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A01=María L. Cruz-Torres
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
anthropology of food
Author_María L. Cruz-Torres
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBCC4
Category=JBSF1
Category=JFCV
Category=JHBL
Category=JHMC
changueras
confianza
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
food studies
gender and labor
gender studies
labor and commodities
Language_English
markets in Mexico
Mazatlán
mercado
mercados
PA=Available
political ecology
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
seafood trade
shrimp
shrimp women
Sinaloa
softlaunch
women's studies

Product details

  • ISBN 9781477328019
  • Weight: 454g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 05 Dec 2023
  • Publisher: University of Texas Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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A rich, long-term ethnography of women seafood traders in Mexico.

The "shrimp ladies," locally known as changueras in southern Sinaloa, Mexico, sell seafood in open-air markets, forming an extralegal but key part of the economy built around this "pink gold.” Over time, they struggled to evolve from marginalized peddlers to local icons depicted in popular culture, even as they continue to work at an open-air street market.

Pink Gold documents the shrimp traders' resilience and resourcefulness, from their early conflicts with the city, state, and federal authorities and forming a union, to carving out a physical space for a seafood market, and even engaging in conflicts with the Mexican military. Drawing from her two decades of fieldwork, María L. Cruz-Torres explores the inspiring narrative of this overlooked group of women involving grassroots politics, trans-border and familial networking, debt and informal economic practices, personal sacrifices, and simple courage. She argues that, amid intense economic competition, their success relies on group solidarity that creates interlocking networks of mutual trust, or confianza, that in turn enable them to cross social and political boundaries that would typically be closed to them. Ultimately, Pink Gold offers fresh insights into issues of gender and labor, urban public space, the street economy, commodities, and globalization.

María L. Cruz-Torres is an anthropologist and associate professor at Arizona State University's School of Transborder Studies. She is a coeditor of Gender and Sustainability: Lessons from Asia and Latin America and the author of Lives of Dust and Water: An Anthropology of Change and Resistance in Northwestern Mexico.