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The Rice Thresher
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by Rachel Krause thresher staff
Guillermoprieto is a regular writer for the New Yorker and the author of two books about Latin American culture, Samba and The Heart That Bleeds. Guillermoprieto's third book, Looking For History: Dispatches From Latin America (Age of Unreason) will be published in April. She began her lecture entitled "The Servant Text" with two personal anecdotes illustrating Latin American social realities. Both dealt with her relations with a household servant who worked for her. One story was about her interactions with a pregnant black woman who came to Guillermoprieto begging for employment while she was living in Bogota. She took the woman in as a maid. Guillermoprieto described her initial experiences as a patrona, her increasing frustration with the arrangement and her final relief when her servant opted to leave on her own initiative. This story appeared in both a Mexican magazine and the New Yorker but received surprisingly different reactions from people on opposite sides of the border. Guillermoprieto's Latin American friends found the story charming and funny while many people she knew in the United States had a different, almost guilty reaction. The response was strong enough to cause the U.S. publisher to change parts of the story, including giving the maid a more domestic appearance. These polar reactions, she thinks, are due to the different views north and south of the border about the morality of having a domestic servant, and they ultimately stem from the difference between Latin American fatalism and U.S. puritanism. Women in the United States and Europe face ethical issues about having servants that women in Latin America do not. Even Latin American feminists do not have qualms about hiring domestic help because, as Guillermoprieto explained, "poverty alters the order of moral issues." She cited a conservative estimate that there are 1.5 million needy women in Mexico who work, or are willing to work, as maids. Having a household servant is normal and often mutually beneficial, she said. In the United States, however, people do not want to talk about domestic help. "The subject," she said, "is intimate and embarrassing in ways that sex and money no longer are ... [because] the issues are not about servants, but about exploitment, gender discrimination, dependence." Guillermoprieto showed a 10-minute video of her interviews with numerous maids in Latin America to give a firsthand account of this type of servitude. Most seemed content with their occupation and considered it a good, honest job. Out of 20 interviews, Guillermoprieto said she only encountered one rebel who was obviously angry about her situation. She attributed the mostly positive attitude to "Latin American fatalism" and said these women do not feel shame or self-pity because of their employment. Guillermoprieto stated several times that she wants to make the servant visible. "These women are pioneers that generally leave their rural homelands in search of new lives for themselves and to support the families they left behind," she said. Latin American servants, she explained, do not live in a capitalist society. There is no connection between the wages they are paid and the services they provide. These services often include strong love and loyalty for their "patrons" and especially the children in the family whom they often raise instead of their own. "These women still know how to give something for nothing ... [and should be] recognized for the immense moral dignity of their position," Guillermoprieto said. English Professor Jose Aranda, who introduced Guillermoprieto, remarked that her contributions to journalism were very important and noted "how much smaller and narrower the world of journalism would be without her contributions." Samba was nominated for the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award. Guillermoprieto was also recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995. This fellowship, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, awards a stipend of $500,000 to 20 to 30 individuals every year who "have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits," according to the foundation's Web site.
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