Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-5wvtr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T05:46:20.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Painted Faces: Conflict and Ambiguity in Domestic Servant-Employer Relations in La Paz, 1930–1988

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Lesley Gill
Lesley Gill*
Affiliation:
American Anthropological Association Congressional Fellow
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

“My face grew white on the job, and when I returned to my community, my friends asked me why I was so pale. They said that I looked made up. I had to rub dirt on my face so that I would look browner to them.”

Alicia Mamani, domestic servant, La Paz, Bolivia

“The minute that you turn your back, [servants] use your clothes, your shoes, your make-up, everything.”

Pilar Cordoba, employer, La Paz, Bolivia

The institution of female domestic service in La Paz has been characterized by continuity as well as change, despite the profound social transformations brought about by the Bolivian National Revolution in 1952. Domestic service has historically been the most important source of employment for women in Bolivian cities and Latin American urban centers in general (Glave 1988; Arrom 1985; Kuznesof n.d.). Live-in domestic service continues to be the norm in La Paz, even though the number of live-out household workers is increasing. The dependent nature of the Bolivian economy and enduring gender biases have precluded the absorption of women into “formal sector” employment, and generally depressed wage rates do not permit most women in La Paz the luxury of being full-time mothers, wives, or daughters. As a result, salaried domestic service is not only persisting but expanding as a prolonged economic crisis forces growing numbers of female Aymara Indian immigrants from the countryside to seek wage employment in the homes of criollo women in the city.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , 1990 , pp. 119 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright Senior Scholar research grant. I gratefully acknowledge the comments and editorial advice of Susan Lowes, Ann Zulawski, María Lagos, and Gerald Sider, who also suggested the title. In addition, I would like to thank the four anonymous LAR referees for their constructive criticism and useful suggestions, which greatly improved an earlier version of this article.

References

Acker, Joan 1988 “Class, Gender, and the Relations of Distribution.” Signs 13, no. 3: 473–97.Google Scholar
Albo, Xavier, Greaves, Tomas, and Sandoval, Godofredo 1982 Chukiyawu: la cara aymara de La Paz. Vol. 1. La Paz: Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesino (CIPCA).Google Scholar
Albo, Xavier, and Preiswerk, Matias 1986 Los señores del gran poder. La Paz: Centro de Teología Popular.Google Scholar
Aranibar, Jaime, ET AL. 1984 Migración y empleo en la ciudad de La Paz. Ministerio de Trabajo y Desarrollo Laboral, Serie Resultados no. 9. La Paz: Ministerio de Trabajo y Desarrollo Laboral.Google Scholar
Arrom, Silvia 1985 The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Beneria, Lourdes 1979 “Reproduction, Production, and the Sexual Division of Labor.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 3: 203–25.Google Scholar
Beneria, Lourdes, and Roldan, Martha 1987 The Crossroads of Class and Gender. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bolles, A. Lynn 1986 “Economic Crisis and Female-Headed Households in Urban Jamaica.” In NASH AND SAFA 1986.Google Scholar
Crummet, Maria De Los Angeles 1987 “Rural Women and Migration in Latin America.” In Rural Women and State Policy: Feminist Perspectives on Latin American Agricultural Development, edited by Carmen Diana Deere and León, Magdalena. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.Google Scholar
DIRECCION GENERAL DE ESTADISTICAS 1950 Censo Demográfico de la Ciudad de La Paz. La Paz: Dirección General de Estadísticas.Google Scholar
Ellison, Ralph 1972 The Invisible Man. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Fanon, Franz 1963 The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove.Google Scholar
Glave, Luis Miguel 1988 “Mujer indígena, trabajo doméstico y cambio social en el virreinato peruano del siglo XVII: la ciudad de La Paz y el sur andino en 1684.” Bulletin de L'Institut Français D'Etudes Andines 16: 3–4.Google Scholar
Katzman, David 1981 Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kuznesof, Elizabeth n.d. “A History of Domestic Service in Spanish America (1492-1980).” In Enough is Enough: Domestic Service in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Elsa Chaney and Mary García Castro. Philadelphia: Temple University Press (in press).Google Scholar
MINISTERIO DE PLANEAMIENTO 1986 Bolivia en Cifras, 1985. La Paz: Ministerio de Planeamiento.Google Scholar
Nash, June, and Safa, Helen, EDS. 1986 Women and Change in Latin America. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey.Google Scholar
Radcliffe, Sarah 1985 “Migración femenina de comunidades campesinas.” Allpanchis (Lima) 21, no. 25: 81–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rollins, Judith 1985 Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Safa, Helen 1986 “Female Employment in the Puerto Rican Working Class.” In NASH AND SAFA 1986.Google Scholar
Scott, Allison Macewen 1984 “Economic Development and Urban Women's Work: The Case of Lima, Peru.” In Sex Discrimination and Sex Segregation in Urban Labour Markets in the Third World, edited by Anker, Richard and Hein, Catherine. Geneva: International Labour Organization.Google Scholar
Smith, Margo L. 1973 “Domestic Service as a Channel of Upward Mobility for the Lower-Class Woman: The Lima Case.” In Female and Male in Latin America, edited by Pescatello, Ann. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Sider, Gerald 1987 “When Parrots Learn to Talk, and Why They Can't: Domination, Deception, and Self-Deception in Indian-White Relations.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, no. 1: 3–23.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael, and Rubbo, Ann 1983 “Up off Their Knees: Servanthood in Southwest Colombia.” Latin American Perspectives 10, no. 4: 2–23.Google Scholar
Wilkie, James 1987 “Bolivia: Ironies in the National Revolutionary Process, 1952–1986.” In Statistical Abstract of Latin America, Vol. 25, edited by James Wilkie and David Lorey. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publication.Google Scholar
Young, Grace Ester 1987 “The Myth of Being ‘Like a Daughter.‘” Latin American Perspectives 14, no. 3: 365–80.Google Scholar