In the United States there are scarcely any capitalists. The Fortune 500 (or 1000, pick any number) is an esoteric and rarefied club, its members secluded in Westchester or Westwood, jealously exclusive, militantly anonymous, never seen on the street. Most of us can count, even on the hand that’s missing fingers, the capitalists within the remotest purview of our acquaintance. The average citizen, the overwhelming American majority, is a wage laborer, well enough paid but with little share in the corporate profits and none in the company. The means of production are not for those of humble means. Even capitalism on a small scale is being hoovered up daily and hourly by the paint and carpet departments, the lawn and garden centers, the hardware and power tool and light bulb aisles of Wal Mart or Target or Home Depot. Lest this sound suspiciously like Marx’s “Economic Manuscripts” (1844), let me explain.
In San Miguel, you run into capitalists on the street, sometimes two in a minute – I mean literally run into them. The city is a bustling commercial center, a thriving exchange, each one of its huddled masses a paragon of enterprise, individual initiative, creative and energetic marketing. San Miguel is, in spite of its undeniable charm, a critical nexus for goods trucked into its depots from as far away as the Chiclets factory in Salamanca. Its most notable merchant class is not the sleek banker in his Armani suit, nor the honest and industrious keeper of the abbarote or the neighborhood farmacia.
I speak of enterprise, intiative, creativity, energy, all virtues found together only in the gangs of chicleteros roaming the busy thoroughfares of Mexico on a level somewhere below the knees of the average adult, suddenly looming into one’s consciousness as a little buzzcut head jogging along doggedly in your front, looking you directly in the eye, head craned at an angle 88 degrees to the perpendicular, demanding noisily that you buy a Chiclet, a keyring, a Chinese handcuff, a balloon, one of those accursed yellow smiley faces, an orange dog leash, or a plastic bag of indeterminate stuff that looks like something between florists' moss and moldy packing material but never like anything you'd care to smoke. It is direct sales in its most direct, unvarnished, simplest manifestation. It is not brusque, it is bellicose. It is, in a word, capitalism au naturel.
Direct sales is a disappearing cultural phenomenon, unlamented, diminished by its detractors, overshadowed by the “distributed marketing” enabled by the internet and new social networks. By contrast, in San Miguel direct marketing is not merely flourishing, it is a significant outlet for the creative impulse, the primally human challenge to sell the unsellable, the undesirable, the unnecesary and the impossible. The 'chicletero' is the hero of primitive capitalism. The name itself is certain to enter the vernacular and ultimately take its rightful place in the lexicon of commerce, as it delineates not only a distinct, albeit unheralded, commercial class but also defines a unique approach to informal personal marketing, with its own quasi-ritualistic technique.
The first technique of the chicletero is brashness of an order usually reserved for something weighing about eight times the gross weight avoirdupois of any one of these miniscule dervishes. "Hey" (pronounced 'ay') is the standard introit or prolepsis for a potential sale, followed immediately by the imperative voice - "you buy . . . ." whatever happens to be on offer (see list above). If this fails, as it unfailingly does, the second technique is truculence - the chicletero scampers further into your path, screws his gaze to meet yours, repeats the same offer louder this time, and with a certain edge which was not apparent in the initial stock offering. Failing a second time, he drifts off port or starboard and repeats the offer, the third time in a markedly sulky tone. He does not tarry for answer but immediately accosts the pedestrian in your wake.
The chicletero is made, not born. His technique has come to him through generations of forebears. His manner betrays the careful example of a father, a favorite uncle, an older cousin, who doubtless crouched before him in his earliest nonage, fixed the innocent gaze in their own sterner countenance, and showed him how it's done. It is not an avocation for females – there are no chicleteras, only chicleteros. It is not for the timid, not for the halt nor faint of heart. Capitalism eats its own.
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