Las Mariposas del Café: landlessness and labour precarity among indigenous trans women in Colombia’s agrarian economy

Abstract                          

This research paper examines how normative gender systems shape processes of dispossession, class differentiation, and labour exploitation for Embera transgender women working in Colombia’s coffee farms. Situated within Marxist political economy and drawing on feminist, queer, and trans materialist contributions, it conceptualises capitalism, colonialism, and cisheteronormativity as co-operating systems that structure exclusion and conditional incorporation in agrarian economies. The research is based on qualitative data collected during fieldwork in Santuario, Risaralda. I used ethnographic methods and conducted interviews with fifteen members of Mariposas del Café – a collective of Indigenous transgender women. The findings show that transgression of gender norms in Indigenous resguardos leads to expulsion and landlessness, forcing Embera trans women into precarious wage labour as coffee harvesters, where their marginalisation becomes a mechanism of capitalist incorporation. Cisheteronormativity thus operates as a structural component of agrarian capitalism, sustaining accumulation through the exploitation of trans and racialised labour. Yet, through gender affirmation and collective organising, Mariposas del Café assert agency and resistance, challenging the cisheteronormative, colonial, and capitalist order that oppresses them.

Keywords

Transgender Indigenous women, land dispossession, agrarian labour exploitation, capitalist agrarian transformation, cisheteronormativity, trans resistance.

Click here to access this working paper