It’s 3 a.m. and the beach in El Bosque, in southeast Mexico, is humming with small talk and laughter as Viviana Velázquez eases out of her hammock and dashes to the shoreline to greet a boat returning with the night’s catch. Velázquez, 38, and her 13-year-old daughter, Marlene, help the tired fishermen unload the ice boxes and heave a plastic crate full of bonito to the cooperative to be weighed.
The captain pays Velázquez for her help in fish. She saves a couple to fry for breakfast and cashes in the rest for 50 pesos, the equivalent of about $3, and heads back to her hammock, where some friends are eating pastries while catching up on the past week’s dramas.
This work is known locally as garrulear. For decades it was an important source of income, food, and bonding for women in El Bosque, a small fishing community in the state of Tabasco located on a narrow peninsula sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and the Usumacinta River. It is one of the things that Velázquez misses most since s... Read more
