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

Abstract

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.