This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Mexico City, in case you've never been, is full of distinctive sounds. There's the bell the garbage men ring, letting you know when it's time to come down and throw out your trash.
On some corners, you can hear organ-glanders cranking out tunes for tips. There are, of course, the roving mariachi bands. And there are all the public markets where you can hear countless vendors hawking their products. But there's one specific sound that cuts through the den.
A voice that, if you've never heard it before, might stop you in your tracks. What you're hearing is a recording that trucks in Mexico City play on a relentless loop. Reporter Ted Seaver The crews inside these trucks are looking to buy old household items and appliances. Basically, they're scrap metal haulers.
And the recording is their pitch to prospective sellers. We buy mattresses, bed frains, refrigerators. The list of appliances continues with stoves, washing machines, microwaves, and then crescendos, gloriously, with Islam. which basically means or any old metal finger selling.
This last bit has become the recording's namesake, Fiero Viejo, literally old iron. The recording started popping up in neighborhoods surrounding the capital city in the early 2000s, but suddenly the sound caught the attention of the internet and a growing number of amateur and not so amateur DJs and musicians. One of Mexico's major newspapers referred to Fiero Viejo as the most popular sound in all of Mexico. Its status as a national icon may have been cemented at the World Cup last year when a Mexican fan blasted it out of a massive speaker he had strapped to his back.
So how and why did Fiero Viejo rise from the streets of Mexico City to become this huge sensation? The answer it turns out starts with a nine-year-old girl. A nine-year-old girl who helped solve a pressing challenge in a city that is busy, loud, and brimming with street vendors. Fiero Viejo is just one voice amid the cacophony of street selling in Mexico City.
More than 50%, that's five zero, of residents work in the informal economy. In a metro area of 22 million, that's a lot of vendors who go out every day selling tamales, pressing fast juice, collecting old appliances for scrap. The main driver of this massive part of the economy is necessity. There simply aren't enough jobs in Mexico's formal economy to go around.
That makes street vending both a crowded space and a competitive one. You can hear the intensity of that competition playing out at the public markets or tiangis as the locals call it. A lot of people are in Mexico, and they're called Pragones. And there's an art to them, one that's been refined over the centuries.
That's Liliana Hamica Silva. She's an anthropologist at the National School of Anthropology in Mexico City. She says the term Pragones has a long history in Mexico, and can be traced back to the period of Spanish colonial rule. In those days, Pragones referred to the Proclamations, a designated town crier would make about new laws or notices of execution, that kind of thing.
This purpose has, of course, fallen by the wayside, but the tradition of Pragones has been carried on by street vendors. The tradition of Pragones has been carried on by street vendors. The tradition of Pragones has been carried on by street vendors. In the past, the purpose has, of course, fallen by the wayside, but the tradition of Pragones has been carried on by street vendors, who have long been important figures in Mexican culture.
In the past, Pragones referred to as the American and American culture. Hamica told me that street vendors and their Pragones were often depicted during the golden age of Mexican cinema. In a 1951 film, you can hear the famed Mexican comic known as Teen Tan, and why they must have been the complete comments. The street vendors you hear in the movie do not generally burst into the song, but the remains an element of performance in their Pragones.
Vendors used distinctive intonations, cadences and often clever turn of phrase to in effect create their own sonic niches. This is especially important for itinerant vendors, the ones who sell their products in carts, trucks or one foot. on foot. After all, they not only have to contend with the ambient noise of the city, but distracted customers who are busy doing other things.
This recording is played by vendors who ride around selling tamales wahakenos, tamales in the style of the Wahaka region. Many mobile vendors like the Red Sellers enhance their pogon with sounds like bells, and sometimes the sound is so loud and so distinctive that no words are needed, like that of the sweet potato seller. The cart he pushes, by the way, is an ingenious contraption. A little woodfire steams the potatoes and powers that piercing whistle.
And there's the roving cooking gas seller who opts for simplicity with his pogon. Before Fiero Viejo, the recording caught on, many scrap metal collectors shouted their pogonists just like that gas seller. And some, though not many, still do. Hamaika explained that while things like cassettes and CDs have changed the means by which vendors deliver their pogonists, their basic function has not changed.
And Fiero Viejo may be the clearest and loudest expression of that trend. While the Fiero Viejo recording fits squarely into Mexico's rich tradition of pogonnes, it's also a stark departure from it, and that has everything to do with the voice that delivers it. So high pitched, it occupies its own sonic register. It's syllable, delivered forcefully, and almost wearily.
The incongruity of it is arresting. For her part, Hamaika isn't sure what it is about the voice, but it does make all the dogs in her neighborhood howl. To get the story behind this iconic recording, I took a drive away from the swankier neighborhoods in central Mexico City to a place called Icati back, a sprawling dusty area of blocky buildings on the city's northern outskirts. That's where I met Marco Antonio Terón and his family.
Marco's had many jobs in his nearly 60 years, cop, chef at a Japanese restaurant, bed frame seller, but the family business and his greatest love is entertainment. My daughter is a clown. I'm a clown. Her stage name is Chimamita.
Mine is Chimamita. However, making a living as a clown is not easy. There's times when the clown business went down. The number of contracts went down.
So talking with a cousin of mine, he says, well, why don't you work with your brother who's already working in scrap metal? After a short time on his brother's scrap metal crew, Marco decided to venture out on his own. But he didn't have a truck, so he built a push guard. And that's what he would use to load and move heavy appliances.
He would push the card under the hot sun, beckoning sellers by shouting through an improvised cardboard megaphone. And you can imagine on foot, your arrive exhausted. And after so much screaming, my throat feels the same. With the sun, the heat, the dust, I got a sore throat, bad feet, super tired.
I will take the boss of my house, and I will sit on the steps because my feet couldn't take it anymore. When a Marco had an idea, he would make a recording of his pitch, something other vendors sometimes did. That way he wouldn't have to string his vocal cords all day. But Marco being Marco, he wanted to do the recording his own way.
And since he felt his own voice was too low and gravelly, he turned to his nine-year-old daughter for help. So I'm the original voice of the pregoin. So I'm the original voice of the pregoin. So I'm the first person to be the first to be the first to be the first to be the first to be the first to be the first to be the first to be the pregoin.
It wasn't exactly a stretch for Marymar, who is now 28 years old, to help out her father. She had already elbowed her way into his clown act. I was eight years old when I started. I said to him, you know what, Dad, I want to be a clown.
And he was like, nope, not yet. And I was like, yes, please, I want to be. And he will say you're too small. And I was like, no, please, Dad, until I convince him.
And he said, OK, fine. But now let me be. You may be a copener, yes, I'm young, but I'm in the same position. She's like, for me.
And so I can't say, no, I'm not. Yeah, she will come with me. And people die laughing because I fall down and she falls down. And we're dancing and my pants are falling off.
And I'm trying to pick them up. And we're still dancing. And I drop her and she falls on me. People thought it was hilarious.
No, I can't think of this. However, recording the pregoin was no time for funny business. Marco is a bit of a perfectionist. And every word was rehearsed.
And since she forget what she had to say, I will put drawings of a mattress on it, a drawing of a washing machine. So for her, it was easier to read. Marco and Mari Mar did take after take after take after take, trying to get the sound right. The recording began at 12 o'clock at night.
And we finished at about 4 AM. And that's because we wanted there to be no noise. But you know, there's always a dog that bark or some boyfriend who was looking for his girlfriend at 4 AM. So it took several hours and I was very tired.
And you could hear it. All of the sudden, I was like, I'm tired. And he was like, I know, but let's try to make sure that the recording goes well. This may help explain the somewhat exasperated quality of the voice in Fierro Viejo.
As much as Mari Mar once your old refrigerator, she also just wants to go to bed. Eventually the cassette was finished and Marco began playing it on his rounds. Other scrap metal crews heard it and liked it. So Marco sold it to them for a pittance.
Five pieces, the equivalent of about a quarter. And so steadily, the sound began to spread across the city. Through the megaphones and loudspeakers of a growing number of beat up pickup trucks. Scrap metal collecting is just one small corner of Mexico's massive informal economy.
People have long carved out ways to make money whether or not the government approves of the activities. In fact, street vending is technically banned on the subway and in parts of the historic center. Yet these settings are primed to for vendors. So why do the authorities allow so many people to work on the streets?
The short answer is they don't really have a choice. That's Carlos Alba Vega, a professor at the College of Mexico who has written books on the informal economy. Carlos says the Mexican state does not have the capacity to create the conditions for economic growth and jobs, but it does have the responsibility to serve those who work in the informal economy. The state says in effect as street vendors, well, I can't help you solve many problems.
You don't have Social Security. If you get sick, you're on your own. But what I can do is cover my eyes so that you do what you need to do in idolery. Because there are laws in the books against many aspects of informal commerce, enforcement often comes down to political expediency.
This leaves a huge gray area governed by unspoken codes and occasional bribes. I'll tell me that there's regulation of the informal economy, but it's an informal regulation. There are unwritten rules that vendors know and respect, and if they don't respect them, there can be severe consequences, including violence. As parts of Mexico City become more gentrified, there are signs that the tolerance Alba refers to may be wearing thin.
A recently enacted policy requires street food vendors in certain neighborhoods to display standardized signs with a city seal. This did away with a long, rich tradition of colorful, hand-painted stalls. The city also recently passed rules concerning noise pollution. While primarily aimed at construction sites and industrial businesses, it also applies to vehicles, and trucks blasting Fiero Viejo would very likely exceed the 68 decibel limit.
None of the scrap metal crews I spoke with said they had received any tickets or fines, but one guy did say that they were more likely to be hassled in certain areas. We said they sometimes have problems in wealthier neighborhoods because people are bothered by the noise. And Fiero Viejo does have a way of injecting itself into one's daily life from Mexico City. This is something Mike Fortu was well aware of when he was studying music production about 10 years ago.
He would often hear Fiero Viejo coming through the windows. It's so iconic, so loud. You can't even complain. I live here in an apartment.
I hear it three times a day. And you can't be mad at it. It's part of the city. One day, Fortu was struck by something in the recording, the rhythm.
It has a lot of musical elements in it. And just the timber, the timber of this little girl, I put this 128 BPM electronic music intro and stuff. And it absolutely matched. I didn't edit it much.
She just crashed the lines and lyrics. Soon, Fiero Viejo, the dance remix, was blown. Fortu may have been one of the first producers to sample Fiero Viejo, but he certainly was not the last. You can find tracks on Spotify and YouTube that riff on the Bragone in various ways.
Probably the best produced song featuring Fiero Viejo dropped earlier this year. It's a collaboration between three producers and rappers who go by Owee Coyote, Fano, and Skipper. The video is excellent. The three rappers vamp it up like they're rolling in a tricked-out Lambo.
But they're actually in an utterly ragged old pickup piled high with old mattresses and junk. Owee Coyote told me it's sort of an homage. It's a celebration of doing what you have to do to make a living with a certain degree of style and ingenuity. In this sense, songs that sample Fiero Viejo are about more than winking irony.
They're about an identity. Here's Mike Fortu again. Yes, like if you play that, it's almost like an anthem. You know, you played it as you said in the World Cup and people are going to turn to find the wolf pack of the Mexicans, you know.
We can be scattered around the world. And if you give us something to unite for, and something to party, we're going to rock the night there. My interpreter, Jose Luis Yesca, a lifelong Mexico City resident artist and writer, had an interesting perspective on why Fiero Viejo has resonated the way it has. It speaks volumes.
I think we're very proud of our creativity, how we always solve things like this thing with three clips and one piece of twingle. But at the same time, I think it's something to be expected from Mexicans. You will have somebody that takes a loudspeaker on their back in order to make noise, in order to attract attention, in order to precisely do something maybe surreal. So, real might be a good way to describe how it felt for Mairi Mar when Fiero Viejo first started to spread across the city.
She was self-conscious about her voice and even she found it a bit intrusive. You're taking a shower, you're in a meeting, you're talking on the phone, you're arguing with your husband, or you're having a romantic moment with your husband and the recording place. So, you hear the recording a lot all day long. A hell of a lot.
Despite her initial misgivings, Mairi Mar has embraced the fame that comes with Fiero Viejo's popularity. She's performed Fiero Viejo live and she's sat for interviews with prominent TV turnlists. She's even active on social media, under the names La Vos Del Fiero Viejo and Nina Del Yero, literally Girl of Iron. And social media has helped Mairi Mar and Fiero Viejo gain an international fan base.
Versions of the Pragone have been posted in other languages on TikTok and Instagram, like this one, in French. Mairi Mar has also used her fame to call attention to more serious matters, like Mexico's high rates of violence against women and femicide. Last year for International Women's Day, trucks rode through the streets of Mexico City, blurring what sounded like Fiero Viejo, but with a very different set of messages. International Women's Day was one of the few times Mairi Mar agreed to lend the tune and her magnificent pipes to alternate versions of Fiero Viejo.
In this clip, the Pragone is played from speakers in the Zocalo, the massive historic plaza in the heart of Mexico City, the word say in part. We invite you to the struggle that demands respect, equality, and justice for us and the new generations. Marco and Mairi Mar hosted me earlier this year in the front yard of their home, a small house with a cement floor that they share with Mairi Mar's three kids. Despite the fame Fiero Viejo has brought them, the family still hustles to make ends meet.
Marco, for his part, believes they haven't always gotten their due. He considers Fiero Viejo an artistic creation, and he says he's registered it and retained a lawyer. Marco doesn't collect scrap metal as much as he used to, but he's still very much involved in the industry. Knowing how challenging the work can be, he started a union for collectors, members to help repairing their trucks, dealing with the authorities, and unlimited access to the recording of Fiero Viejo.
There is at least one constant in the lives of Marco and Mairi Mar since the days he was pushing a cart and hollering out of a cardboard tube. They still perform as clowns. Only now, Fiero Viejo has become central to their act. The truth is, it surprises me when we go to events and do that number.
You have to tell me a sound from Mexico City, and the children start the one with the water, the one with the gas, the Fiero Viejo, and then they start second-prongle chones, and it's something really cool. It's something that I love to do. Making a living collecting household cast offs for scrap isn't easy. By crafting what is basically an extremely effective advertisement, the taroans eased the toil not only for themselves, but for legions of collectors in Mexico.
But it wasn't just what those scrap metal trucks were collecting. It's what they ended up offering, the unbridled, unbowed shout of a nine-year-old girl that for some reason echoed across Mexico and then the world. More on the sounds of Mexico City after the break. So we are back with Ted Siefer, who has more to tell us about some of the street vending calls you heard earlier.
Hey, so you may have noticed the recordings of some of those calls, specifically those in the public markets, were really well done. I did notice that. I mean, many of them were just really clean and crystal fantastic. Like that one you can even hear his intake of breath.
It's that clean. I know. So I can't take credit for that recording. More for some of the other ones that we heard of the market vendors.
They were made by a French sound engineer and sound artist named Felix Blume. He first came to Mexico City in 2009 and he was staying in the historic center of the city. So it's super quiet during the night. It's really silent, probably one of the most silent plays of the city.
But during the day, you have hundreds and hundreds of people, street sellers screaming and announcing what they are selling and people going through. And it was amazing for me to be there and to listen to all those songs. So Felix, sound artist that he is, wanted to record the vendors. So he got to know some of them and started recording their progones one on one, away from the noise of the public markets.
And these recordings would become the basis for an exhibition that ran a few years ago called Coro Informal, which means informal chorus. It was held at a place called the Foneteca, a sound library in cultural center in Mexico City. Basically, when visitors walked in, they'd see all these little wooden boxes. And when people opened them, Al came up for going.
And then they could also see its musical score along with an illustration of the vendor. Wow, that is so amazing. What a great exhibit. And also just like sofously, it was so useful for our story to have all these clean, beautiful recordings that he made.
Totally. But Felix was not content just to be a documentarian. He decided that he would try his hand at street bending as well. So he makes a CD called Disco Pirota, which means pirate CD.
That's Felix in the intro to the CD saying it's three hours long with over a hundred sounds of the city. Okay. Pre-ambicious. Basically, Felix styled the disc after the pirate CDs that you can find being hocked in public markets and subway cars.
They made off for, say, the top 100 kumbia or regga tone hits of the current day. As you can imagine, Felix's disc did not just feature jams like Firoviejo, but deep cuts, like the balloon vendor and the nice sharpener. Felix then boarded subway cars and tried to sell the CD in the style of the locals. The medical...
He certainly was committed to the bit. I mean, pretty gutsy to sell your progone's CD with a French accent. What kind of crowded subway car? Did he end up selling it?
Well, from a commercial perspective, it wasn't so successful. He said he only sold a few discs. So it wasn't so easy to scream. And then I met some people selling this time and I said, well, you should do it like this.
You should go on this line. The green line is better for you because it's like university and we like this kind of stuff. And so even tried to sell it for me. I can give you a few copies and try to sell it.
So the other vendors are giving them pointers for how to shout and sell some things at the same time. That's really amazing. It sounds like Felix was really inspired by the sounds of my city. I mean, did you get a sense from him like what he was really going for in his art when he was archiving these and presenting them?
Yeah, we chatted about that. One of his goals was definitely documentary. He wanted to record the vendor calls because they are such an easily overlooked and ephemeral part of the city's identity. I think the act of recording in general, it's like building a memory of a place.
It's building a memory from a moment or from people leaving these territories or probably those sound will disappear at some point that will change at least. So I personally experienced what Felix is talking about here, how the sounds of the city change and evolve over time. For example, this is Felix's recording of a tamale vendor. And here's the Perdon by the same guy mind you that I heard when I was in the city.
So I mean, I personally like the current one. The lyrics, so to speak, are more complex. It's got a nice flow. These are the kind of things that you start to notice when you spend a lot of time, maybe too much time listening to Perdonas.
Anyway, it was important for Felix to try and capture and preserve these sounds, but he had another goal with his sound projects. And that has to do with the notion of public space. The public space is a space for all in the place to be listened. And this all happens in the public space.
And I think that's the important things of listening to the public space to listen to what people want to say to what people is saying and maybe not enough people are listening to them. That's so true. And I'm so glad that more people are listening. I'm so happy with the story.
And I get to hear these Perdonas for myself. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely.
It was my pleasure, Ramen. It was a really fun story to work on. 99% of us was produced this week by Ted Siefer and edited by Jason De Leon, fact-checking by Stona Avakian, boys over work by Johann Rashi Vega and Laura Obate, original music by Swan Rial, Salimix by Martin Gonzalez. Delaney Hall was our senior editor, Kirk Colstead is our digital director.
The rise of team includes Vivian Lei, Chris Marubay, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Kelly Prime, Washman Don, Jacob Moltenano-Medina, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% of his logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. Special thanks this week to Jose Luis Vieska, Aaron Rees, Jorge Mendoza, Eric Cernaluna, Felix Bloom, and Tumarko and Marymar Torell. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family.
Now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandoora building and beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 9.i.org. Wrong Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok too.
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