ARIEL DORFMAN, AUTHOR OF HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK (IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY IN THE DISNEY COMIC)

Staying in Santiago, Chile, at the moment, I see echoes and reflections of Cleo – the servant at the heart of Alfonso Cuarón’s wondrous film Roma – everywhere. Cuarón’s consummate recreation of his Mexico City childhood in the early 1970s has garnered 10 Oscar nominations and is a favorite for the top prizes later this month – including best picture, best actress, for Yalitza Aparicio who plays Cleo, and best director for Cuarón.

I see Cleo, as Cuarón does, in the nanas. This is the euphemistic term here for domestic servants, the word that serves as a way of pretending they are part of the family rather than paid servants who can be fired at the drop of a hat.

When we visit Chile, my wife and I stay in a house we own in a condominium for educated professionals. One of the delights is a small swimming pool and its icy-cold water, perfect for escaping the fierce summer heat of the southern hemisphere. One of the rules that govern the use of the pool is that servants and their progeny cannot refresh themselves in it.

It seemed unfair to the nanas, who would swelter under the sun while the kids they were supervising frolicked and splashed around. That parents would trust these women with the lives of their offspring but not allow them into the communal water was not only cruel but smacked of something more ominous. For those who are well-to-do, the poor can do the dirty work as long as their dirty bodies don’t sully the supposedly pristine lives of their privileged employers. As the saying goes in the United States: not in my backyard.

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