Search results

Although there have been many articles and books on street vendors, ambulant and fixed, around the world, and many works written about them in Mexico, little has been done on the ubiquitous ambulant beach vendors in tourist centers.

This paper offers an analysis of the backgrounds, levels of contentment, and aspirations of 25 women beach vendors interviewed in Acapulco in 2010.

A third of the women beach vendors had fathers who were peasants, and others had grandparents who were. Thus the article shows light on the fate of some of the offspring of a dispossessed peasantry. Far more than half of the women vendors were very content with their self-employment vending wares on the beach, a few because they could set their own hours, and a few because they had no boss. Other’s contentment was linked to the fact that they could help support their children. Part of this help meant keeping them in school. This was true whether the women were married, widowed, or abandoned. Not all were content, however, and this underscores the importance of their income to their households. Most of the women, though not all, had aspirations for more education and better work, whether in the formal or the informal economy.

The women can be seen as marginalized because of their current poverty, and many because of past poverty leading to a lack of educational opportunities when they were young. They value education for their children.