Maids
When I first learned that a member of our group going to Chile had
a maid in their host family's house, I was shocked. We were given the
impression that the families who hosted students in Chile were mostly single
mothers who needed the extra income of the stipend they receive for housing a
gringo. So when after a few days of living in my modest townhouse with my small
family my host mother told me the maid was going to come in the next day to
clean, I was even more surprised as I knew no one growing up who had a maid and
had only seen them in movies.
But where I had perceived maid employment as a sign of elite
status back in the states, it's much more commonplace in Chile. I asked my host
mother why maids were so popular, and she responded with an answer she clearly
thought was obvious: because the economy is terrible, there aren’t a lot of
jobs, and these women need the money to keep them from attempting to get money
elsewhere, like prostitution (by the way, transvestite prostitutes are
apparently very popular here and one even lingers on our street corner). Her
answer caught me off guard because in the mountain of research from reputable websites I sifted through before leaving for this
country, I had concluded that the Chilean economy was quite successful and was
the leading reason behind this country being one of the more stable and safer
ones in Latin or South America. Hell, their unemployment is only 6%. Not
enough jobs??
From my perspective, one only needed to take a simple trip to a Viña grocery store to
understand what I thought was a plethora of job creation. Now bear with me now as I know this graph is true...
So, grocery store and job creation: We pull into the
parking lot, wave at the parking lot attendee who sits in a chair, walk into
the store, and begin shopping. Down the cereal aisle, we are approached by a
young woman in a space/jumpsuit-type outfit who is advertising the latest new
cereal brands while her partner in crime down the other aisle coerces us into
buying a different brand of spaghetti sauce. There’s almost one attendee per
aisle, all advertising the shelves behind them. After many failed attempts to
avoid them, we push our overloaded cart to the checkout stations that are
surrounded by baggers all waiting in a line to help out the next station. After
paying for our groceries, my host mom tips the bagger, we nod to the young
security officers standing on a pedestal just watching the crowd, and when we
leave the parking lot, tip the parking lot attendee as well.
^That all felt like a lot of employment
there! But after a conversation with the host mother, I found the catch. While
unemployment may be low, it’s only because there are zillions of underpaid/not
paid workers. All those that my host mother tipped? Their tips are their wages.
And the rest? After some back and forth, I found out that they make in a day
about what I make in a couple of hours as a student worker in the states. This
explains that although unemployment is low, the gap between those with and
those without is about as wide as the country is long.
So that’s my lesson/something I thought was interesting for the
day. If you stuck with me through all of that, thanks mom. I promise the next
installment will be a better read, as we have a week off for Chilean
Independence, and I am headed south!
JJ
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