Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the strategies that Bolivian market vendors employ to maintain a viable business within neo-liberal economic circumstances. Such strategies have entrenched economic differences among vendors and created a situation where vendors both compete with, and depend upon, one another.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Bolivia implemented neo-liberal economic policies that resulted in decreased employment opportunities, a reduction in the value of incomes, and declining support from state welfare agencies. In response, many Bolivians mobilized their own resources and sought their livelihoods through self-employment. The outcome for marketplace vendors in the highland market town of Challapata has included increased competition as more people enter the marketplace as sellers; a continuation of the low cash incomes of their largely rural customers; and, for those vendors whose spouses had paid employment, a greater reliance on their selling income to maintain their households. In this paper I explore the strategies that fresh produce vendors have employed to maintain a viable selling business within these changing economic circumstances. I examine, through the use of three case studies, how the outcomes of neo-liberal restructuring have created advantages and disadvantages for vendors. In particular, I demonstrate how vendors with the resources to do so have expanded their income earning activities while those vendors with limited access to selling resources struggle to maintain their businesses. I argue that these strategies have not only entrenched economic differentiation among marketplace vendors but have also created an environment where vendors are simultaneously competitive with, and dependent upon, one another. As a result of all these changes, vendors are focused on the affairs of their business and the maintenance of their households. In short, neither resisting nor embracing neoliberalism, vendors try to get by within the neo-liberal economic circumstances they encounter.