and the author of Lives of Dust and Water: An Anthropology of Change and Resistance in Northwestern Mexico.
Cruz-Torres applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Pink Gold: Women, Shrimp, and Work in Mexico, and reported the following:
Page 99 introduces us to the complex and highly competitive work that women shrimp traders in Mexico perform. When the reader opens the book on page 99, the first encounter is a photograph of a woman dressed in a long shirt and a skirt pulling a plastic bucket on top of a folding wheeled cart along a street. Zoraida or Doña Zory (not her real name) is a shrimp vendor who lives in a rural community near Mazatlán. I first met her one late morning in the summer of 2009 at the Mazatlán’s shrimp market while she was buying shrimp from another vendor I knew. She came to the market that day, as she often did, to buy the shrimp that she was going to sell that day. The woman shrimp vendor who introduced us, explained to me that Zoraida was a cubetera, or a woman who sells shrimp from a bucket walking from door to door along the streets of the middle-class colonias or neighborhoods in Mazatlán City. Shrimp vendors like her, in contrast to those who sell from stands at the shrimp market, lack a permanent space to work. That day, after I explained to her my intention of writing a book about women shrimp traders, she invited me to accompany her, so I could experience it first-hand. We departed the shrimp market that muggy morning heading towards one of the colonias, not too far from the shrimp market. It took us about 20 minutes to reach the main street of the colonia, walking under the already hot sun to begin the long hours of sweating and selling. What impressed me the most about Zoraida was not just her indefatigable energy but her optimism, even in the face of uncertainty. Even when people refused to buy her shrimp she asked me not to lose hope since she was certain that someone eventually would buy it. The text below the photograph is a continuation of the previous page with the subheading “Zoraida Santana, A Cubetera.” It describes Zoraida’s routine, the tools she uses to carry and sell her shrimp, and how she advertises her product.Learn more about Pink Gold at the University of Texas Press website.
Page 99 provides readers with a good example of some of the key themes that the book addresses in regards to women’s role in Mexico’s seafood industry. Readers will get a glimpse of women’s struggles to pursue a decent and independent livelihood in the midst of economic, social, political, and environmental uncertainty. Thus, the Page 99 Test works partially for Pink Gold: Women, Shrimp, and Work in Mexico, since it explains a category of work, among others, that many women perform as shrimp traders. But the emphasis of the book is to better understand how many women who began their work as cubeteras selling shrimp in the streets of their home communities eventually made their journey to Mazatlán where after many years of political and social struggles they were finally able to organize a labor union, gained access to public space, and developed their own street shrimp market. My book also details the processes and various mechanisms that women utilized to craft their unique livelihoods within the traditionally male-dominated fishing industry. Based on long-term anthropological research of 16 years, including archival historical research, oral interviews, and participant observation, my book is an ethnography and theoretical treatment of the manner in which women in Northwestern Mexico pursue their daily livelihoods as informal shrimp traders. It traces their history of struggle from a stigmatized and marginalized group of women to their rise and recognition as icons of the local popular culture.
The book begins with an introduction to the city of Mazatlán, “the shrimp capital of the world,” in Northwestern Mexico and its dynamic and unique beachfront promenade or malecón. Then it transports us to one of the main streets in the old town section to meet a group of women locally called changueras, to learn about their struggles and efforts to organize politically so they could gain legal access to the marketing of shrimp and the use of public space in one of the busiest streets of Mazatlán. We learn about their labor union and their shrimp market and how both shape their daily lives. We get insights into their social relations inside and outside of their market, their struggle to balance work with family and household obligations, and about their performance and portrayal in various forms of expression of the local and regional popular culture. Overall, Pink Gold: Women; Shrimp, and Work in Mexico provides the reader with a first-hand account of women’s work as shrimp traders and of the role of shrimp, one of the most valuable natural resources in Mexico, regarded as “pink gold” not just because of its economic value, but also because of its contribution to the local gastronomy and food culture of the region and as a crucial cultural reference of many dimensions.
--Marshal Zeringue
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