- For some occupations in Chile riding a bicycle is prohibited
“This country is segmented, segregated: there are workers, the poor and the rich and each one of these segments is seen as bad by the other.”- Marta Lagos, Executive Director of the Santiago based International Latinobarometro Survey.
In some parts of Chile, social distinction is not based on skin tone, language or culture. Instead, occupation and wealth determine the level of civil rights afforded to an individual. What’s at the heart of much of this discrimination? Frequently, the answer is social stereotypes.
Nobody walks in El Algarrobal
Up bright and early one recent morning, Felicita Pinto’s bus was late so she decided to get to work under her own power. At the entrance of the posh El Algarrobal II neighborhood, Pinto started to walk to her job as a domestic worker, about five blocks into the gated community. She never made it.
Pinto was quickly picked up and escorted off the premises and back to the bus stop. Why? Because Felicita Pinto and similar workers are not allowed to freely move about in places like El Algarrobal II. Indeed, she can go to work, as long as she isn’t seen getting there, hence the buses. Adding insult to injury, riders like Pinto are required to pay a fare, each way.
On January 21, 2012, Associated Press contributor, Eva Vergara, described what happened to Pinto in an article entitled, “Civil rights in Chile: Maid refuses to get on bus”:
“Security guards quickly chased her down and forced the 57-year-old widow back to the gate. Pinto’s employer protested, as he had before, against the community bylaws that forbid servants to move at will.”
Chile is not alone
Incredibly, Ines Perez, a resident of El Algarrobal II, told Chilean media, “Can you imagine what it would be like here if all the maids were walking outside, all the workers walking in the street and their children on bicycles?”
Apparently, attitudes in Chile are not unique. Vergara explains:
“Discrimination toward domestic workers is among the more entrenched social ills in Latin America and beyond. In luxury complexes just south of Peru’s capital, maids can’t swim in the ocean until their employers have left the water. In Mexico City, some luxury restaurants prohibit maids from sitting down to eat and some high-rises force workers to take the service elevators.”
Social stereotypes
In response to the situation, Felicita Pinto’s employer received an email from the management of El Algarrobal II citing, “maids, nannies, waiters, gardeners, construction workers and pool cleaners” as being particularly predisposed to “committing robberies or providing information relevant to the privacy of other neighbors on their way to the house where they say they work.”
What has been the response? An internet crusade against El Algarrobal was launched with a following that has reached into the thousands and the labor rights group, Justa Causa, plans to seek justice for Felicita Pinto and other workers like her, before the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights.
About the treatment of workers, the Associated Press quotes Marta Lagos, Executive Director of the International Latinobarometro Survey, an annual public opinion study that involves some 19,000 interviews in 18 Latin American countries, as saying, “Chile is an extremely tolerant country in terms of diversity. But having solidarity with your equals is one thing and another is tolerance toward people who are different.”