“Why should I not take an apple or a fruit if I wash their underwear?” Food, Social Classification and Paid Domestic Work in Mexico

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of food relations between female employers and non-indigenous domestic workers in the city of Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. The paper argues that food and eating are still powerful racial and class markers among people in Mexico regardless of their ethnic adscription. The paper describes the history of food relations in Mexico and illustrates the parallels between ideas of culinary and human mestizaje as imagined founders of Mexico's national identity. In doing so, it identifies the complexities of addressing racism among a group of women workers that, in theory, are imagined as mixed while, in practice, are part of an occupation that has been and is still heavily racialised.

Keywords:

• Class
• Domestic Work
• Food
• Food Relations
• Gender
• Mestizaje
• Mexico
• Racialisation

Notes

1. There are countless examples of soap operas and films, such as María Isabel, where domestic workers are racialised and called ‘Indians’. This racialisation is also found in classic novels from the Mexican counterculture of the 1960s, such as José Agustín's De Pefil (1966) and Jose Emilio Pacheco's novel Batallas en el Desierto (1981). Surprisingly, there is an absence of cultural studies on the issue of paid domestic work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abril Saldaña-Tejeda

Abril Saldaña-Tejeda is in her final year of PhD in Sociology at the University of Manchester. She has a BA in International Relations at the ITESM at Monterrey, Mexico and an MA in International Studies at the University of Warwick. Before starting her PhD study Abril worked as a research assistant at the University of Central England and later at Coventry University where she was engaged in various research projects on issues regarding health in prisons, social justice and ethnic minorities in the UK. On her return to Mexico in 2006 she worked at the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública and was in charge of a research project on “Corporate Social Responsibility and HIV/AIDS in Businesses” a study commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the UK