On Sunday 1 July 2019 I arrived in the town of Prados in Minas Gerais on a coach with 30 street vendors. We arrived in the middle of the night in order for vendors to claim the best spots for their stalls. The vendors sold a wide range of products – from fruits to electronic tweezers – to Catholic pilgrims attending a religious celebration. Ana, who had been a camelô for over 40 years, travelled in the coach with her son David. I had spent a long time chatting with her when we eventually approached the topic of politics. I asked her who she had voted for in the last elections. “I voted for Bolsonaro for president,” she replied. I asked what had motivated her choice. “Because I hate Pimentel.” Fernando Pimentel is a politician and member of Brazil's most traditional left wing party, the Workers’ Party (PT), and served as the mayor of Belo Horizonte between 2001 and 2009. During his premiership, the camelôs were displaced from public areas as part of a ‘revitalization’ exercise. While some camelôs were relocated to popular shopping malls, street vending became criminalized by law and a zero-tolerance policy was applied to those who attempted to remain on the streets.

Ana described the trauma she had experienced during this period; several of her colleagues got sick and some even committed suicide. “It's very sad when someone works with something for their entire lives and all of a sudden they are not allowed to do it anymore.” She emphasized that many who support PT are drug users and that their government had been great for drug dealers like her nephew, “But for the camelôs the PT never did a thing. Not even Lula.” I had heard similar responses from other street vendors in Minas Gerais. Ana's support for Bolsonaro was rooted in a rejection of the PT. The trauma of the displacement suffered under the PT's local administration was still being felt. A number of vendors emphasized that the PT did not improve their lives and failed to represent the interests of street vendors on the national scale.

The fractured relationship between street vendors and the PT is indicative of a wider crisis of traditional labour organization. Across the world, political parties founded on the idea of the ‘worker’ are struggling to mobilize voters’ support using traditional working class narratives.