Two years in: Pandemic resilience propels renewed action
By most measures, Obdulia Montealegre Guzmán shouldn’t be OK.
For the past 20 years, the taco vendor has joined the din of informal work in Mexico’s bustling capital – organ grinders reaching out their hats for tips, vendors weaving through busy intersections hawking bubblegum, and cooks crowding sidewalks with their mobile food stalls.
When the pandemic arrived, the streets went silent. And as clients holed up at home, informal workers like Ms. Montealegre had no source of income and little or no safety net. More than 40% of the Mexican population already lived in poverty pre-pandemic. COVID-19 landed informal workers in a “double situation of vulnerability,” according to the United Nations.
But inside a narrow market that spans three city blocks in a working-class neighborhood, where the snip-snip-snip of poultry shears competes with slow-tempo ranchero ballads from a distant boombox, Ms. Montealegre has re-imagined her makeshift stall selling prepared food and drinks at open-air markets with a slick, new business model.
Today, her team of six dresses in matching face masks, aprons, and baseball caps. Each item is emblazoned with their new brand: a mustachioed man in a sombrero, holding a taco and giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up. And while she serves up steak smothered in cheese and crispy to hungry shoppers, she’s keeping track of orders coming in over a new WhatsApp ordering system, and
