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Retratos Magazine

Street vending as a way to make a living

Section: Retratos Magazine | Adriana Saraiva, Leandro Santos, Mateus Boing e Rita Martins

April 05, 2018 09h00 AM | Last Updated: June 05, 2018 11h02 AM

On the main city streets and squares and on the beach sand a lot of persons have tiring routines just to make a living: they work long hours, under the sun or in the rain, many times facing the control of municipal agents and the hostility of shopkeepers. Who are they? Street vendors.  Many would rather have another type of occupation or even a formal job, but because of their low level of schooling or due to lack of opportunities they ended up having street vending as the way to make a living.  Nevertheless, despite all the difficulties faced, some of those vendors have become typical characters in their places of work, attracting people’s attention because of their products – and of their good spirits as well.

Cida do acarajé (on the left) sell African food in downtown Rio

Iracilda da Silva Diniz, known as Cida do Acarajé, age 63, was born in Salvador (BA) and is one of the 28 baianas 1who have been granted permission to sell acarajé2 and other dishes from the Bahia cuisine in the city of Rio de Janeiro. As a young woman, she used to dream of becoming an architect, but the family tradition of cooking African food, handed down by her mother and aunts, as well as the need of survival, led to a change of plans. She has no regrets: “I raised my children with money earned from acarajé sales and all they both have a degree now. My daughter works as manager for a cruise company and my son is a prosecutor”, she says, proudly.

Her stall of typical food opens at 10:30 and serves customers who work or study nearby up to 6:30 pm. The most popular products are vatapá3, caruru 4and acarajé. The customer’s favorite sweets are cocaca5, pé de moleque6, bolinho de estudante7 and lelê8. Cida gets up at 4 o’clock every day and commutes from Icaraí, Niterói, where she lives, to a shed in Ponta D’areia, in the same municipality, where she prepares the food she will sell across the Guanabara Bay, at Largo da Carioca, where she has worked for 30 years.

Neri has sold banana pastries for 21 years at the Campeche Beach, in Santa Catarina

In Santa Catarina, in the South of the country, it is easy to know when it is time for a snack, as one just hears: “A bananinha! (The little banana)”. The low voice that has been selling banana pastries for the last 21 years in Florianópolis is not so often heard today by residents and tourists at the Campeche, a neighborhood in the island that houses a beach with the same name. About to turn 78, street vendor Neri da Costa, the “banana guy”, has been tired. With a hat on, he rides a bike and carries a basket of pastries on the croup – but that has become an unusual view. He used to go out every day, at 3 pm, taking only Mondays off.

Working without any rights

According to Cimar Azeredo, head of the Labor and Income Department, since 2014 there has been significant increase of the number of persons who work as street vendors, mainly in the food segment. As shown in the Continuous National Household Sample (PNADC), there were 1.3 million street vendors in the country in Q3 2017. A total 501.3 thousand were selling food, which means a significant increase against those 98.4 thousand who worked in this segment in 2012. 

That is the case of Josélia Lima, age 43, who, in May 2017, lost her job as cooking assistant at a restaurant in Barra da Tijuca. Josélia, who was born in the state of Ceará and lives in Méier, in Rio de Janeiro, decided to work selling hot dogs on Rio Branco Avenue, downtown: “[selling food] is more profitable because you can reduce consumption in general, but you’ll still have to buy food”, she says.

The apparent freedom of being self-employed, having the chance of choosing which product to trade, besides the location and price, can disguise a condition of social insecurity.

 “The problem is that most of those persons have no registration, do not pay social security and have no right to benefits”, Cimar highlights.

However, not all street vendors see disadvantages in the activity. Silvia Barbosa, who has braiding people’s hair at the Pelourinho Square in Salvador (BA) for over 20 years, says: “I like what I do, I am proud of it. I have already tried, but I can’t picture myself doing anything else”, says Ms. Barbosa, who has worked in this field since the age of six.

Under the sun

Informality is not the only challenge faced by street vendors. In the search for customers, many of them need to commute long distances carrying their goods. Having worked at the Copacabana beach for 12 years selling products for children, vendor Vanildo Mello says his routine is not easy: “you need to be energetic, determined and willing to overcome challenges in life”. He says the sun is his worst enemy: “I wear sunscreen and a hat to protect myself; on very hot days, I enter the water to freshen up”.

Vanildo sells products for children at Copacabana Beach

Street vendors are subject to repression by the city governments and to assault by local shopkeepers. On Rio Grande Street, downtown São Luís (MA), it is not always easy to work in peace. Shopkeepers usually complain by saying that street vendors use the sidewalk and customers cannot go into the stores.

According to the anthropologist Adriana Magalhães, a member of the Distúrbio research group, from the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj), we should keep in mind that street vendors are part of cities like Rio de Janeiro, so it is necessary to think of the precarious nature  of that activity. “We must be careful with the idea that it is okay for a person to lose their job and work as a vendor. Not everybody has the needed skills for that kind of activity”. 

Although street vending is directly related to the increase of unemployment and of difficulties to join the labor market, working in the street means, for may persons, a chance to raise their families. Those workers sell products, such as typical foods, and help preserve popular culture. In 2016, Neri, the banana vendor, received that kind of recognition. He was awarded the Manezinho da Ilha Aldírio Simões medal, given to Florianópolis natives or residentes who stand out in their field of activity.

 

1baiana: a person who sells typical food from the state of Bahia
2 acarajé: a dish made from black-and-eyed peas, onion and salt, fried in palm oil
3 vatapá: a dish made from bread, shrimp, coconut milk, peanuts and palm oil mashed into a creamy paste.
4 caruru: okra stew
5cocada: a sweet mde from sugar and ground coconut
6pe-de-moloque: a sweet made from roasted peanuts
7bolinho de estudante: a type of cake made from pearl tapioca and coconut
8lelê: a dessert made from corn, coconut milk and sugar

 

Other articles from Retratos Magazine are available here.



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