Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma (2018) follows Cleo, a live-in domestic worker for a middle-class family in the Colonia Roma of Mexico City in the early 1970s. When Cleo is pregnant, doña Teresa, the children’s grandmother, takes her to a furniture store to buy a crib.
Later, on a beach, Cleo walks into the sea to bring the children out of the waves, although she cannot swim. In 2019 the film won the Oscar for best foreign language film.
Marcelina Bautista worked as a domestic worker for 22 years, starting at the age of 14. In 2010 she founded the Centro de Apoyo y Capacitación para Empleadas del Hogar, and in 2015 a national union of domestic workers.
In 2016 she told Expansión: “Luego dicen que somos casi de la familia. Las trabajadoras del hogar no queremos que nos adopten, queremos que respeten nuestros derechos” (Then they say that we are almost family. Domestic workers do not want to be adopted, we want our rights respected).
What she asks for is rights, not a place in the family.
Lorenzo Servitje was the founder of Grupo Bimbo. In En esto creo (This I believe), a statement of his beliefs reproduced by Catholic.net, he wrote: “Creo que hay que procurar el bien de quienes trabajan con nosotros” (I believe that we must look after the good of those who work with us). A company, he wrote, should be “no sólo altamente productiva sino también plenamente humana” (not only highly productive but also fully human).
He died in February 2017, at the age of 98. Expansión quoted him on the company’s staff: “el cariño que tenemos para esa gente, la verdad es que los queremos” (the affection we have for those people, the truth is that we love them). His son Daniel, then the head of the company, said his father taught him to treat people “como personas y no como instrumentos” (as persons and not as instruments).
The Ideario Cuauhtémoc, published by FEMSA, sets out principles of Eugenio Garza Sada, the Monterrey industrialist. Principle 13 reads: “Reconocer el enorme valor del trabajador manual” (Recognize the enormous value of the manual worker), “cuya productividad hace posible la posición directiva y afirma el futuro de ambos” (whose productivity makes the managerial position possible and secures the future of both).
According to the Congress of Nuevo León, he promoted “la creación de despensas familiares y el otorgamiento de casa propia para los empleados” (the creation of family food baskets and the granting of homes of their own to employees). He was killed in a failed kidnapping in Monterrey on September 17, 1973.
In 1912, the peons of the hacienda of Tecoac, in Tlaxcala, complained of mistreatment and other grievances. One was that the cost of medicine was deducted from what they were owed. The owner, Gustavo Bretón, answered that when the peons fell ill, “les regala las medicinas habiendo llegado hasta traer un médico sin cobrarles” (he gives them the medicines, and has even brought a doctor without charging them).
According to the historian Mariano E. Torres Bautista, the workers agreed with the owner’s account. In the agreement of September 9, 1912, Bretón committed himself to keep giving medicine to the sick. National social security did not yet exist.
In 1918, the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc of Monterrey founded a cooperative for its workers. In 2011, Expansión described it: the company “creó una sociedad cooperativa, que se encargaría de manejar los servicios para los empleados y sus parientes, casi como si se tratara de los miembros de una familia” (created a cooperative that would manage services for the employees and their relatives, almost as if they were members of a family).
In 2003, P. G. Martínez published “Paternalism as a positive form of leader-subordinate exchange: Evidence from México” in the journal Management Research. The study draws on field data from organizations in Mexico and from U.S. organizations owned by Mexican immigrants. The leaders it describes look after their employees’ welfare at work and in their personal lives.
Martínez concludes that “paternalism combines paternalists’ benevolent acts with their subtle control over subordinates’ flexibility.”
Hoy por ti, mañana por mí. “Today for you, tomorrow for me.” The saying goes with a favor that is given now and may be returned later.
Una mano lava la otra, y las dos lavan la cara. “One hand washes the other, and both wash the face.”