Tepito is a barrio located in Colonia Morelos in Cuauhtémoc, a borough of Mexico City bordered by Avenida del Trabajo, Paseo de la Reforma, Eje 1 and Eje 2. Most of the neighborhood is taken up by the colorful tianguis, a traditional open-air market. Tepito's economy has been linked to the tianguis since pre-Hispanic times.
According to a 2018 paper, it has long had a "reputation for crime, poverty, and a culture of lawlessness."Konove, Andrew. Black Market Capital: Urban Politics and the Shadow Economy in Mexico City. Oakland: University of California Press 2018, pg. 1
Estimates of the area's population vary from 38,000 to 120,000 residents, with an estimated 10,000 more who come in during the day to sell in the market. It also has been a lower-class neighborhood since pre-Hispanic times, which has known crime since the same period. It is famously known as the "Barrio Bravo" or "fierce neighborhood". Most crimes here involve the counterfeiting of goods but it is robbery that gives the area its reputation and can cause problems for sellers by scaring away their customers.
Tepito is home to a distinctive subculture that has attracted the attention of academics and artists. Art exhibitions have been based on Tepito and the area boasts a number of literary journals to which residents contribute.
History The name Tepito comes from the Nahuatl teocali-tepiton, meaning small temple or chapel. There is a folk etymology for the name as well. The story states that when a group of policemen were about to go on their rounds one night, one advised the rest that "Si veo a un ratero te pito" ("If I see a thief, I'll whistle at you") with the last two words fusing to become the name of the neighborhood. The frequency that the police had to use their whistles in the neighborhood became a sign of fear, of the resignation of authorities and the pride of the locals.
Archeological finds indicate that this was a poor area in early Aztec times that lived by fishing and other activities related to the lake which it was situated at the time. It was subdued by the Aztecs quickly, but its original residents were barred from trading in the large nearby Tlatelolco market. It soon became a place to stay for those bringing goods into this market to sell, leading to the Aztec name Mecamalinco, roughly translating to "for carriers."
At the time of the Spanish conquest, there was a small temple called Teocultepiton, which the Spaniards shorted to Tepito, eventually making it the name of this area, which was still outside of the city of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Similar to Aztec times, this area became filled with inns for caravans of donkeys and other transport bringing goods for the markets of Mexico City. At the same time, indigenous merchants who had lost their wealth and status from the Tlatelolco market settled here to trade. They were joined by long distance merchants who decided to stay.
Tepito remained outside the city proper until well into the 19th century with life here relatively unchanged. More merchants came into the area as large informal markets (tianguis) were pushed out of the city center over the course of the colonial period and the early decades after Independence.
During the Mexican–American War, residents of Tepito, along with Mixcalco and Candelaria de los Patos, fought the army of Gen. Winfield Scott, throwing things at them from their houses, and stealing horses and killing soldiers under cover of darkness. In retaliation, the General Scott ordered the neighborhood bombarded and razed.
When railroads were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they took over the task of bringing goods to market, and the inns that sheltered merchant travelers became tenements. In 1901, the decision was made to close the El Volador market, the last major tianguis in the city center, just south of the National Palace and relocate the merchants to the Tepito area. El Volador was a baratillo or baratijo, a tianguis market for selling new goods at very low prices. This is the origin of Tepito's role as a baratillo. Prior to this, most of the goods sold here were used, especially used clothing and utensils.
The Revolution saw the foundation of the influential Casa del Obrero Mundial, a revolutionary organization at the heart of the Mexican worker's movement, in Tepito. In the 1920s, many people from Jalisco and Guanajuato came here to escape the Cristero War and many settled in Tepito. Many were shoemakers, and this area became known for shoes. It also became an important producer of clothing and recycled household electrical items.
The reduction of buildings here to tenements and the crowding from the influx of Cristero War refugees turned the area into Mexico City's first slum.
By 1945, it was considered one of the worst places to live in Mexico. Houses here were not really houses but rooms varying between thirteen and twenty-five square meters grouped around common areas without sanitation facilities. These groups consisted of ten to fifty units and called "vecindades". Given the conditions and cheap rents, the area attracted delinquents, drunks and prostitutes. After World War II, the city froze rents, which was supposed to be temporary. However, the residents here have not permitted a repeal of their low rents, which have essentially remained unchanged since this time, despite attempts by landowners and government to do so.
In the 1950s four permanent markets were constructed for the various trades (foodstuffs, shoes, and secondhand items), confirming the area's status as a commercial center.
The 1985 earthquake destroyed most of the 17th and 18th-century buildings, killing many residents and leaving many to find housing elsewhere. This led to a new influx of outsiders into Tepito.
For decades, both government and developers have tried to transform the area. Mayors promise to clean it up and owners of the land there have tried various legal and other methods to get rid of the current residents to sell or redevelop the property. Coordinated plans to transform the area have tried to move residents to the outer parts of the city but residents here have resisted successfully so far.
One of the few successful efforts to evict and demolish tenements here occurred in 2007, when the adjoining properties of Tenochtitlan 40 and Jesus Carranza 33 were demolished. The area was a complex of 144 tenements known as "La Fortaleza" (The Fortress) where about eight kilos of cocaine and a half ton of marijuana was moved each day. As the tenements were being destroyed a number of curious finds appeared such as safes, false walls, murals, such as Pancho Villa smoking pot, reserves of cognac and champagne and even a Jacuzzi.
The city's Secretary of Public Safety stated that 411 convicts or ex-convicts were living in the tenements on Jesus Carranza and Tenochtitlan, most of which had been in jail for assault and/or robbery. The land expropriated by the government was excavated by the National Institute and Anthropology and History (INAH). Findings included both pre-Hispanic and colonial-era items. The site was redeveloped into the Family Integral Development (DIF) community center for Cuauhtémoc borough.
Tianguis street market
There is a saying, en Tepito todo se vende menos la dignidad ("in Tepito everything is for sale, except dignity"). It has a well-known street market or tianguis, which occupies 25 streets as well as three other markets, one for foodstuffs, one for shoes and one for secondhand items, with most residents here making a living as merchants with about 12,000 doing business here.
The market is a Mexican tradition that dates back to pre-Hispanic times, with the word tianguis coming from Nahuatl. The tianguis at Tepito is called a baratillo or baratijo (lit. little cheap ones) for their traditionally low prices. This market has a long tradition here and is the largest and most vibrant in the city in the 21st century. The market is so large and so crowded that buses must crawl and squeeze their way slowly with only feet to spare at most from the crowds and market stalls.
The sale of counterfeit brands, called fayuca, began in the 1970s. It started small, selling from suitcases but rapidly the quantities rose to pickup loads to tractor trailer loads. Sellers used to go to the U.S. to get merchandise, but many now deal with counterfeit goods coming to Mexican ports from China. Many of the Chinese wholesalers even offer credit. Another widespread phenomenon is the unauthorized selling of copyrighted audio and video. Vendors selling this, most of it copied in Mexico itself, have small television sets with large speakers blaring music at full volume. The electricity for this is tapped illegally, with several stands hooked up to the same cable. It is estimated that street vendors earned as much as 80,000,000,000 pesos in 2005 and avoided 22,000,000,000 pesos in taxes.
There is a used clothing market on Wednesdays on Tenochtitlan Street where garments are sold for as little as one peso. It is generally not stolen but rather bought or bartered for by merchants in lower and middle-class neighborhoods. On Sundays, there is a large antiques market on Paseo de la Reforma. A local dish most often sold from wandering shopping carts in the street here is called migas. It is a stew made with water, ancho chili, beef and pork bones and pieces of bread.
The street sellers of Tepito and other parts of the city form a large part of the financing of political parties in Mexico City. The Party of the Democratic Revolution has governed the city since 2000 and the charge to these vendors to ignore their activities can be anywhere from thirty pesos a week to 100 pesos a day during campaigns. When multiplied by the half million or so street vendors that are estimated in the city, it is a lot of "black money" for politicians.
Crime Tepito has historically been home to working-class and economically marginalized residents. Even in the pre-Hispanic times when Mecamalinco's residents were barred from the Tlatelolco market, there is evidence that some of the merchandise sold here were stolen goods. Most of Tepito is filled with the huge open-air market, or tianguis, and most of the criminal activity occurs in the form of selling counterfeit items and stolen goods.
Seven out of ten illegally copied or counterfeit products consumed in Mexico go through this neighborhood, despite the fact that it is only blocks away from the Procuraduría General de la Republica. In 2009, federal agents confiscated fourteen tons of unauthorized audio and video, dismantled an audio laboratory and arrested three people during a raid in Tepito. In an earlier raid, federal and city police seized twenty five tonnes of illegally copied material and contraband cigarettes. PROFECO analyzed twenty nine randomly selected alcoholic beverages sold in Tepito and results indicated that all were counterfeit and adulterated, not matching the brand of the packaging.
While the sale of counterfeit or stolen goods is still the main crime here, drug trafficking has made inroads as well. The sale of counterfeit goods took off here beginning in the 1970s, until vendors here were bringing it here from ports and the U.S. border by the truckload. Instead of sending the trucks back empty, contact between these merchants and drug traffickers were established so that the trucks now return with loads of marijuana. Their ready availability has now made drugs a problem for youths in the area.
Arms trafficking, including assault weapons, has also escalated in Tepito, a "phenomenon" described in the Mexico City newspaper El Universal on 4 May 2010, and expanded upon in a piece in MexiData.info.