A Day in ""The Hole""

Risk, Loss, and Excess in Downtown Lima

Daniella Gandolfo

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English

University of Chicago Press
24 November 2025

Urban communities; Sociology: work & labour; Social & cultural anthropology; Urban economics

A single day in a semilegal market in Lima, Peru, reveals a social world that defies conventional economic logic.

In the heart of Lima's historic center, the sprawling markets of El Hueco (""The Hole"") and Mesa Redonda pulse with life. Here, thousands of vendors sell everything from knockoff electronics to religious icons, while remaining woven into the fabric of the city. In A Day in ""The Hole,"" anthropologist Daniella Gandolfo immerses readers in the markets on a single, tumultuous day—the thirty-fourth anniversary of the vendors' cooperative—while examining the dynamics that sustain this marketplace.

Through a blend of cinematic storytelling and incisive anthropological insight, Gandolfo reveals a marketplace with its own unique codes. She inspects how vendors embrace expenditure over profit and instability over order, and moving through the sights and sounds of El Hueco and Mesa Redonda, she finds a dissident economy that is as much about survival as it is about spectacle. Gandolfo redefines how we think about urban economies and the unexpected ways these defiant communities thrive in this beautifully textured portrait of Lima's markets and the people who animate them.

By: Daniella Gandolfo
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 286g
ISBN: 9780226843391
ISBN 10: 0226843394
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 24 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface: A Vision of Excess in Lima I. Morning II. Midday III. Afternoon IV. Evening and Next Morning Afterword Acknowledgments Notes Figure Credits Index

Daniella Gandolfo is professor of anthropology and Latin American studies at Wesleyan University. She is the author of The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews for A Day in ""The Hole"": Risk, Loss, and Excess in Downtown Lima

“Gandolfo brings us the tale of a legendary Lima market in a big dirt hole. A knowing love poem to the market and a sharp-sighted study of everyday economics, A Day in “The Hole” chronicles grime, fire, faith, piracy, pain, and profit—and how the world spurns the storylines of progress and liberty we like to dream up for it. This book models twenty-first century anthropology at its splendid best.” * Orin Starn, coauthor of The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes *