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Tijuana orders fashion makeover for street vendors
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20050704-0916-mexi...
By Elliot Spagat
July 4, 2005
TIJUANA, Mexico ? This Mexican border city is planning a fashion makeover for its throngs of street vendors by giving them an ultimatum: Wear brightly
colored, traditional garb or leave.
The new dress code initially took effect June 25 in a popular pedestrian mall in time for the busy Fourth of July weekend ? although most vendors
ignored it and wore jeans and sweat-jackets.
But it will gradually be extended to other streets, including Avenida Revolucion ? the bustling main tourist drag where one vendor donned a giant
sombrero with the words "Mr. Viagra" written on it. He beckoned tourists to be photographed for $5 in a donkey cart.
The new decree, ordered by flamboyant Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, is designed to showcase the city's melting pot of Mexican cultures to the outside
world. He said the fashion mandate will allow visitors to "feel Mexico." Those who disobey will be given two warnings and then forced to leave the
area where the dress code applies.
The dresses "are very nice, very clean, very colorful, very happy-looking," he told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday in his City Hall
office, which he shares with a caged parakeet, a parrot and a python in a glass tank.
The dress code was the latest decision to affect Tijuana's estimated 20,000 street vendors. Since December, the city has kicked some 2,000 out of
downtown after competing shop owners complained their sales were suffering.
So far, the new dress code applies only to vendors in a pedestrian mall that begins near San Diego's main border crossing ? a short stretch lined with
pharmacies, restaurants and souvenir shops. And it is only imposed on the weekends.
The outfits are a mishmash of different Indian styles. Some feature brightly colored ribbons as trim, others are emblazoned with the word "MEXICO"
from head to toe. Men must wear black pants and a white shirt.
"It's part of our culture," said Councilman Edgar Fernandez Bustamante, who wants vendors to dress up weekdays as well. "It's not a question of making
less of someone or trying to take away their dignity."
City officials say the costumes are no different from Colonial Williamsburg's Revolutionary War soldier outfits, Buckingham Palace guard regalia or
Disneyland's Mickey Mouse costumes.
And tourist areas across Mexico have long relied on traditional decorations, including costumes. More than two years ago, Mexico City ordered downtown
police to wear charro outfits, dressing them in spurs, guns and broad-brimmed hats. The Mexican cowboy costumes were designed to put tourists at ease.
Cecilia Angelos, who sells $3 metal bracelets, sunglasses and ceramic Micky Mouse dolls on a pedestrian bridge crossing the foul-smelling Tijuana
River, was among the few vendors Saturday wearing the new costumes.
She said tourists had complimented her on the $10 outfit and she believes the new wardrobe will be good for business. Still, the 30-year-old
acknowledges other vendors don't like what they have been told to wear.
"They worry that people are going to make fun of them," she said.
One vendor wearing everyday clothes said her dress was too tight. Another said her outfit was dirty. Both asked not to be named for fear of
retribution by city officials.
Businesses have donated some outfits, authorities say, but many vendors who are barely scraping by have been forced to dig into their own pockets.
Lucia Victoria Barrera, a 16-year-old girl who sells bracelets, dolls and maracas, spent $15 for a purple dress, with pink, white, yellow and orange
patterns. She was angry that others had ignored the mandate.
"We don't have a choice," said Barrera, who says she makes a $20 profit on good days. "If we don't wear it, they said they'll kick us out."
photo by David Maung
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Anonymous
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photo by David Maung
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Dave
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Attaboy Hank! I'm glad you're finally doing something really important that will help the citizens of Tijuana.
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Anonymous
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NPR Airs UC Riverside Professor?s Critique of Tijuana Dress Code
http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1130
Josh Kun says vendors? new traditional garb misses mark
July 25, 2005
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) -- National Public Radio?s ?All Things Considered? news program recently aired commentary by Josh D. Kun, an associate professor of
English at UC Riverside who contends that Tijuana?s new mayor is wrong to require street vendors in the border city to wear ?traditional? Mexican
costumes on weekends.
?Dressing Tijuana vendors in folk garb misrepresents what Tijuana is all about,? Kun said in his three-minute piece, which aired July 18. ?(The
vendors) aren?t selling ancient Mayan handicrafts or Day of the Dead dioramas -- they?re selling Bart Simpson statuettes, Osama bin Laden pi?atas and
knockoff Gucci sunglasses.?
Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, a flamboyant millionaire with a personal zoo, has said he came up with his ?very nice, very clean, very colorful and
very happy-looking? fashion policy to improve the city?s international reputation and to help tourists ?feel Mexico.?
The trouble with that idea, Kun said, is that Tijuana has never been ?traditional? Mexico. It is a manufacturing city of 2,000,000 butted right up
against the United States, and its border crossing is the busiest in the world.
?Tijuana is more economically and socially connected to the U.S. than to the rest of Mexico, and it has long been a bastion of progressive and modern
thought in Mexican society,? Kun said.
The colorful, ?happy-looking? costumes sound a sour economic note, Kun said, especially as their impoverished wearers ?go home to houses made of
recycled U.S. garage doors.?
The dress code took effect June 25 in a busy pedestrian mall in time for the Fourth of July weekend, but many vendors ignored it, according to The
Associated Press. The city plans to expand the policy to other streets, including bustling Avenida Revolucion, the news service said, and to ban
vendors cited three times for disobeying the directive.
At UC Riverside, Kun teaches about pop music, the Mexican border and the cultures of Los Angeles. As a critic, he has been writing about music and pop
culture since 1993 for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, the Boston Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay
Guardian.
Kun?s latest book is ?Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America,? will be released in November by the University of California Press. He is writing a book
titled ?The World Begins Here: The View from Tijuana.? His NPR commentary is available at
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4759667
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neilmac
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Oh, yeah, right...
an "associate professor of English at UC Riverside" gets on NPR (!) and is going to tell Hank Rhon about Tijuana.
do they do this for comic relief?
Neil
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