Photo: Mayor of Cali.
Given the measure installed by the Cali Mayor’s Office in function of freeing and evacuating the Plaza de Cayzedo from street vendors, there are several detractors…
In this sense, the shoe shiners are opposed to abandoning the emblematic Plaza de Cayzedo where they have worked for years.
This creates an inconvenience, since, according to the Mayor’s Office of Cali, no vendor may be in or around this historic place, since it has been declared a national monument.
One example is that of a man, Jesús Zuleta, who has been a shoeshine boy for 27 years in the Plaza de Cayzedo, and now he and 30 other vendors must retire.
This, according to the mayor’s office, by a regulation that will come into force and declare the square as a national monument.
“They want to take us out of here to send us to a place where our clientele is not in the Park, nor in the twelve or on Calle Real but here in the Park. Here we are and here we have the clientele,” Jesús Zuleta told the 90 Minutes newscast.
At the end of 2022, the Municipal Administration relocated the street vendors on twelfth street located in the center of the capital of Valle del Cauca.
However, there they came into conflict with lottery vendors and other polishers due to less space, less foot traffic and the loss of customers.
Jesús Antonio Oviedo, an accountant by profession and a client in the area, stated the following:
“That they provide them with their chairs and umbrellas so that they do not get sunbathed or wet and can continue to practice their profession because they are informal assets,” he argued.
The Mayor’s Office CaliFor its part, it organizes work groups with spokespersons for the Vendors and embadores so that they evacuate voluntarily. However, they ask for an organization so that they can work calmly on this square that has been the nucleus of the city’s development.
“The idea is that they remain in the surroundings, close, very close to the plaza so that their right to work and the clientele that they may already have due to their career are not violated,” said José Hebert Calle, undersecretary of security and justice. From Cali.