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Pink gold: Women, shrimp and work in Mexico. By María L.Cruz‐Torres, Austin: University of Texas Press. 2023. pp. 384.

Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: It is likely that I will never pass a female street vendor again, in Latin America or elsewhere, without thinking of María Cruz-Torres' insightful and beautifully written monograph about the changueras of Mazatl an, Mexico.Based on almost two decades of fieldwork (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019), she chronicles the journey of these women from being stigmatized as criminal shrimp smugglers in the 1980s, when there was no space or recognition for them in the shrimp value chain, to being a unionized and iconic symbol of local cuisine and popular culture.There is a dearth of knowledge about women's roles in the fishery value chains, as well as how women in marine economies engage in politics and management.Pink Gold offers valuable contributions in both areas with a fine-grained, intersectional analysis of the interplay between gender and class in Mexican and Latin American household organizations, social relations, public spheres, and street level economies.Cruz-Torres writes that she aims to "address the interconnections between gender and labor in the access to and marketing of seafood commodities in Mexico and the politics of resistance and survival in an industry traditionally perceived, studied, and understood as male-dominated" (p. 6).Theoretically, the book takes its cues from Feminist Political Economy, which Cruz-Torres brings into dialog with commodity studies and studies of space and place.In this way, shrimp are rendered in the book as a socio-natural commodity that circulates in local-global value chains while also shaping identities, social relationships, and economic spheres of exchange and commodification.Pink Gold consists of seven chapters, plus a preface, an introduction, and a conclusion.The introduction offers a short, but succinct theoretical overview, while theoretical musings in the following chapters are limited and woven into the analysis.The book's ethnographic focus is on Aquiles Serd an Street in the northwestern coastal city of Mazatl an -the "Pearl of the Pacific" -in the state of Sinaloa.Since the end of the 1980s, Aquiles Serd an has been known as the changueras' street, where locals and tourists alike flock to their market stalls to purchase the neatly-displayed shrimp-the titular "pink gold."But the story actually begins in the early 1980s, commonly known as "the lost decade" in Latin America.At that time, economic crisis and neoliberal restructuring destabilized family economies and forced women from poor households to search for alternative means of survival.Shrimp perhaps seemed an unlikely option-it could only be legally sold through statesanctioned collectives and traders.Nevertheless, entrepreneurial women started to buy shrimp directly from fishermen and sell it on the streets.Often, they were persecuted and punished by authorities, and they emerged in popular discourse as shrewd and rude criminals.With time, however, and particularly after a key event recounted in the book, when university students rushed to defend the women in an act of solidarity, the women organized, unionized, and were given their own marketplace in the heart of Mazatl an.These struggles became the basis for the changuera identity: a valiant, hardworking woman driven by love for her children and family.Analytically speaking, Cruz-Torres teases out how the shrimp became a gendered commodity and shrimp street trade a gendered space, fostered and defended through the women's individual and collective resistance strategies in the face of local and global structural inequalities.Cruz-Torres' multi-year field engagement provides her with unique insights into the changueras' lives.In the book, she follows them through marriage and divorce, through aging and death, through economic success and ruin.She observes their children running around the market and later become street vendors themselves, professionals, or-tragically-victims of Mexico's widespread violence.By studying the women's strategic choices and economic maneuvers, Cruz-Torres offers a comprehensive account of how local economies are entwined.Constantly facing the threat of crisis and indebtedness, the women negotiate with and engage in exchanges with shrimp wholesalers, informal moneylenders, women's saving schemes, family, friends, and one another.They are part of local value chains involving ice, transport, storage rooms, plastic bags, lunches, and commodity barters of all
DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12334
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404505927
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