Who's got my North Face?

I have in recent months become completely addicted to the HBO series The Wire. "Bravo," you say. What else did I just now discover? Seinfeld? If you must know, during the show's heyday some years ago I was living in New York city on an NGO salary, which meant choosing between cable TV and other luxuries like soap and toilet paper.

Anyway, the show does provide an interesting glimpse into street-level drug trade, which brings me to the point of this post.

As I mentioned before, I live near Ovalo Gutierrez, one of the swankier (cheesier) venues in the Miraflores district of Lima. So I was obviously surprised, not long after I arrived, when I noticed semi-organized groups of men and women standing on street corners with backpacks, whispering to passersby if they wanted to do business. If they found a customer, they would quietly go around a corner, crouch behind a bush, complete their transaction, and go on their way. The braver ones would stand on street corners and flag down interested cars, duck their heads into the drivers side briefly, exchange money, and scurry off. Nothing I hadn't seen before in other parts of the world - just surprised to see it in Miraflores.

I would of course duly ignore these guys whenever one of them signaled to me. My Spanish at the time was non-existent and I couldn't tell what they were saying anyway. Then one day I inquired with our doorman as to how they could get away with what they were doing. "Oh, them," he said. "They're buying clothes. Ropa." Ropa? Yes, ropa. As in jeans, fleeces, coats, etc., eventually to be resold in one of Peru's larger flea markets.

As my completely unaffiliated colleague points out in her blog, Peru's informal economy is omnipresent. Makes sense, given the level of unemployment in this country. But geez, why all the secrecy over some used duds? Isn't it kind of like an ongoing garage sale?

Well, no. As with all upscale or wannabe upscale neighborhoods on the planet, there exists a community association appropriately called in Spanish the "Junta Vecinal." In my experience neighborhood associations are nearly always collections of miserable busybodies who've decided that life is far too long to focus only on important matters. The "vendedores/compradores ambulantes," as the buyers/sellers are called, are now squarely in the crosshairs of the Junta Vecinal, who recently circulated a memo urging residents to call a special number to report "illicit commercial activity."

I've lived here for a few months and I haven't seen one drive-by shooting or anyone OD'ing on on sweatshirts. But alas, these hawkers' days in Ovalo Gutierrez might be numbered. Didn't anyone learn from Hamsterdam?