Mexico - Indigenous Domestics Want Education & Human Rights

Maria Antonieta Gómez Álvarez / Chiapas Correspondent
Women News Network – WNN - February 27, 2011

Chiapas woman

A lone woman stands on the main square of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. Image: Rodrigo HerRaz

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 Latina indigenous women, each bent over sheets of paper. Children finger paint nearby as their mothers learn to print their names.

These women, all domestic workers in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, meet in a sunny courtyard twice a month for literacy classes and workshops that teach them about their rights as workers and as women.

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 San Cristóbal are part of a new class. As a literacy teacher López is director of the Palenque based women’s rights organization, Ixim Antsetic, which means ‘Women of Corn’ in the native indigenous Tzolzil language.

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 Chiapas are illiterate, compared to 30% of the men. Family responsibilities, young motherhood and a relentless need to work due to the hardship of life has contributed to an uphill climb for most women who desperately want an education.

“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 Chiapas’ state capital of Tuxtla-Gutíerrez.

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 Mexico, sexual harassment and abuse are two of the most common problems faced by domestic workers.

Virginia Martínez Jiménez, 32, came to San Cristóbal de las Casas in 1994, displaced from her community by the ongoing conflicts between Zapatistas and the Mexican army. She spent 7 years working for the same family, but was eventually forced to leave. “My boss tried to sexually abuse me and my four-year-old daughter. That was when I left, running from that house,” she admitted.

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.

Children of Chiapas, Mexico

Children play on the streets of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. Image: Rodrigo HerRaz

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 Martinez.

“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 San Cristóbal, and wanted to go to school. But her father became ill and she had to start working. Like many other domestic workers, she scraped by on low meager wages. Her first job as a live-in maid paid little because, from what she understood, her compensation included room, board and school expenses, as well as an allowance of about 500 pesos; about $50 USD per month.

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 Mexico, the minimum wage is 50 pesos, about $5, per day or 1000 pesos per month for a five day work week.

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 Chiapas continues to plague communities inside the region.

“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.