Re-writing the Sustainable Development Goals from marketplaces in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico

The universality of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is being pursued aiming for progress towards a wide range of sustainable development targets as the way forward to a create responsible futures. The aim of this paper is to reflect on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and analyze how a neglected part of real-life taking place in the area of informal, diverse economies in this case marketplaces in different Latin American countries can contribute to elaborate and rewrite sustainable development models. Throughout the history, marketplaces in Latin America have provoked strong political debates, increasingly being integrated as tourist attractions in controversial strategies often leaving vendors torn between policies and programs devised at higher scales and the complex realities of the cities in which they work and often live too. The informal, diverse economies constitute more than half of the GDPs in the Global South including Latin America. Despite repeated claims about the importance of informality as one of the fastest growing phenomena of our time and increasingly an issue of public and political concern, no systematic studies within tourism engages with the SDGs dealing with informality. The paper concludes by encouraging SDGs to involve already existing practices if SDGs are to create pathways for realizing human wellbeing in which GDP growth is not the main focus.