Environmental Portraits

J450. Photos from the Environmental Portraits assignment.

Marta García, 49, is a native of Mexico City, she has lived in Boyle Height for about a decade. In 2004, García was laid-off from her job as a garment worker in Downtown Los Angeles. Soon after, García started to sell food on the streets of her neighborhood as a way to make ends meet. “At first it was very hard for me. First of all, I did not know how to prepare these type of street food, so I started preparing ‘gelatinas’ (jelly fruit cups) and ‘flans’ because they were the easiest things to make,” says García. She also mentions that she had to overcome her shyness in order to woo customers and develop “steel nerves” to face the police who periodically crackdown on street vendors as street selling is an illegal activity within the city of Los Angeles.
Soon García’s customers began to ask her to sell tamales; thus she had to call her family in Mexico to get recipes to prepare the famous Mexican street food staple. “I have two grown up daughters who at first thought I was playing a prank on them when I asked them to find me the ‘tamales’ recipe.” Garcia explains that, “I had never made tamales at home! So they didn’t believe that I was going to finally get around to learning how to make them.”After some mishaps, Garcia perfected her tamale cooking method and she now has a shopping cart with a full offering of Mexican street foods that she pushes everyday around the main streets of Boyle Heights.
While Marta thought selling food on the streets would only be a temporary occupation while she found another job, her business has allowed her to earn a tight but dependable income with which she support herself. “At my age and with the state of the economy these days, it’s very tough to find a job,” says García.
Garcia adds that she does not like the fact that her cart is not recognized by the city as a legitimate business venture. García is now working to change this, “what I am trying to do now is to organize with other street vendors and ask the city to allow us to apply for licenses so we can be able to work without hassles.”