Dozens of iconic “palenquera” fruit sellers took to the streets in Cartagena on Tuesday, claiming that the city’s police are denying their right to work.
The protest of the folkloric street vendors is the latest escalation of what began as a curious incident in Bogota where a cop fined a man for $260 for buying a pastry from an informal street vendor.
Bogota’s city hall has since been forced to repay the fine, but policemen across Colombia appear to have begun persecuting informal street vendors, including the palenqueras, based on an obscure article in the country’s police code that bans the “unduly use of public space.”
Bogota police lose absurd empanada battle
According to Angelina Cassiani, her merchandise was decommissioned last week after selling fruit to locals and tourists on the city’s Bolivar Square for more than 20 years.
Angelina Cassiani via El Tiempo
The palenqueras who have been selling tropical fruit in Cartagena’s tourism district since memory believe that the police’s creative interpretation of the law threatens their right to work, Cassiani told newspaper El Tiempo.
Angelina Cassiani
New guidelines in Cartagena allow some 35 women of the palenquera ethnic minority to sell fruit, as long as they keep walking, but the fruit sellers believe this violates their constitutional rights to exercise ancestral activities.