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Roberto

Representative of vendors association.
One Tuesday I was talking to Roberto’s brother, Gabriel, who owns the stall that sells pineapples, right next to Roberto’s orange stall. He showed me a newspaper article in the entertainment section. In it, a cartoon figure of a superhero crossed the page from top to bottom. ‘Hey Pao! This is it! Come, come and see’, Gabriel called me with a mischievous smile on his face, which was partly covered by the baseball cap he usually wears. I asked, ‘What am I seeing, Gabriel?

He pointed emphatically at the newspaper: ‘There he is! This is Kalimán. The character I was telling you about. This is Roberto, and this is me, Solín!’ He smiled ironically. The newspaper showed a drawing of a man fully dressed in white, wearing a white turban with the letter K positioned on his forehead, the initial of his name, Kalimán. Kalimán is the protagonist of a famous Mexican comic book of the same name, created in the 1960s by Rafael Cutberto Navarro, writer and owner of National Radio Cadena Nacional S.A., and writer Modesto Vázquez. Next to him, at a much smaller scale, was a drawing of Solín, Kaliman’s apprentice, a boy wearing a fez. Gabriel explained:
“You see, Kalimán is the superhero, he has mental powers and he is interested in arts and culture, like Roberto. Kalimán confronts the enemies. Me? No. I prefer not to get into trouble. Dealing with other vendors, neighbours, authorities – it is too stressful! Roberto wants to fix the world. He reads, he likes museums, he doesn’t drink. I like football; I like my palomas [tequila with grapefruit soda], I like to party. I am just his helper. Like Solín, I am his chalán, his helper.”

Roberto is the oldest of three brothers, followed by Gabriel and then Jorge. With a slim complexion, green eyes, light skin and goatee, and always wearing a flat hat, he stands out from the rest of the vendors. Like his brother, he talks abundantly and fast with a trace of the accent of Veracruz, from where his family originally comes from. In his 50s, Roberto is the current representative of Route 8. When I first came to the market, he had been in this role for six months. He introduced himself as a ‘temporary representative’, substituting for his father. After more than 25 years in the position, his father suffered a stroke that paralyzed half of his body and took him away from his job in the tianguis. Both Roberto and Gabriel believe that the stroke was caused by the stress of tianguis’ responsibilities and problems. Those responsibilities include collecting the daily fees for the use of space, paying that money to the corresponding person (government or the owner of the space), ensuring that vendors are using the space as established by their authorisation documents, mediating when conflicts appear in regards to public servants and neighbourhoods committees, taking care of rubbish collection and street cleaning, and communicating with other tianguis’ representatives and attending La Coordinadora meetings (a citywide civil association of tianguis representatives). This list of duties is the reason Gabriel points to his brother’s mental powers when Roberto decided to take the lead.




Roberto is a member of the board of directors that run Route 8, which is legally constituted as a civil association. Nevertheless, in practice, the rest of the board and vendors see Roberto as the principal person to address whenever someone asks for a figure of authority in the tianguis. I was directed to Roberto when asking for access to the tianguis to do fieldwork. On Sundays, Route 8 vendors divide into two different spots, Sullivan and Nápoles. In Sullivan, Roberto is in charge of solving problems and collecting stall fees, while in Napoles, one or more delegates, usually members of the board, are in charge of this task. However, Roberto usually visits Nápoles at the beginning and at the end of the day for a quick supervision and to catch up on the issues of the day.

Gabriel has passionate opinions whenever the topic of ‘being a leader’ comes up in a conversation. He positions himself in the role of Solín precisely because he is aware of the workload his brother and his father have to deal with in representing the market. At the same time, he is conscious that neither his own skills and personality features, nor other vendors’ are suited for this kind of job:
“These people don’t know what Roberto has to do after the stalls are packed up and gone or what my father had to do when he was here. They are very keen to criticise and get suspicious, but they are not aware about all the rubbish you have to deal with to preserve the tianguis – THEIR [the other vendors] tianguis, at the end of the day.”