CHICAGO — Every day, just before 4 a.m., the streets of Little Village begin to fill with the scent of homemade tamales and the 26th Street business corridor lights up with an influx of cars and the chatter of those getting ready to start their day.
The early-morning hours are typically the most profitable for tamaleros, who for decades have built a livelihood selling the traditional Mexican dish to their loyal customers. They have become an essential part of the culture and fabric of the city despite historical struggles to regulate their business.
That’s why, even after getting robbed at gunpoint five times in the past two months while selling tamales in the early morning, Maria Aguilar, 50, continues to set up shop at Homan Avenue and 26th Street.
“I’ve been anxious and can’t sleep at night, but we can’t stay home,” Aguilar said. “Even if I’m scared, I need to go sell to make some money to pay for rent, to feed my family.”
Though street vendors are vulnerable to robberies because they are working alone and only with cash, most robberies reported over the years were sporadic. It wasn’t until early December when aldermen of Southwest Side neighborhoods, community leaders and the Chicago Police Department alerted the community to a recent string of armed robberies targeting vendors.
In Little Village, the tamaleros have taken the biggest hit, leaving them in fear and scaring away their clients.
Some of the vendors say they have been assaulted multiple times by the same group of armed and masked men in the weeks before Christmas. The group took their cash, sometimes their phones, and even the tamales, said Elizeth Arguelles, a community leader and organizer of the vendors in the area.
Vendors, their families and local leaders have held several community meetings over the past month, demanding more police officers patrol the 26th Street corridor in the early-morning hours to prevent more attacks. But the “crew is not enough,” said William Betancourt, commander of the 10th District, during one of the meetings.
During the community meeting, Betancourt said there isn’t enough staff to increase police presence in the 10th District during the early-morning hours. So vendors, their families and neighbors have galvanized to protect each other by lining up volunteers to patrol the streets from 4 a.m. until about 9 a.m., when the sun is up and the streets fill with pedestrians, said Kristian Armendariz, a community organizer with the Little Village Community Council.
“We need to take care of one another,” Arguelles said.
Arguelles, a daughter of a tamalera, has become an advocate for the rights and protection of the vendors. She said the only way to ensure their safety is to put the robbers behind bars.
“This is concerning because our vendors are under attack, our families are getting traumatized and we’ve heard from police that there is nothing they can do even after demanding their help,” she said after learning that four more vendors had been assaulted Thursday morning. “We are frustrated and don’t know what to do.”
On Thursday, the group of men was armed with semi-automatic guns, said Aguilar, still in shock. After quickly pulling up, they held a gun to her head and demanded her belongings. In the 15 years that she’s been selling tamales in the area since arriving from Guatemala, she had never experienced anything like that, she said.
Chicago police confirmed that units responded to an incident at about 6:30 a.m. Thursday in the 3400 block of West 26th Street, but the report did not specify the type of gun used by the suspects.
That same morning, three more vendors also reported getting robbed in a similar manner.
Though police have not released data about street vendor robberies, robberies overall in the 10th Police District, which includes Little Village, increased more than 40% in 2022 with 541 thefts, compared with 378 in 2021.
Crime statistics for the 10th District show there were 32 armed robberies or attempted armed robberies from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. from Nov. 1 through Dec. 29. That six-hour period is typically when vendors set up shop. In October, there were eight armed robberies during the hours from 4 to 10 a.m. In September, there were five.
A group of vendors and Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, sent a letter in mid-December to Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago police Superintendent David Brown asking for a more permanent strategy to protect vendors.
A group of vendors and the Little Village Community Council went to the Police Department headquarters demanding a meeting with Brown but were unable to meet with him.
“We are desperately asking for their help,” said Laurencio Pérez, who has been making tamales for more than 20 years and supplying at least four vendors in the area. “We are terrified; it’s not only our well-being but also our money. They are taking the little money that we make to survive.”
Pérez is one of the residents who has paired up with a friend to patrol the area in the last two weeks. During that time, he said, “I have not seen a single police car around.”
The robberies caused him and other vendors to lose the money they needed for the holidays. Many of them, he said, live paycheck to paycheck. “People are afraid to go out and sell, and others are afraid to go out and buy,” he said.
During the robberies, Aguilar has been stripped of more than $1,200 and, in one instance, her rent money, she said. The suspects also took her phone, she said. Maria Velazquez, who was robbed three times in a span of 15 days, lost nearly $1,000, she said.
“At the moment, all I could feel was the gun to my head,” Velazquez said.
A spokesperson of the Chicago Police Department said the department “is committed to strengthening safety for our residents and street vendors across the city, including in our Little Village community.”
The statement added that to address the incidents targeting the street vendor community in the 10th District, the department has placed “special attention and additional visibility in the affected areas. We will continue to adjust resources as necessary as we work to combat these crimes.”
In a meeting with the vendors organized by the Little Village Chamber of Commerce and the office of Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, officers from the 10th District told the vendors how they can protect themselves, including the possibility of going cashless to avoid losing all their money.
Arguelles said that as the days go by and the robbers are not put behind bars, her biggest concern is that instead of only taking the little money that vendors have, they can potentially take the vendors’ lives.
“They’ve already taken our peace,” she said.
In early December, the CPD’s Bureau of Detectives sent out an alert to residents in the nearby 8th and 9th districts about the armed robberies that targeted street vendors.
Police said that in each instance, a group of three to six men approached vendors and demanded personal property. The suspects are described as being 15 to 25 years old; between 5-foot-10 and 6-foot-1;140 to 160 pounds; and wearing all black clothes and face masks. A CPD spokesperson said there are no other updates.
The Chicago Tribune spoke to 12 vendors who said they had been assaulted. The vendors also described a group of young males, armed and wearing face masks.
