Difference between revisions of "Manteros"

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#REDIRECT [[Manteros (Spain)]]
#REDIRECT [[Manteros (Spain)]]
{{infobox
| nameofpractice = Manteros
| flagemoji = 🇪🇸
| definition = Informal street vendors disposing their merchandise on a blanket
| location = Spain
| imagemap = Spain map.png
| clusters = [[:Category: Informal entrepreneurship | Informal entrepreneurship]]
| categories = [[:Category: Spain| Spain]] – [[:Category:  Informal economy| Informal economy]] – [[:Category:  Informal employment| Informal employment]] – [[:Category:  Trade| Trade]] – [[:Category:  Second hand| Second hand]] – [[:Category:  Flea market| Flea market]] – [[:Category:  Entrepreneurship| Entrepreneurship]] – [[:Category:  Fee avoidance| Fee avoidance]]
| authorofpiece = Horacio Espinosa
| authorinstitution = Observatorio de Antropología del Conflicto Urbano (OACU), Universidad de Barcelona
| authorwebsite =
}}
<big>'''By Horacio Espinosa, Observatorio de Antropología del Conflicto Urbano (OACU), Universidad de Barcelona'''</big>
[[Category: Informal entrepreneurship]]
[[Category: Spain]]
[[Category: Informal economy]]
[[Category: Informal employment]]
[[Category: Trade]]
[[Category: Second hand]]
[[Category: Flea market]]
[[Category: Entrepreneurship]]
[[Category: Fee avoidance]]
[[Category: Entry]]
[[Category: 2022 entry]]
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|style="font-size:1.1em;"| From the Spanish ‘manta’ (blanket), ''manteros'' are street vendors that offers souvenirs, football t-shirts, footwear, souvenirs, sunglasses and other goods to customers in a public space. In the last decade, this commercial activity has been practiced by Senegalese migrants. In ''wolof'' language they are known as ''modou-modou'', which stands for informal traders or migrant workers (Zubrzycki 2016).
|}
''Top Manta'' is another vernacular way to name these street vendors. More in use from the 1990’s to the 2010’s it is a word game between "manta" and the pirated CD’s  ‘top’ hits that manteros used to sell. In the video of the song "Santa Claus" by the Senegalese rapper and ex-mantero Lorey Money, the sale of pirated records and DVDs is referred to as "top manta". In the same video, the rapper shows another iconic element of the ''mantero'' sale: a cord device used to secure the merchandise inside the blanket. In this way, the blanket becomes a bundle that the mantero can carry on his back, allowing him to escape the police. Lorey Money refers to this action as “doing the Santa Claus".
[[File:Manteros foto 1.jpg|thumb|x300px|left|“Manteros” carrying their packages in their backs, Barcelona, Spain. Source: Angel García. © Angel García.]]
In the 1930s, during the government of the second spanish Republic, - ''manteros'' was practiced by Spanish people, that frequently clashed with the police in a 'fight for the street' (Ealham 2011: 203). In the 1990s, African immigration to Spain consisted mainly of North Africans, mostly Moroccans, whereas the sub-Saharan community saw Spain as a transit point to traditional destination countries such as France, Germany or the United Kingdom (Robin 1996: 57). Yet, by the early 2000s for Senegalese and Sub-Saharan migrants Spain had become "a migratory destination comparable to Germany, the United Kingdom or France" (Sow 2004: 235). As the new poor, in lack of a work permit, Senegalese migrants are drawn to informal activities as street vending.
In Barcelona, most manteros are identified and known to police forces, that can go as far as monitoring them from the moment they leave their homes to reach La Rambla, the tourist heart of the Catalonian capital. Still, without any real integration policies, Spanish authorities limit to prosecute street vendors through the work of police patrols. ''Moreover, ad hoc'' regulations are aimed at limiting their mobility. For example, by prohibiting the introduction of “large packages” into the subway, hence blocking their access to the main means of transport (''Diario Izquierda'', April  20 2016).
If they overcome this barrier, manteros then need to find a spot to sell their products. To this end, street vendors carry out preliminary explorations verifying the presence of the Guardia Urbana, Mossos d’Esquadra (Autonomous Police of Catalonia) or plainclothes police officers (''secretas''). If they feel unsecure, they will wait on different platforms and passages of the Catalonia metro station for the right moment to display the blanket, or what De Certeau calls “kairos”, term that can be translated ''as the appropriate or opportune moment'' (1980: 96).
The Guardia Urbana van, or la ''lechera'' (“milk truck”) in street slang, is used to circulate in the middle of the pedestrian walkway of La Rambla with the intention of "running over" the ''manteros''. They reacted by pulling the cord to transform the ''ambu'' (“blanket" in Wolof language) into ''sare'' (the package). They got up and surrounded the van, stood at the rear of the vehicle and then unfolded the blanket again. Repeated several times, this scene became a sort of choreography of the urban conflict in La Rambla. In Barcelona , the role of the police has a cosmetic character and the presence of the ''manteros'' is incompatible with the carefully designed image of Barcelona (Espinosa 2017, 2021).
[[File:Manteros foto 2.jpg|thumb|x300px|left|Street art depicting a “mantero”, Barrio del Raval, Barcelona. Source: Horacio Espinosa. © Horacio Espinosa.]]
On the 2nd of October  2015, at the Santa Mónica art center of Barcelona, a group of about eighty ''manteros'' organised the Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes de Barcelona (Popular Union of Street Vendors of Barcelona). The organisation was founded as a reaction to the death of the Senegalese street vendor Mor Sylla in the tourist area of Salou (Tarragona). Officially, the street vendor "fell" from a balcony while being chased by the Catalan regional police (Mossos d'Esquadra) in an operation "against piracy".
According to the Catalan police force, between 2011 and 2015 the Mossos d'Esquadra had invested 28,000 hours of work in prosecuting street vendors. When questioned about the death of Mor Sylla, the Minister of the Catalan goverment justified the fact by declaring that the prosecution of street vendors was indispensable because their activity "puts the Welfare State at risk" (El Diario, 26 August 2015).
[[File:Manteros foto 3.jpg|thumb|x300px|right|Demonstration against police repression to “manteros”, Barcelona, Spain. Source: Horacio Espinosa. © Horacio Espinosa.]]
On 15 March 2018, the mantero Mame Mbayé was killed in a police chase in the Madrid neighbourhood of Lavapiés. His death was followed by a day of riots against the police. The politicisation of street vendors was natural and even a mantero has reached institutional politics, as in the case of the election to the Madrid Parliament of the former mantero Serigne Mbayé Diouf in the ranks of the political party ''Podemos''.
The "defence of public space" has been one of the classical arguments used to justify police harassment against African ''manteros'', not only in Spain, but also in Argentina (Marcús and Peralta, 2021) or Italy (Molinero and Avallone, 2020). On the 25th of May 2015, the director of the conservative newspaper ''La Vanguardia'' Marius Carol wrote an editorial in which he described the public space as "the greatest conquest of democracy", quoting Aristotle to justify his discourse in its defence from destructive forces, in this case the street vendors, that he described as “terrorists of public space” (La Vanguardia, 25 May 2015). These elements testify that in Spain and other countries there is large a part of the public opinion opposing manteros and their survival strategies.
==References==
Carol, M. 2015. ‘Editorial’. ''Diario La Vanguardia'', 25 May: 2
De Certeau, M. 1980. ''La invención de lo cotidiano, Tomo 1: Artes de Hacer, desarrollo''. México, D.F/Guadalajara: Universidad Iberoamericana/ITESO
Ealham, C. 2011. ‘La lucha por la calle: la venta ambulante, la cultura de protesta y la represión en Barcelona (c. 1930-1936)’, ''Ayer. Revista de Historia Contemporánea''. 81/2011 (1), 173-205
Espinosa, H. 2017. ‘El mercadillo rebelde de Barcelona. Prácticas antidisciplinarias en la ciudad mercancía’, ''Quaderns-e de l'Institut Català d'Antropologia'', (22 (1)), 67-87
Espinosa, H. 2021. ‘Informal appropriations in the face of the state of exception. Ethnographic snapshots of the right to the city’, ''AIBR - Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana'', ''16''(2), 266-297
Marcús, J., & Peralta, M. A. 2021. ‘La calle en disputa. Narrativas sobre los usos legítimos e ilegítimos del espacio público en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, ''AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana'', ''16''(2)
Molinero, Y., & Avallone, G. 2020. ‘El trabajo ambulante: entre derecho a la ciudad y represión. El caso de la resistencia de los trabajadores senegaleses en la ciudad de Salerno’, ''MIGRACIONES'', 48 (2020)
Robin, N. 1996. ‘La multipolarisation de la migration sénégalaise’, in Mung, M. (dir), ''Mobilités et investissements des émigrés, Maroc, Tunisie, Turquie, Sénégal'', París: L'Harmattan: 48-64
Sow, P. 2004. ‘Prácticas comerciales trasnacionales y espacios de acción de los senegaleses en España’, ''in'' Escrivá, A. y Ribas, N. (coord.) ''Migración y Estudios sobre remesas y otras prácticas transnacionales'', Córdoba: CSIC: 235-254

Latest revision as of 08:45, 15 June 2022

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