Totonaco Gender Roles in Coffee Production

Abstract

The study analyzes gender roles that certain Totonaco-origin men and women who raise coffee in the Zongozotla municipal jurisdiction, in Puebla’s Sierra Norte, take on, as a means of seeing which traditional practices are still being observed as well as to shed light on values and beliefs that have modernized. To reach our goal, we used the participant observation technique and undertook fifteen interviews with Totonaco-speaking women, in the company of their husbands. We interpret the outcomes from a gender-based perspective while respecting indigenous worldviews of all interviewees, women and men alike. We discovered traditional behavior patterns and certain elements that oblige us to re-think gender from first peoples’ perspectives.