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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
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“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.

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