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Maria Antonieta Gómez Álvarez /
Women News Network – WNN - February 27, 2011
San Cristóbal de las Casas – Chiapas,
Mexico — As maids, cooks, nannies and housekeepers they work behind closed
doors, away from the public eye; unprotected by Mexican labor laws.
Carmen Sánchez Gómez’s hand trembles as she
struggles to form the letters her teacher slowly spells out for her. She sits
at a table with five other
These women, all domestic workers in
Beside Sánchez Gómez, Josefa Díaz
Martínez’s tired face shows the years she has spent working hard to keep ‘other
peoples’ homes impeccable. Like most domestic workers in the city, she is
female, indigenous, poor and an immigrant. And like many domestic workers, she
has experienced the occupational hazards of mistreatment, sexual abuse and
economic exploitation.
Since September 2006, Concepción López has
coordinated literacy classes and workshops for a domestic workers. A recent
group of six domestic workers and their children in
The women in the group are united by their
hardships and the trying paths that led them to domestic work. Most have been
forced to begin their work at a very young age. They are united by an absence
of rights and legal protections that the Mexican government does not provide to
domestic workers.
Approximately 50% of the women in
“As in many Latin American countries, there
are huge income disparities between rich and poor,” says a World Bank Chiapas
report.
Josefa Díaz Martínez, 33, was orphaned when
she was three years old as she was put into the care of her grandparents. Five
years later her grandfather died. On the days of grief her grandmother, “threw
herself into vice,” and was unable to care for eight year old Díaz. It was then
that Díaz Martínez was forced to leave home as she went to work as a maid in
the
Coming from a humble indigenous home Díaz
barely spoke Spanish. Working in a wealthy household meant learning new ways.
Those who employed her had little patience. Her boss told her that if she
didn’t fry eggs correctly she would beat her with the skillet.
Díaz remembered once being stabbed in the
hand with a fork as punishment for setting the table incorrectly.
“It is common for such mistreatment to escalate
into sexual abuse,” said literacy teacher Concepción López. Across
Virginia Martínez Jiménez, 32, came to
It’s a challenge for many women domestic
workers to stay safe in households where they are vulnerable, first as women,
then as low-wage slave laborers. Subjected to degrading treatment and given
little to no dignity by their employers, many forms of abuse range from forced
14 hours work days, an intense amount of unending work that often can cause
chronic health problems.
Indigenous domestic workers also complain
that they suffer racism in the Mestizo homes where they work. Díaz Martínez
says her bosses shamed her for being indigenous.
“The children called me a flea-bitten,
smelly Indian,” says Díaz.
When Diaz got seriously sick, her boss
never helped her or gave her any medical aide, even though at the time she was
still a child.
“She (my boss) said that Indians don’t
understand good treatment, that they only know how to work. I had a fever and
she told me that Indians just have to bear it,” says
“The first family I worked for made me eat
off of separate utensils and plates,” shared Sánchez Gómez, who has worked as a
maid since she was seven years old.
Gómez came to the city from Lagunas de
Teopisca, about 17 miles from
Unfortunately for Sánchez, the family never
followed through with many of their promises, including their promise to pay
for her education.
Current Mexican law does not guarantee a
minimum wage or an eight hour work day for domestic workers, although other
types of employees are provided these protections. In
Live-in maids, who typically work at least
six days a week, often make less than half that. Those who don’t live with
families make more money, between 600 and 700 pesos, about $60 to $70 USD per
month; but they pay for their own food and housing.
The women attending the literacy class run
by Concepción López for Ixim Antsetic have clear ideas about legal reforms that
would better their lives. The list includes reforms for eight hour minimum
workdays, benefits, social security and vacation time.
The women understand clearly that to help
themselves and demand these rights they must become educated.
“We have to be literate. It is incredibly
important that we learn to read and write and learn our rights as domestic
workers,” says Díaz Martínez.
“It’s always been thought that housework
doesn’t matter. It’s poorly paid, and especially since mostly indigenous women
do this work, it’s even less valued,” explained Ixim Antsetic director,
Concepción López.
“Many women start working as children and
spend the rest of their lives as maids and servants,” added López as she
explained how domestics are often unappreciated as they are also left with too
many responsibilities.
It’s a fate that Díaz Martínez hopes her
daughter avoids. “I tell (her) to study, so that she doesn’t live the same kind
of life as me,” said Díaz. “Poor people who never had the opportunity to study
do this (kind of) work. People who have gone to school can dream of other
things, they can find a different kind of work, but us, no.”
Of the Chiapan population, 42.76% over the
age of 15 have not completed primary school. 20.4% have not received any kind
of formal education, as marginalization of indigenous women in
“We are calling for genuine change. We cannot
accept that minorities and indigenous peoples are the most vulnerable members
of our societies and that they remain excluded from decision-making that
affects their lives and the future of our countries,” said “The Chiapas
Declaration,” in a new formal international document adopted by consensus among
participants of the International Parliamentary conference on “Parliaments,
minorities and indigenous peoples: Effective participation in politics,” in
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico, 3 November, 2010.