
Raul Claro and vendors at Tuesday's press conference. Photo by Brenda Verano.
More than 100 vendors in the Pico-Union area, known as the El Salvador Corridor, claim they are not receiving adequate support from the City of Los Angeles to be able to work legally and safely. The El Salvador Corridor Association said if progress is not made by city leadership soon, they will initiate legal action in February.
“As we remain committed to working together with all stakeholders, we are reserving to hold off on the legal route until we have fully exhausted all other options and avenues towards an inclusive plan of action,“ the association stated in a press release on Thursday.
On January 31, vendors are scheduled to meet with Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, representative of City Council District 1, where the corridor resides.
In a press conference last week, street vendors spoke out against the discrimination, mistreatment and alleged unwillingness of the city and Council District 1 to set forth clear rules and regulations for the vendors in the corridor.
According to Raul Claros, executive director of the El Salvador Corridor Association, their primary request is for a constituency around the laws that need to be implemented for the El Salvador Corridor vendors to operate safely and legally. “All we are asking of the city and our district is for them to do their job and lead us by formulating street-vending regulations that help these vendors comply with the law and provide food for their families,” Claros told CALÓ News.

Vendors sell anything from pupusas to medicine. Photo by Brenda Verano
Hernandez said she and her office are committed to protecting and working alongside the vendors to also support their businesses. “For me, street vending, that economy is the central nervous system of the city,” she told CALÓ News on Tuesday. “I hope the vendors know that I'm doing everything in my power to bring sustained and permanent infrastructure to this economy.”
Although the Safe Sidewalk Vending Act was signed into law by former CA Governor Jerry Brown in 2018, making street vending legal in the state of California, there are still certain conditions that tend to prevent many vendors from exercising this state right.
California law states that vendors must comply with a city’s laws when vending in that city, but many street vendor activists say this can get confusing since street vending ordinances can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
“There’s state law, but it's interpreted differently by different municipalities. And that's all we're trying to figure out at this point: What we can do, what are we doing [in this corridor], what's permitted?" Claros said.
According to the El Salvador Corridor Association, to avoid street vending confusion, they submitted a street vending district pilot program plan to Hernandez on May 25, 2023. A plan, they said, is yet to be adopted. “It’s the same plan that we submitted to her predecessor, Gil Cedillo... It’s been over 7 months and nothing has happened” Claros said.
But Hernandez told CALÓ News, that although her office is working on passing a street vending district pilot program and that the association and the vendors have been in communication about this initiative, no official document of a proposed plan has been submitted to her by the association.
“My team has been in conversation with the representative of the association and vendors regularly, but this plan was not presented to me,” she told CALO News. “Something really important for me and the work that I've done is listening and empowering the people who are directly affected by the problems to be the leaders and uplift their solutions. We are making sure that we focus on the vendors. It's not about an individual; it's not about an association; it's about the vendors and what they want themselves,” Hernandez said.
A street vending plan would not only address current concerns connected to the corridor, such as public health and safety conditions, limited sanitation and city services, a lack of support for small business owners, and a lack of regulation and enforcement of street vending activities, but ultimately make the corridor an official street vending district in the area and open-air markets like MacArthur Park and Olvera Street.
“I hope that one day this Salvadoran corridor will look like other food destinations like [those in] Ciudad [de] Mexico, Oaxaca, where they have uniform tables and tents; a place that has uniformed infrastructure, it's clean, it's safe for the vendors, and for the community members to go enjoy the food,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said she doesn't want vendors to be removed from the corridor and will be working on continuing services such as oil and grease collection as well as pressure washing of the sidewalk area where the corridor is located.
After the initial press conference on January 9, the El Salvador Corridor Association and supporters also attended the LA City Council meeting the following day, where they spoke to Hernandez and secured the January 31 meeting.
“Vendors are being subjected to unequal protection of the law. They're being subjected to constitutional violations. This is how these people feed themselves. We're not going to tolerate that; we're going to come forward,“ said Humberto Guizar, the Justice X lawyer representing the El Salvador Corridor vendors.
Apart from the corridor, Two Guys Plaza was also used and occupied by approximately 30 of the El Salvador Corridor vendors until the first week of January, when vendors were kicked out of the premises due to a criminal complaint filed by the City of L.A. The complaint was, against the owners of the plaza for zoning violations. In 2022, the LA Times reported that, on average, vendors in the parking lot of Tow Guys Plaza would pay around $2,500 to $3,000 per month to be able to sell here.
But now, after being forced to move out, some of the 30 went back across the street of the plaza, next to the LAPD Olympic Division, something that, according to Claros, reinitiated the hostile and unfair harassment that the division has inflicted upon the vendors for years.
Claros said they do this when one of the street corridor vendors crosses the street and starts vending outside of their station. “Just last week, about three or four days in a row, they came out with over 10 officers harassing one vendor that went across the street to prevent the others [from crossing over.] They've continued to do that yesterday and today” Claros said during Tuesday's press conference. “Our vendors are scared.”

The El Salvador Corridor has been a historic cultural site for over 30 years. Photo by Brenda Verano
Street vendors are calling on the LA city attorney to request a court extension on the matter of Two Guys Plaza so that vendors can return to sell on this premises until the City of LA adopts a Street Vending District Pilot Program on the El Salvador Corridor. The initial court hearing will take place this Thursday, January 18.
According to a Cal Matters report, there are approximately 50,000 street vendors in Los Angeles County, with 80% of them being women. The corridor, which was officially recognized in 2010 by the state of California and by the city of Los Angeles in 2013, extends throughout 14 blocks down Vermont Avenue between 11th Street and Adams Blvd. The majority of the vendors in the corridor are immigrants and Spanish-speaking women from El Salvador and Guatemala.
Angela Barrientos from El Salvador has been selling at the corridor for 30 years. She is the longest-standing vendor, selling things such as mango verde, Salvadoran sweets, nances, pupusas and yuca. She said selling at the corridor is the only financial means to pay her bills.
”We used to have a lot of people that were coming when the market outside of the Two Guys Plaza was here. And now that it closed a week ago, you can feel the difference for us that are still in the corridor,” she said.
Her friend, Tomasa Chavez, has been selling at the corridor for 13 years and she was one of the 30 vendors who got a spot at the Two Guys Plaza to sell her pork pupusas.
“I’m very sad and hurt and really affected by the impact of this market,” she said. She described the Two Guys Plaza today as a “big bald spot" that she wishes would reopen. “We're asking again that this be reopened temporarily and permanently in the proper order. [Vending] is the only way that we're going to make a living,” she said.
Chavez also mentioned that, in addition to supporting vendors' families, the corridor also financially supports the pockets of the buyers. “There are a lot of people that have also been laid off from employment. Our food and prices have been able to bless others,” she said.
Rick Salinas, a Hollywood actor in films such as Encino Man, Hero, Mi Vida Loca and Camera Obscura, called this situation a “tragedy.” Salinas, who was born in El Salvador, said the vendors have made this corridor a historical and cultural place for Latinos. “It's an area where people have been here for 30 years. [The vendors] have put their kids through college; now all they need is a chance. And this is a place that has that opportunity,” he said. “This is Los Angeles; there are enough resources to make this happen, so I hope we find a solution.”
Last week Claros said Hernandez’s office had previously participated in dialogue with vendors but has decided to take what they've called an ‘observant position.’ “During her election campaign, she said that she would support the vendors. Her chief of staff sat with us two months into her administration and said that this would be part of her agenda in the first 100 days. We wouldn't be in conflict between the cops, the city, and the residents if we had leadership, and leadership is not lip service; it's action. That's the type of movement we need,” he said.
The association hopes that the January 31 meeting will bring more clarity to the vendor's future. “We are hoping we can recap how we have gotten to where we are now, so we can understand the facts and understand the different perspectives, but we also want to move forward on the next plan that we started to fully pass the street vending pilot program,” Claros said. “We just want this to move along expeditiously. We all just want a plan so we can all play by the rules at the same time, and so there can be transparency and accountability all around.”
Hernandez and her team are also looking forward to the meeting and said she’s excited to work with the vendors to create street vending regulations that would ultimately help vendors feel safe and supported. “Our priority is the vendors and to speak directly to them because there are a lot of people speaking for them, but they're not vendors themselves... They don’t even live in the area. I think that's important for us to highlight: who's advocating for whom and how we need to keep empowering the people who are actually on the receiving end of these things,” she said.
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