Monte Sinai is a town located in the northwest of the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, and has about 99,325 hectares. There are some signs that this population is in the process of being transformed into a satellite city, given the increasing number of startups and the formation of small markets to buy and sell raw materials. Also, extreme poverty has increased from 7.9% to 15% from 2010 to 2020. There are approximately 12,152 businesses: cyber shops (spaces for renting internet services by the hour or fraction thereof), grocery stores, canteens, pharmacies, bazaars, hairdressers, chicken restaurants, creative entertainment services, among others. This fact implies an economically active population of 34,584 (there are no rigorous statistics on the population), which means a possibility of a very varied supply at the retail level. The objective of this chapter is to propose a Chamber of Popular Entrepreneurs that will lead to the continuous creation of popular brands. For this goal, the authors analyze the Multiplazas Itinerant Fairs as a strategy for popular micro businesses.
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This part of the city of Guayaquil began in the mid-80s with the construction of small villages. A situation finished in the 1990s. From this date onwards, housing cooperatives appeared that allowed the acquisition of houses or land in that area at a low cost. The cooperatives were around the number of five at that time. The expansion of cooperatives, which at the end of the 1990s reached approximately 20, caused the population to multiply (MIDUVI, 2011). Today, in 2020, Monte Sinaí is made up of roughly 40 cooperatives (INEC, 2019). Social groups without housing in Guayaquil and other cantons (mainly in Manabí) decided to turn it into a micro-city formed by a large area of valleys and hills covered by the dry forest of the coast, and cattle ranches, to be the most extensive popular sector of Guayaquil.
Monte Sinaí represents a classic popular society in which, when it comes to business, it does not differentiate any ethnic, religious, or educational situation. From this, an original and proper life dynamic is born based on solving the family economy. Thus, the great majority in these popular communities live the same socio-economic concerns in a horizontal way (Tabara, 2017). In this micro-society, the critical aspect of the circumstance can be observed in the precarious essential services, the rudimentary housing, the trivial education, the inefficient health care, the informal sources of monetary income, and the low level of employment (Hernández, 2016).
In that sense, the popular must pass, in the process of its construction, through formal criteria of legalization. The National Institute of Agrarian Development (INDA) grants notifications to the cooperatives, which facilitated the distribution of legal land parcels (MIDUVI, 2018); thus, the land began to fragment more rapidly, which was later formalized before the Municipality of the city of Guayaquil. The sale of land became a very lucrative business since 1996 when it began to offer illegal and cheap land to poor migrants from around the country, which caused the arrival of a mass of migrants. Precariousness was so great that, in some cases, this land was reached only after having crossed a river and ravines, with a rope tied around his waist (Tabara, 2017). Under these conditions, people earned a living even though they were selling products on the street. This idea becomes the breeding ground for entrepreneurship due to necessity and precariousness of life.
By 2010, Monte Sinaí had expanded to 38 cooperatives (99,000 hectares), housing approximately 45,667 families, about 274,000 inhabitants, and this dynamic growth continued. Given this reality of chaotic change, a decree was issued (Reform Law 88 to regularize the human settlements registered in Monte Sinaí) that tried to stop its expansion (MIDUVI, 2018).
The evictions of the invaders (those who do not have title to the land) multiplied, some families were relocated, but the growth of Monte Sinaí did not stop. Only faith accompanied them during this social journey. Many temples of many religions were built. Even the names of their 40 housing cooperatives speak of the religiosity of the population. The most important ones, because of their size, are Will of God, New Life, Ebenezer, Trinity of God, Will of God, Gift of God, among others (Hernandez, 2016). All of them form the extensive area of Monte Sinaí. It is a territory that continues to enlarge towards the northwest of the Perimeter Road of Guayaquil.
This is how the popular areas of Guayaquil are born, with some nuances. There are many improvisations in all economic and social aspects: schools are made by improvising premises and teachers, markets, as well as work, are informal, health and sanitation are extremely precarious, and housing is in minimum conditions for life (Sánchez, 2014). But with the stability of having a house, precarious startups emerge to earn urgent income.
Startups, which include precarious micro-businesses out of necessity, is known as a marginal area with a large and growing population density (Abramo, 2012). In this area, poverty is the inheritance that is reproduced among its extremely vulnerable inhabitants and in a state of defenselessness that prevents them from demanding their rights and assuming their duties as citizens. This fact mainly affects the daily lives of the families that have to solve the problem of survival. In this circumstance, it is necessary to generate income that eliminates or reduces the precariousness of life, and housing is the only one that provides the security to undertake business at the lowest possible costs and risks.