Politics of Space and Bolanteros

By Noel Galon de Leon

The image is still difficult to ignore: bolanteros returning to the Iloilo Terminal Market after a violent clearing operation conducted by the city government and police last April 10. Fruits and vegetables scattered, confiscated goods gone, and livelihoods temporarily erased in the name of “order.” What remains is not just a physical cleanup, but an emotional and political wound carved into the everyday life of the street.

I write this not as an outsider observing urban policy, but as someone deeply disturbed by how easily survival is criminalized. When we talk about “development,” we rarely ask who gets pushed out to make space for it. In Iloilo City, the question is no longer abstract—it is visible in every displaced vendor who returns the next morning to reclaim a corner of survival.

“Bolantero” in Hiligaynon refers to ambulant vendors—people who sell goods like vegetables, fruits, fish, and daily essentials in public spaces, often without permanent stalls. In English, it translates to “itinerant vendor” or “street vendor.” But these translations are insufficient. A bolantero is not just a seller; they are part of the living circulation of food, culture, and urban survival.

Bolanteros are essential nodes in the informal food economy. They connect rural production to urban consumption in ways that are flexible, affordable, and immediate. Without them, many households would struggle to access cheap daily food, especially in a time of inflation and global economic instability.

It is therefore ironic—almost contradictory—that Iloilo City carries the UNESCO City of Gastronomy label while simultaneously displacing the very people who sustain its food ecosystem. Gastronomy is not only about restaurants or heritage dishes; it is also about everyday food distribution. Who brings the ingredients to the table if not the bolanteros?

This is where the politics of space becomes unavoidable. Urban space is never impartial. It is produced, regulated, and contested. Who gets to occupy the sidewalk, the market stall, or the second floor of a public building is a deeply political question tied to class, mobility, and visibility.

The insistence that bolanteros move to the second or third floor of the new market structure reveals a misunderstanding of how informal economies function. Height is not neutral architecture—it is economic marginalization. In public markets, visibility equals survival. If customers do not pass by, vendors do not earn.

Urban studies on public markets in Southeast Asia consistently show that foot traffic determines vendor success. Research on market redevelopment in cities like Bangkok, Jakarta, and Manila highlights how vertical market designs often fail informal vendors because they disrupt natural consumer flow patterns.

Accessibility is not just physical—it is behavioral. Shoppers in public markets tend to follow habitual, ground-level, frictionless routes. Asking a grandmother or a daily wage earner to climb multiple floors just to buy ₱20 worth of vegetables ignores lived reality.

The redevelopment of Iloilo’s public market under SM Prime reflects a broader trend of public-private transformation of urban commons. While modernization promises efficiency, it often results in the displacement of those who cannot conform to formalized, commercial spatial logic.

This is neoliberal urbanism in action: the conversion of public space into regulated, profit-oriented environments. Markets become sanitized, structured, and “efficient,” but lose their organic, chaotic, and socially embedded character that once defined them.

Studies of revitalized markets in the region show a recurring pattern: when vendors are relocated to upper floors or enclosed spaces, income drops significantly. Many eventually abandon stalls altogether, returning to street-level vending or exiting the market economy entirely.

This crisis is compounded by broader economic pressures. Rising food prices, inflation, and even global tensions such as conflicts in the Middle East directly affect remittances and household incomes in the Philippines. For many families, bolanteros are not side actors—they are primary survival mechanisms.

A policy that allows vending only “one day per week” is not economic support; it is rationed survival. It assumes that livelihoods can be paused and resumed like a schedule, ignoring the daily urgency of feeding families, paying rent, and sustaining dignity.

Traditional markets are not merely commercial zones; they are cultural infrastructures. They are where memory, language, and everyday interaction converge. Removing bolanteros is not just economic displacement—it is cultural erosion.

Iloilo has long been described as a food basket of Western Visayas. That identity is not produced by policy documents or tourism branding alone, but by the constant movement of goods through informal and formal actors alike. Bolanteros are part of that circulation system.

Yet development narratives often render them invisible. They are seen as obstruction rather than infrastructure. This invisibility is a form of structural inequality—one that decides whose labor counts as legitimate and whose does not.

The violence of clearing operations is not only physical but symbolic. Confiscated vegetables are not just goods—they are hours of labor, meals for children, and fragile hopes for another day. To scatter them on the ground is to scatter the dignity of labor itself.

What is being lost is also memory. The old rhythm of Iloilo Terminal Market—the shouting of vendors, the bargaining, the smell of fresh produce—is being replaced by controlled spatial order. But order is not always justice.

This is where the academe must intervene. Urban planning cannot be left solely to developers and policymakers. Scholars, researchers, and students must document, analyze, and amplify the lived realities of bolanteros and other marginalized urban actors.

Cultural workers and artists also have a role. They translate suffering into visibility, transforming statistics into stories, and policies into human narratives. Without cultural intervention, displacement becomes normalized.

A coalition is needed—bolanteros, academe, artists, and civil society working together to demand participatory urban governance. Development cannot be imposed from above; it must be negotiated with those who inhabit the space daily.

In a time of global instability and economic strain, silence is not an option. When war disrupts economies and inflation tightens survival, the most vulnerable sectors feel it first and hardest. Market vendors are often at the frontline of this crisis.

True development must reframe itself around culture, not against it. Planning must consider not only infrastructure but also practice—how people actually move, buy, sell, and survive in urban environments shaped by history and habit.

If bolanteros disappear from Iloilo’s public markets, what remains is not progress but a hollowed version of it. Development without people is just architecture. And architecture without justice is merely another form of displacement.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at U.P. High School in Iloilo. He is also the secretary of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts – National Committee on Literary Arts.