ABSTRACT
In 1992, media coverage in two large cities on both sides of the El PasoCiudad Juárez border dramatized street vendors into sustained front-page news over an extended time period. Normally, vendors are rendered invisible in public affairs communication, at least in El Paso. However, during this period the critics of street vendors on both sides of the border used amazingly similar rhetorical embellishments, whether in the Spanish language or in the English language, to call for the control or abolition of street vendors: congestion, disease, unfair competition, crime, invasion, filth, and overall threat to established, formal businesses.
