Maids, Maids or Housewives: synonymous with a single deletion story.
“Xenophon writes: People who engage in manual work are never elevated to high positions and it is reasonable. Condemned for the most part to be sitting all day, some even enduring a continual fire, they cannot but have their body altered and it is very difficult for the spirit not to resent it. "(PAUL LAFARGUE, Right to Laziness, LCC, electronic publication)
In this brief article we have chosen to deal with genealogy, so to speak, with housework, we could have chosen any another function and/or attribution considered residual within capitalist society, where wages and status are equally residuals; this is the case of street sweepers[1], masons, servants, cold buoys, and a whole range of professions whose specialization and degree of proficiency are minimally required, that is, they are considered activities of a rudimentary nature, where cognitive ability would not be as relevant, compared to other areas, positions conspicuous whose accreditation would be linked to the individual's intelligence and by their ability to perform complex tasks, unintelligible for incipient.
These simple premises seek to legitimize the gradations and social division of labor, to those who say that Fordism had died, that the difference between office and the factory floor had been dissolved by methodologies and paradigms of inclusion and co-participation, but the reality that escapes the theories of great administrators, shows that specialization and functional segregation in contemporary capitalist society, has inexorably offended way, people whose opportunities offered them a limited existential field, History shows that reality is multiple, that is, rich and poor; Catholics and Protestants; young and old, even being at the same historical time, decode their reality and circumscribe it in a peculiar way, thus building a identity, its interface with the world, so much of what people are, or will become, will depend on the cultural and/or existential apparatus placed in their disposition. In other words, what would be the geniuses of our time if they were not armed with the knowledge that gave them the basis for their discoveries, it would be like expecting an Indian from the Xingu to build an atomic bomb, in the first place, its cultural framework would not conceive such an apparatus, there would be no logic, no raw material, no previous knowledge, in short, it is like some anthropologists say: "we have a biological apparatus prepared to live a thousand lives", depending of course on which one we are awarded.
From the above, we can define that the ambiguities of professional activities and their corollary of satisfaction or marginalization come from artificial inequalities, conventions. historically delimited, whose roots we can find through a careful resonance of the history of civilizations and our case more precisely, of the slavery past Brazilian, which engendered at least mistaken classifications, anamorphosis that deliberated what would have value and what would not, building virtual walls that protected the fortunate of the underprivileged.
The freedman faced the competition of the European immigrant, who did not fear degradation due to the confrontation with the black and thus absorbed the best opportunities for free work and independent (even the most modest ones, such as shining shoes, selling newspapers and vegetables, transporting fish or other utilities, exploring the trade in knickknacks, etc.). [...] eliminated to residual sectors of that system, blacks remained on the sidelines of the process, withdrawing from it personalized, secondary and occasional benefits [...]. In short, Brazilian society has left blacks to their own fate, laying on their shoulders the responsibility of re-educating themselves and transforming itself to correspond to the new standards and ideals of man, created by the advent of free labor, the republican regime and the capitalism. [2]
Obviously when it comes to domestic workers [3], that over time their designation has undergone synonymous changes, but semantically the predecessor terms, namely: mucama [4]; created [5] and servant [6], crystallized and/or internalized functional mediocrity and, therefore, remuneration; so much so that only recently, after five hundred years, domestic workers came to possess some of the rights that have been enjoyed for decades. by other workers in other activities, obviously their wages remain infinitesimal, even though it is hard work, vital for the consubstantiation of both the model and the current toilet, where cleanliness and organization are essential features of a house of “people good"; as well as the family structure of today whose parents also work outside the home and leave their homes in the hands of people who do not they had no choice but to do the "undesirable" jobs, as if what the maids did was something dirty, degrading. But unfortunately this is what becomes clear when we observe the bonus destined to them, we know that human speeches contradict each other when we observe their actions.
The history of Brazilian domestic servants is intertwined with the history of our slavery, not only she but almost all functions discredited, since, to the ex-slave what remained were the residual occupations, as Florestan Fernandes would say, for this statement the newspapers of the time corroborate and, more precisely, the classifieds of jobs, which concurrently denounce the options for people of color, who, even after the abolition and proclamation of the Republic, were not evident only economic inequalities, but, and above all, existential inequalities, those that make it possible to glimpse, the hope of conquering a clod of Grand Fatherland.
We will cite the occupations most offered among the various delimited and deliberately reserved for blacks, even after abolition, already in full Republic, they are: "carrier of boxes", "cook", "butler", "clerk", "seamstresses", "candy sellers", "bread carrier", "laundresser", "maid", "saieiras", "basket loader", "guava pullers ”, “helper of tailor", "cigarette maker", "barber officer", "baker", "baker", "carpenter", "nanny", "wet nurse", "kitchen helper", dishwasher" and appearing overwhelmingly The function of "created”, in all verified classifieds, the reference to color is what endorses, accredits the occupation of these posts and, in those cases in which we mentioned above, where the functions are the least paid and therefore those that require less qualification, that is, they are residual, "inferior" functions within the occupational hierarchy capitalist, as they are until today, is the case of the maid, our maid, a class with the lowest salary levels and which has the least legal guarantees of the worker. We will transcribe some texts from these newspapers in order to contextualize our inferences.
“We need a black servant: Rua Visconde de Sapucahy n. 169ª”; “We need a black maid, who cooks and washes; in the old Guarda street n. 30.”; “you need a nigga to arrange the house and deal with children, you pay 15$; at the Ombudsman Center n. 20, 1st floor.”. “we need a middle-aged black woman who knows how to cook, on Ajuda n. 27, 1st floor”; “We need an old black woman to cook and wash, who can sleep in the house; in the street General Polydoro n. 24.”; a black girl is needed for a nanny; on Senador Eusébio street n. 9, house.”; “We need a black grocer, who is faithful and without vices, on Haddock Lobo n. 18F.”; “You need a little girl between 12 and 13 years old to go around with children aged between year and middle; Rua da Passagem n. 67, Botafogo." “You need an old lady or an old black woman for light work; on Rua da Ajuda nº 187, 2nd floor.”[7]
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The modest modalities offered to blacks do not allow them to reverse their exclusion, social anomie, because their allocations were analogous to the slave period, which insisted on internalizing in social idiosyncrasy the underlying gender of the black.
Blacks and mulattos remained on the sidelines or found themselves excluded from general prosperity, as well as from the their political earnings, because they were unable to enter this game and sustain their rules. As a result, they lived within the city, but did not progress with and through it. They constituted a social congérie dispersed throughout the neighborhoods, and shared in common only an arduous, obscure and often deleterious existence. In this situation, instead of correcting itself, the state of social anomie transplanted from captivity was aggravated [...] almost half a century after the abolition, the black and the mulattos had not yet conquered their own safe niche within the urban world, which would make that stage an inevitable transitional episode, but transposable. They paid with their own lives, uninterruptedly, for the yearnings for freedom, independence and consideration that encouraged them to "try their luck", leaning on the material and moral compensations of urban civilization [...] The most coveted positions remained “closed” and inaccessible; the “open” positions were selective according to criteria that could only episodically favor a small number of “elements of color”. [8]
Veiled, unconscious or deliberate strategy, it doesn't matter, the issue is that the tiny roles within the labor market offered to graduates of slavery, it helped and has helped to perpetuate economic and, therefore, social weakness, silencing its voice before an economic system rooted in racist selection practices, anachronistically feeding a colonial feeling, whose permanence forged a kind of unconscious collective. Therefore, unprepared, disbelieving, abandoned to their own fate, the black man lacked almost everything, there was no planning to dump them into a world whose logic would be unintelligible to a ex-captive. Thus, with no time to adapt, re-educate and internalize the ethos of a free worker, with no means to compete with whites, and aspiring to occupy more valued positions, blacks behaved in a dispersed way, almost neurasthenic.
We bring this issue to the fore at a time of real revolt and as a form of protest, yes, without worrying about criticism about our scientism, because, as we also watch the shamelessness and the total absence of embarrassment with which the media highlights activities such as: cleaning women, street cleaners, peons, in short, are stereotyped as the consubstantiation of failure, because it is very common for soap operas to report to these professions in a disrespectful way, even if camouflaged in rice powder of a grotesque ingenuity. lived by Guilhermina Ginle who, at the end of the novel “Paraíso Tropical”, received as a “punishment”, so to speak, an “unfortunate” ending, at least that was what the author probably should have in mind when he "ridiculed" her by putting her in the shoes of a street sweeper in Rio de Janeiro, as if this profession were a penance, the same happened recently to a couple of gentlemen in the soap opera Seven Sins who simply had an aversion to the work of cleaning workers in a luxury hotel and achieve a majestic end by winning the lottery and getting rid of this "martyrdom" that would be the cleaning service.
The worst thing is that the authorities also reverberate this prejudiced ideology, so much so that they have adopted it as a penance for young offenders, the “punishment” of carrying out sweeping services for a few days, a situation that had been received with indignation by the class that claimed to be insulted, because their profession should not be seen as a mere punishment and treated with disgust, they say they are proud to do the that they do. Another aspect evident in soap operas concerns the established pattern of maids, that is, most of them are composed of black women, so far we agree, since this is unfortunately our reality, because, as we have already explained, it has roots in our slavery.
The question is how long will we treat with such disdain people who work hard, doing what graduates and suits deem humiliating to do, for this bequeathed to the "subalterns", but as if the workload was not enough and, paradoxically, the degraded wages, they still find other ways to vilifying simple people who without shame struggle to survive using the means they have, challenging with an open heart a world whose glamour it depends on their work who picks up the heavy and the dirt, but whose hands are not as dirty as those who are responsible for the immobility in the structure. Brazilian social
Grades:
[1] Gari [From the antr. (Aleixo) Gary, developer of a former company in charge of cleaning the streets of Rio de Janeiro.] Noun of two genders. 1. Public cleaning employee who sweeps the streets; garbage man: “No papers were seen in the gutters; the street sweepers kept the streets impeccable” (Maria Julieta Drummond de Andrade, Um Bouquet of Artichokes, p. 32). New Aurélio Electronic Dictionary version 5.0 © The New Aurélio Dictionary of the Portuguese Language corresponds to the 3rd. edition, 1st. Printed by Editora Positivo, revised and updated by Aurélio Século XXI, The Dictionary of the Portuguese Language, containing 435 thousand entries, phrases and definitions. ©2004 by Regis Ltd.
[2] FERNANDES, Florestan - Integration of blacks in class society. São Paulo: Editora Ótica, 1978, p. 19-20.
[3] Domestic [F. of domestic (4).] Feminine noun. 1.Maid maid; maid, maid. [Cf. domestica, from v. domestication.] Op. Cit.
[4] maidservant [From the quimb. mu’kama, ‘slave amasia’.] Feminine noun. 1. Bras. Angola The young black slave and pet who was chosen to help with housework or accompany family members, and who was sometimes the wet-nurse. [Var. (bras.): mucamba and camba2. See macuma.]. Ditto, ibidem.
[5] Created [Female of servant (2 and 3).] Feminine noun. 1.Woman employed in domestic service; housekeeper. Ditto, ibidem.
[6] Servant (is) [From lat. servu.] Male noun. 1.He who has no rights, or does not have his person and property. 2. In feudal times, an individual whose service was attached to the land and transferred with it, although he was not a slave. 3.Creado, server, servant; servant. 4. Slave (6): servant of duty. Adjective. 5.That is not free. 6.Who provides services; servant. 7. Who has the status of servant or slave. [Cf. deer.] maidservant [From lat. servant.] Feminine noun. 1.Maid, maid. 2.Woman absolutely subject to others; slave. [Cf. deer.]. Ditto, ibidem.
[7] National LIBRARY. Microfilm sector. Jornal do Commercio, January 1, 1888; January 8, 1890; and April 14, 1901.
[8] FERNANDES, Florestan -- Op. Cit. P. 17-29.
By Ricardo Corrêa Peixoto
Columnist Brazil School
Historian, researcher and student of the History of the Marginals, author of several articles and essays on social exclusion, Empire-Republic transition, slavery-capitalism.
Sociology - Brazil School
