Market by the Road on the Edge of South Phoenix

Aloysius Canete

South Phoenix is a place that one never gets bored. The streets are animated by colorful buildings, murals, graffiti and so on. Its landscape is interrupted by pockets of farm lands and more interestingly a juxtaposition of up-scale subdivisions and remnants of “old” neighborhoods. But what animated the place is its sense of unpredictability that one experiences as a flâneur roaming around the streets of South Phoenix.

On February 19, while conducting my fieldwork for the class, I chanced upon an informal market by the road as I drove by Southern avenue. It was there that I met Ovaldo, a middle-aged Mexican-American who came to the United States when he was 16 years old and lived in California for 28 years before moving to Phoenix. He and his other Latino friends sell their stuffs at the edge of a huge vacant lot of property with a distant view of downtown Phoenix. They sell used items including clothes, dictionaries, machine parts, oranges, bottles of lotion and cosmetics, yard equipment, tools, truck tailboard and so on. They used their pick-up truck and tables as makeshift props for this purpose. These props are akin to what James Rojas described in his article “The Latino Use of Urban Space in East Los Angeles” as objects that “create a sense of security in a place by acting as markers for territory.” But I would add that in this case such props are an expression of resistance. Since selling by the road is prohibited by the city of Phoenix, movable props give street vendors like Ovaldo more flexibility to move around every time they get apprehended by police officers.

This marketplace originally arose from “swap meets” where people bought and exchanged used goods; but now those are dedicated to new goods and have become too expensive to be worth it, says Ovaldo. He would rather sell at an informal market where the $40 he earned would go directly to his pocket. But it is interesting to note that Ovaldo does not do it for the income; he does it for the company and to meet friends. Obviously, street vending here is seen as a site for social interaction. But in addition to this, Ovaldo talks about street vending in opposition to staying in the home. As he says, “it’s not good to stay at home all the time.” This statment resonates with the point made by Rojas on plazas in Latin America as spaces for social interaction. In the absence of plazas in South Phoenix, street vending creates a space for Latinos like Ovaldo to mingle and interact with people, as they normally do in a plaza in Latin America.

24 March 2006