With Funds Cut, Vendors Try to Cope

Inside a cramped kitchen at Mama’s Hot Tamales Cafe near MacArthur Park, Ana Martinez rolls carrots, olives and peas into corn masa and banana leaves, just as she learned to do growing up in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

For as long as Martinez can remember, she and her family have lived off what they have earned making tamales. Last year, she and her mate, Manuel Figueroa, sold about $1,200 worth of tamales each week from a colorful vending cart at the edge of the park.

They were working in Los Angeles’ first legal street vending district, the result of an effort to revitalize the neighborhood, create an alternative to illegal pushcarts and help low-income vendors develop their own businesses.

Since 1999, the local nonprofit organization that operates Mama’s has received more than $1 million in city, state and private funding to run a street vendor apprenticeship program.

But this year there was no money for the program, and it was discontinued in January. City and state officials cite stiff competition for scarce funds.

“Mama’s Hot Tamales has been very popular,” said Cliff Weiss of the city Community Development Department, which funded the program. “We’re disappointed that the program hasn’t taken off as it was intended.”

Joseph Colletti and Sandra Romero, founders of the nonprofit Institute for Urban Research and Development, said they were unable to raise the $150,000 necessary to keep the job training program going or to make it self-supporting. But the cafe on 7th Street -- which opened in 2001 -- still pays the vendors to make tamales for its customers.

Now, Martinez and Figueroa are relying on those cafe orders to help support themselves and their five children. The couple said they could make more money selling in the park.

“We are frustrated,” Figueroa said. “We want to sell tamales again. We can’t keep waiting.”

The problem of illegal pushcarts has long plagued neighborhoods around the county, where vendors sell native foods to nostalgic immigrants.

Health inspectors say the food is often unsafe to eat. Police maintain that some carts hide other illegal activities. Restaurants complain that they steal customers.

Launched by the city in 1999 as a pilot program to discourage such problems and to maintain control over operations, the MacArthur Park vending district began with 17 licensed vendors selling drinks, fruit and handicrafts from decorated wooden carts lined up along 7th Street.

Soon, they began selling a variety of sweet and spicy tamales made as they are in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and other Latin American countries. Over five years, about 50 vendors have sold food and drinks through the program, Romero said.

The immigrants paid for permits, insurance and food, while Colletti and Romero provided the carts, which cost $7,500 each, and a place for vendors to cook at the cafe.

Subsidies also paid for maintenance of the carts and an administrator to take them out to the park in the morning and to ensure that everything operated smoothly.

As part of the program, the vendors took classes in how to prepare food safely, operate legally and develop business plans. After a slow start, the tamale carts began to attract customers.

“There was a stigma of people coming to the park,” said Romero, known as “Mama.” “That was the biggest challenge.”

MacArthur Park was known as a haven for drug dealers and gang members. But in recent years, the Los Angeles Police Department has increased park patrols, installed security cameras and cracked down on illegal street vending and prostitution.

Last year, the number of violent crimes in the neighborhood dropped 12% from the previous year, LAPD Officer Mark Hubert said.

The tamale vendors and Mama’s Hot Tamales Cafe contributed to that turnaround by bringing families and visitors to the area, Hubert said.

The cafe also used to organize festivals in the park and neighborhood cleanups.

“Word got out quickly that if you were out there breaking laws,” Hubert said, “you didn’t want to be in MacArthur Park.”

Councilman Ed Reyes, whose district includes the park, said some politicians were reluctant to address the issue of street vendors, because some of the sellers are illegal immigrants, do not vote and aren’t typical restaurateurs.

But he said Mama’s tamale carts helped revitalize the park and surrounding neighborhood.

“It became a very popular place and a destination,” he said. The main downfall of Mama’s carts was that they were required to stay in one spot and could not roam the park, Reyes said.

Indeed, unlike Martinez and Figueroa, not all vendors made money and there was a constant rotation of participants in the city-sponsored program.

Colletti said another problem was that the illegal vendors continued to sell nearby. “The dollars were exchanging hands, just not all was going to our vendors,” he said.

On a recent day at the park, a father and his son strolled around the lake. Another man slept under a tree. Several men stood on a corner at the edge of the park selling fake Social Security and green cards. Green cards are issued to permanent U.S. residents.

Jose Antonio Martinez, 50, read a Spanish-language newspaper and listened to music on a portable radio.

He has lived near MacArthur Park for 24 years and recalls the days when bodies often turned up in the lake and drug dealers sold their wares openly. He said the park had changed drastically since then.

The tamale vendors provide a taste of home, but they also serve as the eyes and ears of the park, Martinez said. “If there is nobody selling tamales,” he said, “there isn’t anyone to watch what happens.”

The vendors are eager to return to the park.

Kony Rubio, 46, came here from El Salvador two decades ago. Before the legal vending district was established, Rubio, who is undocumented, sold food and clothes illegally but constantly worried about getting ticketed by police officers or arrested by immigration agents.

Like a few of her fellow vendors, Rubio used what she learned at Mama’s to open her own business. She runs a small storefront on Alvarado Boulevard, where she sells clothes, diapers and shampoo. But the bills, taxes and loans are overwhelming.

“I am surviving with my store,” she said. But Rubio said she would prefer to return to her wooden cart in the park.

Ana Martinez, 26, and Figueroa, 42, began selling tamales with the vending district last year. They took business and food preparation classes and got their permits and insurance. Out in the park, the couple sold hundreds of chicken, pork and vegetable tamales each week.

“I feel happy selling tamales,” Martinez said. “It’s the culture of my country. It’s the tradition of my country. And I make a lot of money selling them.”

The couple had dreams of opening their own restaurant. Now they are struggling to pay their rent. Figueroa, a permanent resident, is receiving unemployment. Martinez, an illegal immigrant, still cooks tamales for the restaurant, but earns much less than what she did selling in the park.

Romero and Colletti, whose cafe is also struggling to make ends meets, are still scrambling for additional funds and say they have not given up on reopening the street-vending program. Romero said she was proud of those vendors who had succeeded in starting their own businesses.

“But like any mother,” she said, “I feel frustrated and sad for those who want to take their carts out and can’t.”