Book Review: Rocio Rosales, Fruteros: Street Vending, Illegality, and Ethnic Community in Los Angeles

From the first page of the book, you enter the social world of street fruit vendors (fruteros) in Los Angeles with a dynamic and engaging writing style. Through thick fieldnote descriptions, the reader can envision the fruteros’ mannerisms and personalities, the fruit carts, and the vibrant street sounds of Los Angeles, which at the time of the study prohibited street vending. Rocio Rosales masterfully weaves six years of ethnographic fieldwork, twenty-five interviews with fruteros in Los Angeles, and fifteen interviews with the fruteros’ family members in Dos Mundos, a small town in Mexico. Rosales’s book is both timely and timeless. Since she started the project some fifteen years ago, much has happened in the world of street vendors in Los Angeles. For years, street vending in California was illegal, mostly attracting undocumented immigrants. After Trump won the presidential election in 2016, California decriminalized street vending to protect undocumented immigrants who risked deportation if apprehended and charged for criminal activity. What does decriminalizing street vending mean to fruteros? According to Rosales, the fruteros in her book did not attend any events organized by the mobilization campaign. The type of immediate legal help the fruteros needed to fight back when citations were issued, when arrests were made, or when confiscations were carried out, was not the type of assistance offered in those meetings. Instead, the paisano network, a social network based on immigrants from the same hometown, provided fruteros the immediate and tangible assistance they needed in their everyday business life. Through their networks, fruteros could afford expensive carts and avoid unwanted attention from health inspectors. According to Rosales, “Fruit vendors criticized the street vendors in the mobilization campaign in part because they feared losing their dominance if legalization occurred” (149). Operating in a “semiformal” sector gave fruteros with a strong paisano network an edge over their competitors. The new legislation came with restrictions and responsibilities for vendors that fruteros, asserts Rosales, have missed due to a lack of engagement in the information summits. Yet, it is too early to tell if and how the new laws will impact vendors’ personal, social, and work relations. Rosales’s findings may help organizers engage street vendors in future organizing efforts since there seems to be a disconnect between fruteros’ everyday urgent needs and the campaign’s larger wins for the street vendors. Rosales’s book helps bridge this knowledge gap between street vendors and campaign organizers. While Rosales makes great contributions to the informal economy literature, her book is not just about street vending. It expands what we know about social networks in immigrant communities. We learn how paisano networks pose both advantages and disadvantages. While this type of network offers financial incentives, protection, and support, it can also serve to ostracize, confine, and exploit new immigrant arrivers. Rosales uses the concept of the “ethnic cage” to illustrate the “underside” and dynamic nature of coethnic networks and “provides a useful way of understanding the harmony and conflict 1093697 CTYXXX10.1177/15356841221093697City & CommunityBook Reviews book-review2022