Along the street-like canals of the ancient Aztec city Tenochtitlan—modern day Mexico City—vendors routinely sold various meats, stews and even chili sauces that Spanish ethnographer Franciscan Friar Bernardino de Sahagún described as “hot, very hot, very, very hot.” Street vending worked its way into colonial Mexico, later evolving into a robust part of the country’s formal and informal economy.
The tradition remains alive and well in Oakland’s Fruitvale District, where Mexican and Latine immigrants have shaped their own culture and inspired that of the whole country.
Fruitvale’s vending ecosystem, and the people who ran it, were a driving factor in Oakland becoming the first city in the U.S. to implement an ordinance legalizing the mobile food industry in 2001…