Indigenous women: Stories of the reproduction of life in Guatemala. A reflection on Silvia Federici’s visit

Abstract

Doña Jovita Cardona was a Mam girl raised on a coffee plantation in the department of San Marcos, Guatemala. From a very young age she was responsible for preparing food for the workers, while she listened to and took part in conversations about the injustices her relatives were fighting against. At the age of twelve she went to Guatemala City to work as a domestic worker in a Ladino household, where she was forced to work full days without rest and to wash herself constantly because “she could not prepare the food and touch things in the house unless she had bathed.”