Categoría: Inglés

Translated by Marvin Najarro She just needs to tie the shoelaces of her snickers and she will be ready; with her neatly ironed uniform and carefully tied up hair, Soledad is about to start her third job. She takes a look from behind the kitchen’s door and sees that the room is full to bursting; she estimates there are at least five hundred persons that have to be served by six waiters; three women, and three men.     In the mornings she works as a seamstress in a laundromat, the mending she does fatten the business owner’s wallet; he pays her…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan She observes her cracked fingertips because of so much cleaning chemical use. Her hands, used to working the land, have now cleaned restaurants and shopping centres for twenty four years. Originally from Camotán. Chiquimula, Guatemala, Tana left her traditional indigenous clothes behind and started wearing jeans, t-shirts and tennis shoes. She belongs to the Maya Ch’orti people. Tana and another 15 girls from her community left together. Her village became a dry corridor, after decades of being fertile land that nourished the crops. There wasn’t any water nor food and this obligated Tana and many others…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan Cayetana turns on the stove and starts heating up the food she will put in containers for her lunch. It is four in the morning. She fills up five 1.5 liter plastic bottles of water that she will drink during her working day. She puts tortillas in her lunchbox that have been heated, wrapped in aluminium and then enclosed in plastic bags. She checks everything is there, the container of rice, beans, scrambled eggs and the tortillas. She puts her knee pads on, double pants, double sweaters, a jacket and her Caterpillar type boots. in her…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan Rosa tries to reposition the nylon bag full of oranges that she carries on her back. She is barely able to take a step because the bag weighs fifty pounds. She is short in stature and the bag is half her size. The pain in her back makes her walk hunched over. Rosa has been working in the same job for sixteen years ever since she came to California from Xicotepec, Puebla, Mexico. She barely speaks Spanish. English even less, she know only very few words. Rosa is an indigenous Otomi. She speaks mountain Otomi, one…

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Translated by Katrina Hassan Justina cleans hotel rooms for a living, twenty two of them a day. Sometimes it can be twenty five, depending on if any of her colleagues miss work that day. Her shift begins at 5 a.m. and finishes at 7 p.m. fourteen hours in total. Monday through Friday. Saturdays and Sundays she rents a space at a Mexican supermarket. One square meter for twenty five dollars a day, where she sells hand embroidered blankets. She embroiders them on nights when she can’t sleep, and there are many. Money from the blankets pay for her gasoline. From…

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