CULTURE

Domestica: Immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence

By Joseph Nevins

While researching her new book, Doméstica, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo attended the funerals of three children of domestic workers. Two died in a fire with their mother in their apartment, and one fell from the balcony at her public housing project. She sees these deaths as “neither accidents of fate nor the result of parental abuse, but rather tragedies of poverty.” Had their mothers earned better wages, she contends, they would have had safer housing, and the deaths might have been prevented.

Hondagneu-Sotelo’s own mother worked as a doméstica in her native Chile and in the United States. The daughter grew up to be a sociology professor at the University of Southern California. Now she employs a Salvadoran woman to clean her house on a bi-weekly basis. While the presence of domestics is a sign of growing opportunities for American women, including the author of Doméstica herself, the fact that these women are almost exclusively the ones in charge of hiring and managing domestic employees “speaks to the extent to which feminist, egalitarian goals of sharing household cleaning and care work remain unachieved.”

Dedication to such egalitarianism underlies the author’s academic work, as well as her political activism. Dince 1990, Hondagneu-Sotelo has been involved with the Domestic Workers Association, part of the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). The group receives the royalties earned through the book’s sale.

The bulk of Hondagneu-Sotelo’s extensively researched and very readable book focuses on the daily travails of domestic workers and their interactions with employers. These include the difficulties faced by live-in maids or nannies — the most exploited of domestics – and the lack of privacy and clear boundaries between work and non-work time. The frequently poor communication between employer and employee can often result in troubling misunderstandings regarding matters such as pay and the definition of tasks.

The nature of domestic work can also be very lonely – especially for housekeepers who, while relatively well paid, work in numerous houses and often have very little cantact with their employers. In exploring these issues, the author provides myriad insights into how both employees and employers can and do avoid such pitfalls.

Domestic work has deep roots in the US economy. It was the largest source of paid employment for American women during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But changing social relations and economic growth led to new opportunities for women and a significant decline in such work, causing some to predict the occupation’s demise. Recent years, however, saw a dramatic increase in demand for domestic help and in new recruits.

The greatest concentrations of paid domestic employment are in certain urban areas, such as Los Angeles. Such work, argues Hondagneu-Sotelo, tends to emerge in cities where income is relatively inequitable, where multinational capital concentrates and where there are large numbers of Caribbean and Latina immigrants. The destabilizing effects of globalization and neoliberalism along with the presence of violent, authoritarian regimes – often supported by Washington – have played an important role in driving women from their home countries. Growing geographical concentrations of wealth and changes in immigration laws also have attracted them to richer countries.

Domestic work in the United States has long been the domain of poor women, immigrants, and women of color, but “ over the last century, paid domestic workers have become more homogeneous, reflecting the subordinations of both race and nationality/immigration status,” Hondagneu-Sotelo writes. As mostly Latina and Caribbean immigrants – often undocumented ones – and racialized foreigners, women domestic are disenfranchised in multiple ways. And like women who work in the home more generally, domestics are forced to challenge the widespread perception that housework and childcare are not “real” work. This patriarchal worldview manifests itself in the unjust ways both employers and government treat domestics.

Hondagneu-Sotelo suggests various courses of action, one being the strengthening and enforcement of regulations that govern domestic employment. The author also advocates a public education program aimed at employers of domestics, in addition to collective organizing by and for those who work in the profession. Curiously, she does not offer any suggestions about how to challenge the immigration and international hierarchies that underlie the injustices embodied by domestic work.

Doméstica sometimes has the feel of a primer for both would-be and current domestics and their employers. Yet the book is much more: It is also a manifesto for justice, of sorts, and a practical guide to political strategies and tactics to ensure greater respectability and rights for domestic labor.

Source: In These Times Book
cover courtesy of www.ucpress.edu

Libraries, bookstores celebrate Banned Books Week

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s classic novel about the Depression, had a rocky introduction in American libraries back in 1939. It was burned by the East St. Louis (IL) Public Library, barred from the Buffalo (NY) Public Library, and banned in Kansas City, MO, and Kern County, CA. Even today, as the National Steinbeck Center celebrates the centennial of Steinbeck’s birth, his books continue to be challenged. According to the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, Of Mice and Men was the second most challenged book of 2001, after the Harry Potter series, arguably a new children’s classic.

To raise awareness regarding the censorship of books today, events, exhibits, and read-outs across the country will be held during Banned Books Week, September 21-28. The read-outs will feature local celebrities and community members reading from their favorite banned book, with a focus on American classics such as Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Color Purple, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The ALA will host a read-out at its national headquarters in Chicago on September 24.

Banned Books Week 2002 has the theme “Let Freedom Read: Read a Banned Book,” and is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the ALA, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers and the National Association of College Stores. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.

“The ability to read, speak, think and express ourselves freely are core American values,” said Judith Krug, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “We hope the read-outs will help remind Americans of the importance of our freedom at a time when freedoms are being eroded in the United States. Now — more than ever — we must let freedom read.”

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom has recorded more than 6,500 book challenges since 1990, including 448 in 2001. It is estimated that less than one-quarter of all challenges are reported and recorded. A “challenge” is defined as a formal, written complaint filed with a library or school about a book’s content or appropriateness. The majority of challenges (roughly 60 percent) are brought by parents, followed by library patrons and administrators. Each challenge represents an effort to remove books from school curricula or library shelves.

Books many parents and teachers consider American classics, including The Grapes of Wrath, The Bluest Eye and Lord of the Flies, are among the most frequently challenged books of the past 12 years, when the Office for Intellectual Freedom began tracking attempts to remove books from schools and libraries.

“Unfortunately, any book can come under attack for any reason,” said Chris Finan, president of American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. “Steinbeck’s books have been deemed ‘filthy’ and ‘profane,’ while Maurice Sendak’s popular In the Night Kitchen has been challenged for nudity. I hope families will pick up a banned book and read it and discuss it together.”

While committed parents, students, librarians, teachers and other concerned citizens are fighting to keep books on the shelves, and more and more challenges are unsuccessful, the freedom to read continues to be threatened from Iowa to Connecticut. The James Kennedy Public Library in Dyersville, Iowa, last month banned Sari Locker’s teen advice book Sari Says: The Real Dirt on Everything from Sex to School, and would-be censors in Cromwell, Ct., are petitioning to have the Newbery Medal-winning children’s books The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare, and Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson, removed from the Cromwell middle school’s curriculum.

“Not every book will be right for every reader, but the freedom to choose for ourselves from a full array of possibilities is a hard-won right that we must not take for granted in this country,” said Judith Platt, director of the Association of American Publishers’ Freedom to Read program.

Source: American Library Association

Direct democracy in Colombia: An Interview with Alirio Arroyave and Arquimedes Vitonás

By Justin Podur

Sept. 20— Colombian community leaders Alirio Arroyave and Arquimedes Vitonás were in Toronto last month to give talks as part of the Canada-Colombia Solidarity Campaign. Rabble interviewer Justin Podur caught up with both men during their stay and spoke with them about participatory politics, direct democracy and what can happen when the people making the decisions are also the people affected by them.

Alirio Arroyave is a peasant leader from the community of Tarso, Antioquia, in northwestern Colombia. For the past several years, Tarso has been the site of a Municipal Constituent Assembly, a successful experiment in direct democracy in which the entire community participates in local-level decisions.

Justin Podur: Tell me about Tarso and about the democratic processes the community has created there.

AlirioArroyave: Tarso is an agricultural community of about 7600. Production is mainly ranching and coffee. What we have done is create a participative assembly called the Municipal Constituent Assembly. It is an open space in which members of the community exercise their rights and participate in decisions.

Podur: What kinds of decisions?

Arroyave: The Municipal Development Plan, for example. This is a three-year plan whose content comes from a collective process. There are five working groups: on jobs, social security, environment, democracy and human rights/duties—we don’t want to speak only of human rights but also of duties. Participation is an obligation of citizens. The construction of society—of a better society—means people have to fulfill their obligations.

Each of these working groups has 150 spokespeople named by the community, representing social organizations or neighborhoods. Each delegate is named to the assembly. The assembly is a planning instrument that coordinates the initiatives of the municipality. The mayor is a participant, the municipal council members participate, members of the church participate. The system represents an agreement of the citizens to work together on a solution to our social and economic problems.

Podur: What’s the history of this project?

Arroyave: It is quite new. It started in October 1999 with a forum on Tarso in the new millennium. Some local activists struck a committee to unify the community. We held workshops on participation and mechanisms of participation. We were motivated by a social and economic crisis in the municipality. There was growing public debt. There was violence and a growing problem of displacement.

There was, of course, unemployment because of falling coffee prices. This is all due to a crisis in a form of governance—a product of how politics was done.

Politics is not a science of administration but something the community lives. But politics was being presented by the existing government as just administration, and that administration inevitably put the interests of capital before collective interests. This brought us to the crisis.

Traditionally, municipal politics consisted solely of a drive to get executive power. The executive in power seeks to get a majority in council, control of the bureaucracy and control of resources. The council — the representatives of the people — lose any power to make proposals.

When the constituent assembly took over, we restructured the administration and re-invested in social spending. We have made education free; we have increased health care access; we’ve made housing improvements. We are making improvements in the quality of education and the quality of the environment, as well. We are looking to create more employment.

Podur: What do you lack?

Arroyave: Several things. We need international co-operation. We would like to build food security, for example. And to eradicate poverty. International co-operation at all kinds of levels can help. Above all, we need protection of our process. We are threatened. We are an example of democracy and peace, and we are threatened by the war in the country. We need the protection of the international community so we can build welfare for our community.

Arquimedes Vitonás is a Paez indigenous leader from Toribio, Cauca — in southwestern Colombia. Cauca has a democratically elected indigenous governor, Floro Tunubala, but also practices direct democracy through local councils. The councils enact Planes de Vida, or Life Projects, which deal with land reform, development, education, health care and general governance.

Podur: What are some of the principles behind the Life Projects of Cauca?

Arquimedes Vitonás: Our work is based on three principles. First, we start from the premise that nobody owns. The only entity that can own is the great spirit. When a person begins to feel like they can own things, that’s where the problems begin. Nobody owns oil. Nobody owns water or wind or wood — how could they? Who could have given it to them? To us, only the spirit — in our language Chaus — can own.

Our second principle is that everything must be shared.

Otherwise, you are contributing to jealousy and to violence. We have self-regulation around this principle. If I gain and gain, greedily, and do not share, I will be ostracized. So not sharing makes one worse off in our communities.

Third, and this is related to the second, is that someone who does not share, who thinks he owns, is stealing from the community, from nature and from the spirits. This behavior merits punishment.

Podur: It seems clear that your political work is inseparable from, founded on, a certain cultural and spiritual fabric. How much it is possible for outsiders to learn from you if your progress is based on your particular social fabric? Can outsiders apply the lessons you have learned?

Vitonás: I believe so, yes. For example, I think people here could learn about solidarity from us. I have seen only a little here, but it seems to me there is an extreme individualism here. Everyone is out for themselves. For the most part, people don’t even know each other. You can go to a party, dance with someone, see them on the street the next day and not even say hello. To us, the idea of accompaniment is sacred—being with someone or being there for someone on a personal level but also on a community or political level. If we hear that someone has died, we will go to their house to accompany their family.

Another thing I would teach people here is to love life. To live. It seems to me that people here are not happy. Their identity, their life, revolves around work. To us, work is about doing what you need. We work to live. We plan as we go. We refuse to stop living, to stop laughing, even if there is violence. That’s a kind of resistance to violence.

But is our political process inseparable from culture? I think it is. The municipal government, which we [the indigenous of Northern Cauca] now control, shares out the public resources. If our cultural values of sharing did not prevail, our government would be impossible. And there are cases of the community having to sanction authorities who came to believe that the municipality’s car, for example, was their own personally to use.

Podur: Cauca is one of the sites of the most successful land reform in the hemisphere. Could you give an example of a land recuperation?

Vitonás: First of all remember that the land was ours. It was lost only in the 1950s and 1960s during La Violencia. At that time, we were displaced by force by large landowners, and these seizures of land were then legalized by the government. When the indigenous returned from flight, they found themselves workers of these large landowners. So they began in the 1970s to recover the land.

It is a long process. First, there are community meetings. These happen between 1 and 4 am, as they are prohibited during the day. They are as secret as possible. There is no writing, since to the authorities and landowners in those days having a typewriter was far worse than having a gun. During the meetings, 200 to 500 workers would get involved through coming to agreements about decisions.

The next step is the occupation itself, which we do at dawn, taking over the territory with the people by simply starting to work the land. There are already set escape routes and people watching, however. So when the police and army come, as they always do, we would run and hide. The police would stay for three or four days, and leave—at which point the people would return.

After months of this, maybe years of this, during which there are assassinations, attempts to single out leaders, etc., the owner sees that he has to negotiate.

There were also people on the inside, fighting with legal instruments and legalizing the conquests that the people had won on the ground. It is a long fight, and many were killed, but we recovered the land.

Having recovered it, we made the land collective property. Sometimes we have continued with ranching, but we’ve always added diversity, food security and trees to the mix. The ranch becomes a ranch, farm and grove. As a consequence, we’re accused of lowering meat and milk production. That is true, but we have trees and water here where we did not before.

Source: Rabble:http://www.rabble.ca