AFTER Argentina’s economy crashed in
2001, the ranks of informal workers grew along with those of the unemployed. In
Buenos Aires, the capital, destitute citizens picked through rubbish to collect
anything worth recycling, sold crafts on the pavement, charged drivers to
“protect” their parked vehicles and cleaned car windscreens at red lights.
Although the economy is now stronger, the scavengers and car-watchers have not
gone away. But they have met with very different fates.
In 2013 the local government
conferred formal status on cartoneros¸ workers who comb the city for
cardboard and plastic which they sell to recyclers. It recognised 12 of the
co-operatives into which they are organised and provided them with uniforms,
health plans and cash incentives on top of their earnings from selling rubbish.
“With the monthly bonus I can afford things for my family now that I couldn’t
before,” says Gabriel Aquino as he loads plastic bottles into a battered
pickup. “And I’m actually around to see them, because there are set hours.”
Other groups are seen as nuisances
and are being dealt with brusquely. None is more despised than trapitos,
or “rag men”. They wave people into parking spots and solicit fees for keeping
cars safe. Hugo, a trapito who works in the chic Palermo Soho shopping
district, says he never demands payment. If he spots people who look like
thieves cruising the area on motorcycles, he alerts the police.
Yet he admits that not all trapitos
are as scrupulous as he is. Some have damaged cars or even assaulted people
who do not pay them. “They are intimidating people into paying to use a public
space,” fumes Carmen Polledo, a councilwoman who belongs to the PRO, the party
led by the city’s mayor, Mauricio Macri.
Another target is street merchants
who operate outside areas set aside for them. Their number has increased
fourfold since 2011, according to a report by two chambers of commerce. Nearly
13,000 illegal stalls sell 678m pesos-worth ($77m) of goods a month. Unlike trapitos,
they provide a service people want. It is their rent-paying competitors who
dislike them.
To date the government has had
little success clearing scofflaw workers off the streets. Mr Macri, whose party
lacks a majority in the city council, has failed in three attempts to pass a
bill that would make it easier for police to arrest trapitos. On April
10th he re-introduced the measure yet again. Police operations to evict
unlicensed merchants have provoked violent clashes and traffic blockades. In
2012 a judge issued an injunction allowing artisans to sell their wares on a
three-block stretch of Peru Street, directly behind Mr Macri’s office.
Cartoneros, meanwhile, are setting their sights higher. Though
conditions have improved, Jacquelina Flores of the Movement for Excluded
Workers complains that the government has not replaced the co-operatives’
ageing fleet of trucks or adjusted the monthly bonus enough to compensate for inflation, which was
40% in 2014. Scores protested outside the city’s environment ministry in March.
The government has opened talks with them. Whatever the outcome, Buenos Aires’s
cartoneros have already learned that formality pays.
from The Economist
from The Economist
