2024/11/19 by Iselin Åsedotter Strønen · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/sea2.12334
openalex publication_date 2024/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
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 Mazatlán, Mexico. Based on almost two decades of fieldwork (2004–2019), 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 Serdán Street in the northwestern coastal city of Mazatlán —the “Pearl of the Pacific” —in the state of Sinaloa. Since the end of the 1980s, Aquiles Serdán 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 state-sanctioned 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 Mazatlán. 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 kinds. In describing these dealings and transactions, Cruz-Torres emphasizes the importance of confianza—trust. For the changueras, being trustworthy and trusting others make it possible to make a living under precarious circumstances. Sometimes, however, economic desperation drives the women to break these norms of collegiality and trust. Cruz-Torres is careful and respectful when she writes about such breaches, as she is aware of the enormous strains and burdens they carry. Many of the women in Pink Gold are widowed or divorced, or have husbands with limited incomes. Most of them bear the main responsibility not only for the household economy but also for housework, childcare, and often elderly parents. In various ways, they are all scarred by Mexico's patriarchal culture—in some cases, literally, through domestic violence. Their work offers little rest, a lot of stress, precarity, and risk, and limited prospects for social mobility. And yet, they are driven by love for their family and children, and the hope that their efforts will provide better opportunities for the next generation. Cruz-Torres's rich ethnography succeeds in documenting their countless sacrifices and showing how much courage and resilience they—and millions of women like them—mobilize every single day. If I were to wish for something more from Pink Gold, it would be a deeper insight into the wider context of Mexico's shrimp economy, from shrimp aquaculture to export industries. That would have provided an even fuller account of the broader political economy and value chains in which the changueras are embedded. Still, this is a minor objection. All in all, I highly recommend Pink Gold not only for those interested in the role of women in seafood economies, but also for anyone—and especially graduate students—looking for an engaging case that simultaneously grapples with gender and class, urban space, street level economies, commodity analysis, and feminist political economy more broadly. ¡Viva las changueras!