Pandemic, (post) neoliberalism, and helplessness of street vendors in Mexico

Based on ethnographic work and the analysis of social programs and public speeches, I examine the relationship between governmental measures and the (re)production or containment of conditions of inequality experienced by street vendors in Mexico City during the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that from the president's office the symbolic violence of discourses (linked to urban neoliberalism) that stigmatize workers given their structural impossibility of complying with confinement norms was confronted. However, it was precisely the structural economic violence which was not contained by social policies that effectively suspend the workers' dependence on the market, especially during the moments of greatest risk and major restrictions on economic activities. This forced them to go out to the streets in search for income, thus failing to comply with the official regulations and exposing them to illness, as well as to administrative sanctions and police repression for working.