Domestic Workers In Mexico Often Virtually Slaves

by Diego Cevallos

(IPS) MEXICO CITY -- Angelica came to the Mexican capital five years ago to work as a domestic. Although her employer says the young Native woman is like a "daughter," she was not able to go to school, is given no vacation, earns less than $2 a day, and is the first to get up in the household and the last to go to bed.

"They treat me well. The 'senora' takes me everywhere, and at night she lets me watch the soap opera on TV," says Angelica. As she talks, she is closely observed by her employer, to whom she looks for approval when responding to IPS' questions.

Angelica adds that she was 17 when she came to Mexico City. (She and her employer asked that her last name not be used.)

According to the National Women's Institute, 95 percent of the 1.5 million people working as domestic employees in this country of 104 million are girls or women. Most of them work fixed schedules and 50 percent earn around $70 a month.

A majority of these women come from impoverished rural areas, have little to no formal education, and work all of their lives as domestics.

Although under Mexican law employers are obliged to pay domestic workers a decent wage, give them room and board, and provide them with health care coverage, these obligations are rarely fulfilled, according to the Institute.

After a day of washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning, Angelica does not look tired and is enthusiastic as she talks. "I like it here because I don't have the poverty that there is in my house. We're really poor there, not like here," she says.

As she gestures with her hands, red and chafed from washing and cleaning, the young woman says she rarely leaves home, because her employers have warned her that the city is dangerous.

But she does accompany "la senora" to the supermarket, and once went with the whole family on vacation to a beach resort.

"She is like a daughter to me. She is a good girl, although a bit ignorant and strange," Angelica's employer, a middle-class woman who lives with her retired husband, says in private. "Our kids are grown-up and married, so she is my only company now."

Angelica sleeps next to the washing machine in a room of roughly 6 square meters and wears second-hand clothing she is given by her employer.

She says that what she would like most is to be able to buy a TV set for her room, which is located behind the kitchen and the patio where the clothes are hung out to dry.

When asked about her right to vacation days, better wages, a private life and education, the young woman responds that she knows nothing about these things and that the only thing she cares about now is to be free of worries and to be able to send some money home to her relatives.

Angelica's family lives in extreme poverty in a Native district in the mountains of the southern state of Oaxaca.

Among Mexico's Native communities, who make up 10 percent of the population, women are more vulnerable to poverty and illiteracy. Life expectancy among Native women is 71.5 years, compared with 76 years for men. And while illiteracy stands at 18 percent among Native men, the proportion rises to 32 percent among women.

"There is a lot of abuse of domestic employees in the cities, they are often mistreated, and some of them still live as slaves, as if their employers were their owners," says Marcelina Bautista, head of the non-governmental Center of Support and Training for Domestic Employees.

Bautista, who worked as a domestic for 21 years, began three years ago to work in defense of the rights of domestics. In her conversation with IPS, she laments the lack of clear legislation to regulate the work of these women.

"It is work that is looked down upon, poorly paid and not adequately regulated," says the activist, who belongs to the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Domestic Workers, a regional organization that emerged in the late 1980s to advocate for the rights of domestic employees.

The Center of Support and Training for Domestic Employees offers weekend courses for domestics, providing the women with information on their economic and labor rights as well as training in efficient domestic labor techniques.

Studies show that domestics throughout Latin America and the Caribbean share similar problems in exercising and demanding respect for their rights.

Many of them are not even adults. A report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) states that at least 2 million girls work as maids in Latin America and the Caribbean.

These girls are at high risk of various kinds of exploitation, from verbal and emotional mistreatment to sexual abuse and physical violence.

The ILO notes that girls working as domestics are often submitted to discriminatory and humiliating treatment, and frequently work in subhuman conditions, such as sleeping on the floor and eating leftovers, and working 12- to 16-hour days seven days a week, with no holidays or vacation, which renders it impossible for them to obtain an education.

Although Angelica insists that she is treated well, some of the ILO's observations apply to her: she began to work while still a minor; she has no access to schooling; she works long days; she is given no vacation; and she is unaware of most of her rights.

Between 2002 and 2004, the Mexican prosecutor's office in defense of labor registered just 435 complaints from domestic workers, a tiny number compared to the thousands received from workers in other sectors of the economy.

Domestics do not have a culture of filing complaints when they suffer abuses, which must be fought, says Bautista, who founded the Center of Support and Training for Domestic Employees with assistance from several private sector organizations and a grant from the MacArthur Foundation in the United States.