Informal Economics

Gerardo
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

Gerardo sells gum. He walks around the old center of Granada looking for people to buy little packs of Chiclets for one cordoba each. At 10 he's a savvy salesman, although he has no formal education and doesn't go to school because he can't afford any of the necessary supplies, including leather shoes, a school uniform, a notebook and pencils. I saw Gerardo the other day and we sat together for a while and talked. I learned a lot about the informal economy--at least from Gerardo's perspective.

The day we talked, Gerardo was toting a 100-pack box of gum, about two thirds of which he'd already sold. The box costs 40 cordobas (approximately $2.50). Selling the box of 100 at a cordoba a piece, he makes a 60 cordoba profit. But for a poor street seller like Gerardo--who that day had on flip-flops so old and worn out that he'd scuffed a hole in the heel--that's a lot of money. When we met that day (Friday), he had about 35 packets of gum left in the box. This morning (Monday) he sold me the remaining six packets. That suggests that he sells roughly 10 packets each day. So every ten days he finishes up a box, pockets 60 cordobas and reinvests the other 40 in a new box. At the end of the year, after a hard work every day, he's probably made 2,190 cordobas, or about $135.

A mile in his shoes
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

Given this level of poverty, I wondered how Gerardo gathered enough money to buy that first 100-box of gum. He bought it, he said, at the market after having saved up the necessary money. He explained that he used to sell sticks of gum, little candies, cigarettes and the like from a small basket. He bought and sold on a small scale. The returns were far less, but his up-front costs were more feasible. Still, this also meant wasting time going back and forth to the market every day or so.

Gerardo started on the streets when he was just 7. He had no money and thus had nothing to sell; so he begged. From these first few cordobas, he has moved steadily toward larger and more profitable selling. He's a micro-entrepreneur who has been increasingly successful. Yet he still lives in desperately poor conditions and malnutrition has left him small for his age. Moreover, he is largely at the end of his mobility. He could conceivably move onto larger and more profitable goods like jewelry or ceramics, but these are very different businesses with enormous initial costs and an uncertain future. These things are subject to taste and the purchase of tourists. Gum and cigarettes are fungible items and always desired. More importantly, they are bought by Nicaraguans as well as foreigners.

It is unlikely that he will beat the odds that poverty has dealt him. The life of kids like Gerardo is often marked by drug addiction (especially glue sniffing), disease, and physical and sexual abuse. I offer Gerardo's story not as a romantic tale of a Nicaraguan Horatio Alger, but rather as both the inspiring qualities of human creativity and doggedness in the most dire of circumstances and the real structural impediments to even so amazing a kid as Gerardo.

Lost in Translation

I was flabbergasted last night to learn that my fellow residents in the Casa de los Tres Mundos--Germans and Austrians all--had not only not seen, but had never heard of Wim Wender's "Wings of Desire." This shock came to me as we sat together and watched the last two thirds of "City of Angels," the hideous American remake starring Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. Admittedly they are all quite a bit younger that me and "Wings of Desire" did come out in the late 1980s, but it is like a 25-year-old American having never heard of "Blue Velvet."

I suppose it was just an old-fogey moment, for I know from my own students that if they missed a movie when it came out, there's almost no chance they saw it after that, even if it was a huge hit. Yet it still seems utterly shocking. Perhaps what made it all the worse was that their introduction to this classic if imperfect film was through a tawdry and melodramatic Hollywood remake.

Life on Two Wheels

Bicycles are everywhere and many are modified to accommodate several passengers. It’s like the circus is in town every day! Still, I’m reminded of a visit I made to a hospital in Managua in 1991 and the doctors noting that while they used to have daily arrivals of the war-injured, now the most common emergency was “full-family motorcycle accidents.” When we first lived in Granada in 1994, bicycles were far less common and for most people prohibitively expensive. I’m not sure if bicycles have gotten cheaper or economic growth has enabled a surge in purchases, but either way the streets are often jammed with them and we daily witness near collisions between bikes and cars that make our hair stand on end. Below, a sampling of the bicycling life in Granada.

Bicycle built for two?
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

The other day we walked toward Lake Granada and as we strolled we saw this man and his baby girl hurtling down the street. They probably weren’t going as fast the photo looks, but it was still a startling sight. The girl balanced on the crossbar, with her arm around her father's neck. I love the natural confidence that exudes from them, as if to say, “Doesn’t every family travel this way?” I've seen other versions of the same style of multiple riders, for example, father on the seat, mother on the crossbar, and small child in her lap with the child's legs hung over the handle bars. It's a little unnerving to watch.

Tour de Granada
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

Coming back from that same walk we chanced upon another group of bicycles, again sporting multiple passengers. They’d just whirled around one corner and were making for the next when I snapped open my camera. As the Tour de France had just started and I felt immediately transported to some countryside turn along the route, watching teams of racers zip by. These Granadino riders took the corner in front of this newly restored house and were gone. Luckily, I caught this brief but beautiful moment.

Safety first
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

Bicycle modifications are numerous and multiform. There’s nothing that some duct tape and arc welding kit can’t seem to do, whether it’s attach a rack or an extra seat. This guy went against the trend of utility toward personal safety and ornamentation. We almost missed his bike, but somehow I caught the steering wheel out of the corner of my eye. I walked back and asked if I could take a picture of him and his bike. He assented and then leaned over and honked the horn. He’d stripped the steering wheel from a car, horn and all, attached it and then wired it to a battery that was strapped under his seat. I still wonder how easy it is to steer the thing, but at least people can hear him coming.

Nueva Antigua or La Gran Nada?

Granada, historic center
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

A day after arriving in Granada we ambled toward the lake. We were hoping for a bit of a breeze and to see some of the changes that have come in the year since I last visited. Granada is nothing like the sleepy town I first came to in 1993. There were just two hotels and they had both lost whatever grandeur they once possessed. Restaurants were few and far between and tended toward small mom-and-pop shops serving Nicaraguan basics like rice and beans, pollo asado (roasted chicken), carne de res encebollado (beefsteak topped with grilled onions), plantains, etc. Mondays was soup day, and most places put out a steaming bowl of beef broth with vegetables, no matter the heat. Don’t get me wrong: I loved this food, but I longed for a bit more variety.

Today, by contrast, Granada has a number of nice hotels and hostels and dozens of places to eat, including pizza, tapas, Mexican, and more. And, of course, there are even more places to get traditional Nicaraguan fare. All of this has been fueled by a growing tourist economy that began to spring up about 5 years ago. The burgeoning economy, Granada’s colonial charm, and its cheaper real estate prices compared to Costa Rica, have also attracted a significant ex-pat community. I’m ambivalent about all the changes. On the one hand, the local economy has certainly grown and Granada has a new liveliness. Young people who used to flee Granada in search of jobs or an education, now seem to have options if they stay (or return). On the other hand, the real estate boom has all the marking of a bubble and native Granadinos find themselves ever more priced out of their ancestral homes. The influx of tourist dollars has also brought an attendant rise in crime. When I lived in Granada from 1994 to 1995, I would often walk the city at midnight, enjoying the late night cool. Today, mugging’s a good possibility if you walk alone past dark.

Shoe shine
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

Right now Granada seems like a great place for a visitor with dollars. Quaint, yet lively, with opportunities for good food and an enjoyable nightlife. But it’s hard to say how it will shake out for your average Granadino. Will it bring more and sustained work? Will it help alleviate poverty? Or will it devolve into an insular ex-pat community known more for pricey restaurants and sex tourism? Certainly worth contemplating is recent work on Caribbean tourism, such as Mimi Sheller's Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies(New York, 2003) and Polly Pattullo's Last Resorts: The Costs of Tourism in the Caribbean(London, 1996) is worth contemplating.

Will Granada become a new Antigua, and is that even desirable? Or is it, as a friend from Managua likes to say, just "la Gran Nada" (the great nothing).

Seismic arrival

Miami airport
Originally uploaded by justinwolfe.

Our plane from Miami to Managua was delayed by the late arrival of our flight crew. Still, they loaded us on to the plane as if we'd take off on time. Only once we were settled did they bother to tell us we'd be sitting there for an hour...without snacks or drinks. All that extra time let my mind wander to the 6.2 magnitude earthquake that hit Nicaragua on Friday. It struck just off the southern coast, near El Astillero and was apparently felt as far away as the rolling cattle lands of Chontales. We saw it briefly on CNN at an airport bar, but the news team quickly turned back to the vital analysis of shark attacks and Tom Cruise's recent psychotic episodes.

Nicaragua has suffered numerous quakes, most famously in 1972, when Managua was leveled and nearly10,000 people were killed. The capital never recovered from Anastasio Somoza’s theft of recovery aid and failure to rebuild the old center. Subsequent presidential administrations promised to right Somoza’s wrongs, but the downtown remains a wasteland. I figured Friday’s quake couldn’t be that bad, since otherwise the plane would have been buzzing with rumor and concern. Sure enough, we arrived to find people more shaken by Nicaragua’s faltering political system than this recent temblor. I’m not sure this marks an auspicious start to six months in Nicaragua, but it’s hardly boring.