Robert Neuwirth - Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people . Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation.

The Wealth of Nations

These are the products of some peoples lives. Biscuits, balloons, and battery-powered lint removers. Rag dolls, DVDs, and cut-price datebooks. Individual packets of laundry detergent, roach killer, rat poison, face cream. Fresh fruit and finger puppets. Sunglasses and magnifying glasses. The Un-Bra (a pair of gravity-defying, self-adhesive, strapless silicone push-up cups.) Counterfeit Calvin Klein cologne cling-wrapped in Styrofoam clamshells.

A vendor selling slide whistles blasts a mocking trillseveral times a minute, seven hours a day. Across the street, a husky man standing in front of a huge heap of clothes hollers, Cuecas baratas! Cuecas baratas!Cheap underpants! Cheap underpants!in an increasingly hoarse tenor. Next to him, a hawker with a tray full of pirated evangelical mix tapes blasts a stereo powered by a car battery. Two women toss tiny toys in the airtwin pinecone-shaped pieces of metal lashed together with elastic. These novas brincadeirasnew jokesclack together like raucous rattlesnakes, creating a din destined to drive mothers and schoolteachers bonkers. Around the corner, two vendors with plastic windup launchers shoot small helicopters high above them (they drift back down, rotors a-frenzy) while another stands, back to the breeze, and silently releases child-size soap bubbles from a scoop that looks like a giant Ping-Pong paddle. The bubbles squirm after being born, their edges hesitant. They wobble on the weak current and burst an instant before they touch anything.

In her office six floors above the everyday economic carnival, Claudia Urias, general secretary of Univinco, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting and improving the market, took in the tumult rising from the street. She shook her head. uma confuso total, she declared. Its total confusion.

Despite her up-close knowledge of the street, however, Claudia is wrong. Rua Vinte e Cinco de Maro (the street of March 25) in the center of So Paulo, Brazil, only seems like absolute anarchy. The street market herethe largest in the city, where retailers from other markets come to buy, because many of the items you can get on this street are either unavailable or far more expensive elsewhere, even from wholesalershas unwritten rules and an unofficial schedule, almost as if all its merchants were punching a clock. The chaos here is meticulously organized.

Each market day starts well before dawn. At three thirty a.m., four men converge on a short commercial alley just the other side of the Tamanduate River. Thin sheaths of onion skins crunch under their feet, perfusing the air with their scent. The men, however, seem immune to the acrid atmosphere. They enter a run-down warehouse and emerge with several dozen battered wooden crates and splintered and stained plywood sheets. They rope this haphazard cargo on top of dollies and roll them along Avenida Mercrio and across the river to Rua 25 de Maro. There, they pile the boards on top of the crates to make two rows of makeshift tables along a pedestrian alley that leads from Rua 25 de Maro to Rua Comendador Abdo Schahin.

This is the opening ritual of a site-specific street performance, the construction of the stage set for So Paulos wholesale market for pirated CDs and DVDs. Within a few minutes, several dozen dealers arrive. Some roll up in compact vans and sell their contraband right from the vehicles. Others arrive on foot, carrying duffel bags. They plop the bags on the tables, unzip, and isso ai!as if a starters gun has fired, the market has begun. First-run movies are often available a day or two after they open in theaters.

By four a.m., dison Ramos Dattora is on the case. dison is a camelan unlicensed retail street vendor. He came to the big city almost two decades ago and spent fifteen years selling chocolates, clothing, and small gift items on the trains at Estao Jlio Prestes, one of the citys commuter rail stations. For the past three years, he has moved into the more lucrative trade selling pirated movies and CDs on the citys streets. Business is so good that his wife, who used to work a sales job in the legal economy, has joined him in the illicit trade. dison hits the wholesale market for both of them, so his wife can stay home with their young son. They buy movies for fifty centavos eachor thirty centsand resell them for at least twice as much. Most often they work separately, to maximize the amount of the city they can cover, but when the streets are particularly busybefore a big holiday, for instancethey join forces to handle the demand.

Being unlicensed dealers in illegal copies of well-known films may put them at odds with the movie companies and the cops, but dison is proud of his profession and insists that it is no different from the work his wife used to do in the aboveground economy. Its the same as any job, with the same goals, only done differently, he said. Street peddling has given his family a life that has transcended the dreams he had growing up in Brazils agricultural midlands. He now has an apartment in the center of the countrys biggest city, a house in the suburbs (rented out, to bring in extra income), and a bank account and credit card. dison earns enough money that, a few years back, he traveled to Europe to try his hand at street vending there (though he enjoyed his journey, sales were better in Brazil, he told me.) As he spoke, three members of the Guarda Municipalthe local police forcesauntered by on the Viaduto Santa Ifignia, one of the long pedestrian bridges that span the low-lying downtown park/plaza called the Anhangaba. dison fell silent. His wares were safely zipped inside a pink schoolgirls satchel at his feet, but he stared after the cops and waited until they were at the far end of the viaduct before he picked up the thread of the conversation.

It takes about an hour for dison and his fellow camels to finish their purchasing. Thats when Jandira pulls up in her small pickup, as she has six days a week for the past ten years. She parks in the same spot every daya corner next to the pirate marketand does her business right from the back of her truck. Her trade is