Colombia’s Push Cart

Text: Robin Finley. Photos: Santiago Riascos

The streets of Colombia offer a colorful taxonomy of entrepreneurial push carts; here, decontextualized, these convenience stores on wheels serve as a glimpse into Colombia’s informal employment sector. In a country where over 60% of the population lives in poverty, they speak of financial hardship and hope, independence, desperation, and daily survival.

Many of these carts display the sort of hybrid construction techniques that would make MacGyver proud. In true do-it-yourself fashion, they are cobbled together using whatever materials are available: grocery carts, baby carriages, milk crates, scraps of wood, duct tape, and the multi-purpose plastic bag.

They typically offer passing pedestrians everything from food and drink to cigarettes, cell phones, DVDs and even fishing poles, often with a mobile BBQ thrown in on the side. Once in a while you’ll stumble upon a vendor serving his own unique market niche, such as the mango and shoelace guy (picture above).

The pirate ship cart above is a super-deluxe model with every option and on-board accessory included. Its main sail announces that cell phone calls can be made here for 200 pesos a minute, and the main deck offers all manner of snacks, an FM radio, and even a rear-view mirror for the captain’s view (safety first!) Open at least 10 hours a day, most push carts have a space behind the storefront display to tuck away personal items such as lunch, an umbrella, a garbage bag, and most importantly, the cash register.