Spring 2024 Charlas con Café | Tracing their Own Path: Women Shrimp Traders in Northwestern Mexico

Center for Latin American Studies, Spring 2024 Charlas con Café – a weekly space to hear lectures from a wide variety of experts and discuss topics relevant to the Latin American region, Fridays from 1-2 pm (unless otherwise specified). Coffee & snacks starting at 12:30pm!

In this presentation Dr. Cruz-Torres will provide a close examination of the historical and contemporary participation of women in Mexico’s seafood industry through their livelihoods as seafood traders; their control and use of urban public space; their struggle for organizational and collective action; their familial and household dynamics crucial to their livelihoods; and the many social, political, and economic challenges they face. It traces the rugged and often times blazing path of a group of women shrimp traders (Changueras), from their beginnings as stigmatized street peddlers to their self-formation as politically influential unionized workers, and finally as icons of the local popular culture.

Dr. María L. Cruz-Torres is an Associate Professor in the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University and a cultural anthropologist whose areas of teaching and research include: political ecology; impact of globalization upon local communities and households; gender and work; gender, sustainability and the environment; migration; food systems; and the environmental and social aspects of natural resource management. She earned a B.S. in Marine Biology from the University of Puerto Rico, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Rutgers University. Professor Cruz-Torres has conducted anthropological research in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and in the Cuban community of Southern Florida. She is the author of Lives of Dust and Water: An Anthropology of Change and Resistance in Northwestern Mexico (University of Arizona Press 2004); Voices throughout Time: Life Testimonies of Women Shrimp Traders in Sinaloa, Mexico (Voces en El Tiempo: Testimonios de Vida de Las Camaroneras del Sur de Sinaloa (Autonomous University of Sinaloa Press, 2014); and is also the co-editor of Gender and Sustainability: Lessons from Asia and Latin America (University of Arizona Press, 2012). Her most recent book Pink Gold: Women, Shrimp, and Work in Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2023), examines the historical and contemporary participation of women in the informal sector of the seafood industry of Mexico. Her current research examines the lives of the men and women who work in the formal and export sector of seafood processing in Sinaloa, Mexico. She is also conducting research on the dimensions of food sovereignty and local food systems in Puerto Rico. Methodologically, her research has always combined a mixed methods approach of qualitative ethnography, ecological analysis, archival research, community ethnography, and household surveys.

This is a hybrid event. To join on Zoom, register here.