cultural, social and architectural value. All the products offered by the walkers in the Alameda can be acquired in other tianguis that give life and color to the city, but there is only one palace of Fine Arts, a central mall, a Post Palace, a National Museum of Art, among many others, which deserve to be well protected by their majesty and historical value.

In the small book by Salvador Novo, The walks of Mexico Citythe chronicler begins to define the meaning of walking to travel pleasantly a place: “walking by car is already a contradiction; because walking is taking steps, walking, ‘walking on foot’, as with redundancy we say.” Precisely to walk in the Alameda, according to Nayelli Ramírez Bautista’s note, has almost become an extreme sport, due to The obstruction of free traffic to walkers and tourists by informal merchants, who in family or couple raffle the same cargo devils, large umbrellas, cardboard boxes and stalls formed by grilles on banks, in which products are exhibited, such as stuffed dolls, sun glasses, as well as vendors with grills that sell roasted elotes roasted.

Novo writes that the idea of creating the Alameda was from the second viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco, and that corresponded to his son, of the same name and eighth viceroy, back 1590 perform the project that would include A fountain and trees, which served as ornament to the city, and recreation to its neighbors. It should be noted that the Alameda served as inspiration to develop the New York Central Park.

Today it is difficult to go to the Alameda to try to walk in the sense defined by Salvador Novo, to sit on one of its benches to rest from the walk and talk, to enjoy some reading or look at the environment. He could not do it, for example, a elderly man whom a street vendor demanded to get up from what he considers his Banking to put belongings and merchandise. Given the refusal, he was pointed out as harassment, by the author of the demand, with the gender police. A video that circulates in networks shows that the man who nothing else wanted to rest was falsely accused (https://www.excelsior.com.mx/tren ding/Ladyalameda-acusa-acoso-adult- major-quearse-banca-vender/1731 071).

There are no historic center as monumental and admirable in Latin America as that of Mexico City. That the authorities responsible for protecting such a valuable cultural and architectural wealth allow to be flooded with street trade is an attack against heritage that gives singularity to the capital of the country. We do not allow a few privatize for their commercial interests public spaces that are legacy that belongs to all.