CITY TIMES COVER STORY : FOR VENDORS, THE WHEELS TURN SLOWLY : A program that would allow them to operate legally has seen limited success because of infighting and bureaucratic shifts.

“Are those things aguacates?” asked a female passer-by incredulously as she strolled past street vendor Maria Mendez’s display of huge, bright-green Florida avocados, stacked neatly on the curb near the busy intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Western Avenue.

Mendez nodded, her weathered face smiling from behind a miniature tropical forest of mangoes, coconuts, pineapples, bananas, oranges, plantains and the cantaloupe-sized avocados.

“They’re very good,” she said. “Three dollars each, or two for five.”

The passer-by paused briefly, then moved on.

“Ah, that’s the nature of the business,” sighed the 54-year-old Salvadoran refugee, leaning against a chain-link fence and adjusting the baseball cap covering her closely shorn silver hair. “Some days you sell, others you don’t.”

A philosophical outlook is as necessary as good stock in the precarious world of Los Angeles street vendors, for whom the nature of the business also involves dodging police as they struggle to make an honest living in what is technically an illegal occupation.

A year ago, the City Council approved a two-year pilot program enabling vendors to set up districts in which those with permits could conduct business legally. But with one year remaining, the program has brought mixed results: Only two applications have been submitted to the city, and neither has been set up. City officials say it is unlikely that the goal of eight districts will be reached by the time the program ends.

That would be a setback for the vendor rights movement, which began in the late 1980s to counter the city’s strict enforcement of laws against the unregulated businesses that had proliferated after a surge in Latin American immigration. Police crackdowns and the resulting fines--up to $1,000 for the misdemeanor--spurred vendors and their advocates to organize and eventually grow strong enough to persuade the city to allow the pilot program.

As the clock ticks toward the February, 1996, deadline, some vendors look forward with genuine hope to legal status, while others remain in limbo. Vendor groups are scrambling to make up for time lost to confusion and internal squabbling that has slowed and in some cases stalled the process altogether, while city officials try to clear bureaucratic hurdles that are new to them.

The pilot program has made its clearest progress in the Santa Monica and Western area, where Maria Mendez may soon be able to devote full attention to her work without fear of police and the citations they issue. The intersection to which she wheels out her rusty shopping cart every day, practically toppling over with fruit, will probably become the first zone approved for legal vending this year.

After suffering internal setbacks during much of 1994, the Pico-Union-based Street Vendors’ Assn. of Los Angeles--which began life as AVA, the Asociacion de Vendedores Ambulantes--hastened to organize Santa Monica and Western last fall, collecting necessary approval signatures from 20% of the area’s merchants and residents.

The application was turned in last November, and a community advisory committee appointed by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who oversees the area, is reviewing the proposed zone. Provided there is no overwhelming opposition, the district could be approved as early as next month.

Mendez is keeping her fingers crossed. As she rises at dawn each day to catch the bus Downtown to the produce market, she says a little prayer of thanks for the peace of mind she soon hopes to enjoy.

“I am thankful for that ordinance, and for the people who worked to organize this district,” she said. “We won’t have to be so nervous anymore, worrying about whether or not the police will come and take our things, afraid to set up if they’re around.”

As part of their prospective initiation into legitimate business, several Santa Monica and Western vendors recently participated in the first-ever entrepreneurship class specifically for street vendors. Put together by the CHARO Community Development Corp., the free six-week course taught 50 vendors the basics of running an efficient business out of a cart, and how to advance toward loftier goals.

“I got some new ideas about how to move ahead with my business,” said graduate Silverio Velasquez, a produce vendor. “One day, I’d like to open my own little Latin market.”

Hopes are also running high among vendors in the MacArthur Park area, the site of the Street Vendors’ Assn.’s most recent effort. Organizers have been knocking on doors to collect the needed approval signatures for two months.

While salsa music blares from a nearby store, Zoela Morales peels and slices ripe mangoes with the dexterity of a skilled chef on the corner of 6th and Alvarado streets, overlooking the park. Although she maintains a realistic outlook, she embraces the hope that perhaps sometime this year, she may be able to hold her head high as a legitimately self-employed woman.

“It’s going to be great if they legalize this district, because that way they will just let us work,” said the Salvadoran native, her rapid hands not missing a beat. “We’ve demonstrated that we can work. We want to earn an honest living and not have to depend on anyone.”

With income from factory jobs and street vending, Morales has supported her three children in El Salvador for 13 years. Now that they are grown, she someday hopes to bring them here.

Morales rises before daybreak twice a week to ride the bus Downtown, returning to her Westlake apartment with up to 15 boxes of mangoes--costing $12-$15 a box--in a taxi that costs her $10. Selling small plastic bags of mango slices sprinkled with lemon, chili powder and salt for $2.50, she takes home between $30 and $40 in profits when she calls it a day around 7 p.m.

Over the past several months, Morales has been putting away a few extra dollars for permits and the cart she hopes to buy if the MacArthur Park area is approved as a vending zone. During Christmas, she sold dolls made by hand in her spare time for $20 next to the fruit, a profitable offshoot business she hopes to repeat around Valentine’s Day.

Morales is aware that health and vending permits, combined with business tax registration, could cost her up to $500, and that a city-approved cart for food sales could cost as much as 2,000. But she says her American Dream is worth it.

“It costs money to make money,” she said matter-of-factly. “Sure, the prices are very high. But so long as we have something with which to earn a living, it’s OK. I see it as an investment.”

In East Los Angeles, the mood is not nearly as optimistic. Eliseo Lopez is antsy and uncertain as he sells tejuino --a cold drink made with corn--from a cart near the intersection of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and Soto Street.

“I’m always afraid that at any given moment, the law can come and remove us from here,” Lopez said as he squatted behind his cart on a rainy afternoon. “If this were ever to become a legal vending zone, I would feel so much more secure.”

Ironically, the area originally stood to be the first legal street vending district in the city; an application put together by AVA was to have been turned in to the city last July.

But while AVA vendors were busy gathering signatures, a rift was taking place within the group’s ranks. Angered by an increase in vendor citations in early 1994, several vendors from the association picketed police stations in areas where street vendors operated.

This disturbed other vendors who had spent years lobbying the city for greater tolerance. They feared such tactics could destroy the fragile links they had established with police and city officials, and divert the vendors from their primary goal of establishing the vending zones.

“Conflict is the most ineffective and wrong method of action,” said Dora Alicia Alarcon, a vendor who helped found AVA in 1988. “The best way of getting ahead when dealing with a problem is passive dialogue, good relations and good communication.”

But backed by coordinator Javier Rodriguez, the militant vendors stood their ground.

“The police did not leave us any recourse other than to demonstrate,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a question of dignity also.”

The bitter conflict came to a head last July, just as the association was preparing to submit the East Los Angeles application. The militant vendors seceded from the group, along with Rodriguez and four of AVA’s six board members. They later sued the association for use of the AVA moniker, as well as assets of $30,000 that had been collected to help defray start-up costs for vendors. Rodriguez has since been sued by two members of the old group who claim Rodriguez defamed them in the course of the group’s split.

While the suits and the assets remain tied up in the legal system, the application remains in the hands of legal counsel who cannot release it to either side until the conflict is resolved.

“I have to keep moving from spot to spot, because I do not have permission to sell in one place,” said Jaime Carbajal, who has a health permit for his neat little cart laden with iced fruit chunks but cannot obtain his vending permit until the zone is approved. “The police can still pick us up and move us, just like bits of trash.”

Although the plaintiffs, who have assumed responsibility for East Los Angeles, could technically begin the organizing process anew, Rodriguez said they do not have the resources. In the meantime, he said, they will continue protesting alleged police harassment.

Capt. John Trundle of the Hollenbeck Division said he has tried to arrange peaceful meetings with the group.

“It seems to me they should be exerting their energy toward organizing,” he said. “Yes, we occasionally do make citations. But we only respond to complaints. We have more important things to do, and are not the impediment they want to make us appear to be.”

Other obstacles have impeded progress in Pacoima, where vendors hope to legalize a stretch of Van Nuys Boulevard.

Like AVA, the Street Vendors’ Assn. of the San Fernando Valley began organizing early. But when they turned in their application in July, it was discovered that the proposed zone included non-contiguous areas, unacceptable under the ordinance. The city’s petition forms also made no provisions for verifying the signatures collected.

The district was redrawn and the signatures verified one by one, but it was November by the time the application was complete.

“We’re bound to have problems getting this going,” acknowledged Robert Valdez, the city’s sidewalk vending administrator. “It’s a new program, and we’re feeling our way through it.”

The organizing picture is different in South Los Angeles, where there are no cohesive vendors’ groups. Nonprofit developers such as Build Plus and Dunbar Economic Development Corp. hope to use street vending as a tool for economic development, setting up vending zones around their projects to encourage entrepreneurship in the Watts and South-Central communities.

The African Marketplace, which plans to open a year-round cultural bazaar, wants to encourage vendors to join their project once it gets under way. The Amerage Group, nonprofit organizers, hope to increase commercial foot traffic in the Crenshaw area through street vending, going so far as to encourage merchants to buy their own carts.

But most South Los Angeles street vendors, the majority of whom are African American, are skeptical. They have had few problems with police until recently, and even though authorities have begun more diligent enforcement, going legal is still a foreign concept.

On a windy corner near Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, Vietnam veteran John Basil shares the spot on which he sells framed prints and clothing with Walter Herman Charlton, a World War II veteran who has been selling handmade dolls for 25 years.

“I have mixed feelings about this entire district thing,” said Basil, who was forced to become a street vendor after losing three stores in the 1992 riots. He dreams of setting up a new store with Charlton.

As dry-goods vendors, Basil and Charlton would have to pay about $1,500 each to sell under the ordinance. They are afraid the steep costs will be more affordable to established merchants who wish to do a little street business than to vendors like themselves.

“The way they’re setting this up, they’re inviting people with money,” Basil said uneasily. “Fifteen hundred dollars might as well be $15 million to us right now.”

So far, nonprofit lenders such as the Source for Empowerment and Economic Development and the Coalition for Women’s Economic Development have expressed interest in working with vendors, and a fledgling credit union under the wing of El Rescate may help fund some vendors once it opens in the fall. Still, this leaves a significant shortfall in available financing.

Another obstacle that worries organizers are merchants, since the opposition of 20% of a proposed district’s merchants and residents can cancel out approvals. Some merchants coexist tranquilly with vendors, enjoying the foot traffic they attract, but many others feel they present unwelcome competition.

“They hurt business,” said Chris An, a cashier in her parents’ Four Aces Market near Santa Monica and Western. “For example, there’s a woman who sells cigarettes for $1.25, when we don’t even get them for that price. She gets them in Mexico, where they’re cheaper. That’s unfair competition.”

Although he realizes it’s going to be a rocky road, Robert Valdez is counting on having at least a couple of vending districts established before the end of this year.

“The City Council isn’t going to approve anything that isn’t productive,” he said. “But once we get a couple of districts up and running and people see how they work, they’re going to want more.”

Councilman Mike Hernandez, whose district includes the MacArthur Park area, said the council could possibly vote to extend the pilot program if it sees good results.

But if the whole thing flops, the vendors will just keep doing what they’re doing now--taking risks but pushing ahead with business as usual.

“If it doesn’t work out, we’ll just keep on struggling,” said Zoela Morales, her knife poised to plunge into another mango. “What else can we do?”