Antigua, Guatemala, Street Food Vendors

Abstract

Based on long-term ethnographic research on livelihood practices in urban public spaces, I explore street food politics in Antigua, Guatemala. From various subjective vantage points, I describe the food vendors themselves, the handicraft vendors who constitute their primary clients, tourists who only by chance encounter them when purchasing handicrafts, and the city officials who are responsible for regulating the streets. I analyze the reasons why some food vending practices are permitted, despite regulations against them. Drawing on a theoretical framework that articulates Lefebvre's (1996) and Harvey's (2012) positions on rights to cities, I explain why such street food vendors persist in a highly regulated UNESCO World Heritage Site. I argue that claims of rights are not merely organized political actions but are exercised in the everyday practices of those who live and work on the street. Drawing on the concept of “gray space” from Yiftachel (2009) and shades of graying from Heyman and Smart (1999), I highlight the ambiguous social spaces and physical places that food vending and consumption takes place, to described what I call spatial permissibility, the practicing of ambiguously legal/illegal work in these gray and graying spaces.