Kids at Work. Emir Estrada
When asked what her friends do, Chayo, who had just turned fourteen but spoke with the security of a much older person, assessed, “Nothing. They have their parents, but their parents work for them. Like, they get money either way. They don’t have to do anything.” Her ten-year-old brother Andrés disparagingly claimed that his friends were always “outside eating chips and they are all fat.… They just, like, always play around and eat junk food all the time.” And Edgar disdainfully said of his Catholic school peers, “They don’t even work. They are lazy.” Not working was associated with slothfulness, junk food, and being fat.
Familiar and widely circulating racializations of Mexicans as lazy, illegal, and illegitimate were challenged by narratives that allowed the street vendor kids to position themselves as more authentically Mexican or Latinx than their nonworking peers. The street vendor kids said that their nonworking peers had lots of idle time. They reasoned that with all this idle time, their peers were more likely to get in trouble and turn to drugs, stealing, and gangs. Take the examples of the following three girls:
Street vending gets you tired, but you have, like, time to do it. And you’re not doing dumb stuff over there, seeing TV, sitting down, doing drugs, tú sabes [you know], not doing bad.… Like my cousin, he got into jail like three times already because he’s, like, stealing and doing drugs and he’s a gangster. I don’t want to be like him. (Nadya, age thirteen)
My neighbor just sleeps, smokes drugs, and then, like, he goes and eats and he doesn’t even help his parents. And I feel bad for his parents because one of them no puede caminar [cannot walk].… Like, if it was me, I have to help my parents. (Veronica, age eighteen)
Es mejor que estés trabajando que te cachen robando. [It’s better to work than be caught stealing.] I mean, that’s the way I see it. I ain’t stealing. (Martha, age eighteen)
Across the board, the children rejected traditional stereotypes of this profession. They countered the stigma by taking pride in this “cultural” activity that made them better Mexicans in the United States as it helped them develop a strong work ethic and kept them away from gangs and drugs. For street vending children, meanings of culture did not remain stagnant; rather, the children transformed and readapted cultural meanings through their work experience with their parents.
The children defined themselves as hardworking compared to their friends. For example, Leticia said that none of her friends could handle the work that she did with her mother. One night, Leticia’s friends had a sleepover and witnessed all the work that Leticia and her family had to do the night before they went street vending. This was not a typical slumber party that entailed nail painting and boy talk. Leticia took her friends to downtown Los Angeles, where they bought the majority of their food in bulk. Once home, she diligently put away the food and made sure to separate the food for their street vending business in one refrigerator, and in another fridge, the food for the house. Later, Leticia began boiling water in different pots for the different types of salsas that she made. In one pot, she boiled tomatillo and dried chiles, in another she boiled red tomatoes with jalapeños, and so on. Leticia did not count the vegetables before putting them in the pot, as someone would while meticulously following a recipe. She cooked with confidence and skill, as if she were one of the kids depicted in the cooking show MasterChef Junior. In total, she made about eight different types of sauces to accompany the food they sold. Her friends were overwhelmed just by seeing all the work she had to do and confessed they could not handle even part of it. During our interview, Leticia shared that story with pride:
Most of my friends have stepdads and their moms are always home. They mostly help around the house. One time my friends slept over for a weekend and they said they can’t handle it and they don’t know how I do it.
The children told me that they stood out among their friends. While some school friends who knew of their street vending work naively made fun of them, others regarded their work with admiration and respect. For example, Joaquín told me that his friends at first made fun of him, but later he gained their respect once his schoolmates saw how the fruit of his labor materialized.
At the beginning a lot of them made fun of me, but they started seeing that I made money. They would ask me, “How come you have money?” I guess they thought I was doing something wrong, and I tell them I always liked to make money and I found ways to make money by making good things.
The list of things children disliked about street vending was long: waking up early, dealing with rude customers, running and hiding from the cops, getting tired, and so forth. However, as Joaquín put it in a very mature and matter-of-fact way, “I think I have lived my childhood and I think it’s time to face the real world.” While children enacted their own agency, they also recognized that they had very limited options. Not helping would not only hurt their parents, but it would ultimately hurt them directly as well.
Figure 1.3. Handwritten work schedule of Adriana (age thirteen).
When Do Children Work?
Vacation Work
The children filled out a time schedule showing me what a typical week in their life looked like. One student jokingly said on her last day of school, “My vacation time has ended.” By this she meant that she worked more during the summer than she did during the school year. Others echoed this sentiment. When I looked at Leticia’s schedule, I was amazed by the number of hours she worked with her mom. She worked over forty-five hours per week. Immediately she clarified, “It’s ’cause I’m on vacation. I have more time now.” These young street vendors were ubiquitous on the streets of Los Angeles during vacation periods. In fact, I met most of the children in this book during summer and winter breaks.
Their street vending schedule was fluid and ever changing, but one thing was for sure: summer was a very busy time. Most children in the Los Angeles Unified School District are out of school during the summer. Budget cuts have greatly affected summer classes available to students in the Los Angeles area.13 Lack of summer classes means that more children are now idle at home, often watching television or playing in the street with their friends. This is seldom the case with child street vendors, though. In fact, summer is the busiest time of the year for the children and youth who work with their parents as street vendors. The summer days, with temperatures reaching the high nineties, are the best season to sell raspados, cut-up fruit, aguas frescas (fruit-flavored water), elotes (corn on the cob), and tejuino. Since they do not have school responsibilities, they are able to street vend during the day and stay late at night without having to worry about assignments due the next day or getting up early to go to class.
Figure 1.4. Handwritten work schedule of Josefina (age seventeen).
Weekends Only
Other children worked only during the weekend, but their weekdays were packed with household and childcare work. Take the case of Josefina as an example. My interview with Josefina started at sunset on the front porch of their small apartment, at around 6:00 p.m. Since she is the oldest, she is often left in charge of her little siblings. This was the case when I met her for our interview. Shortly after I arrived at Josefina’s house, her mom and stepfather drove out to do the laundry and she was left in charge of her fourteen-year-old sister Elsa, her five-year-old brother José, and her four-year-old brother Juan. During our three-hour interview, I was able to see how much work and responsibilities Josefina had on her plate. She makes sure her siblings eat, do their homework, and take a shower before they go to sleep. She also does behavior management. For example, her little brothers José and Juan interrupted the interview with a constant opening and slamming of the heavy iron front door. After a while, this banging noise became part of the background soundtrack that included cars passing by, children playing, neighbors blasting loud music, dogs barking, and a TV playing in the living room. The kids wanted attention from their sister and from me. Josefina constantly scolded them to stop, but my presence inspired extra curiosity that kept them peeking out the door.
An hour into the interview, we decided to move to the kitchen table, where there was light,