Guatemalan Domestic Workers Reveal a Dirty Business

[Judi Lynn]

Guatemalan Domestic Workers Reveal a Dirty Business

By Louisa Reynolds

WeNews correspondent

Monday, May 4, 2015


"It's been hard," says a domestic worker who is struggling to organize and bring the country in line with the region. "The women are afraid and they have been told that if you're a labor organizer you're going to get killed."


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A young indigenous domestic worker in Solola, Guatemala.

Credit: Louisa Reynolds
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GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (WOMENSENEWS)-- At the age of 8, Fidelia Castellanos had just landed her first job as a domestic worker in Guatemala City and her tiny hands were already dry and chapped from washing, cooking and cleaning.

Castellanos had been raised on a coffee and sugar plantation in the municipality of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, in the southwestern department of Escuintla, and she had never seen a TV before.

One day, as she cleared the table after dinner, she momentarily gazed up at the TV screen in amazement. Suddenly, a burning pain in her cheek brought her back to reality and tears began streaming down her face. Her employer's husband had slapped her so that she would never again forget that she was there to work from dawn to dusk and could not remain idle even for a few seconds.

That would be the first of many humiliations that Castellanos would face as a domestic worker.

Her last employer instructed another domestic worker to search her handbag before leaving the house at the end of the day. When she dared to complain, she was fired. Ironically, her employer worked for a well-known human rights organization.

More:
http://womensenews.org/story/labor/150501/guatemalan-domestic-workers-reveal-dirty-business