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Latinas and their Work: A Roundtable Chat

By Carol Amoruso, Hispanic Village Feature Writer

Mayra Peters-Quintero was born in Panama. She came to the States with her family when very young, settling on the West Coast. She completed a double masters in international development and law degree in 1999. She worked for Unicef in the Caribbean and with Palestinian political prisoners in the West Bank. Until recently she handled immigrant rights at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York. Mayra has just begun as a teaching fellow at the New York University law school teaching and handling cases for their immigrant rights program.

Janet Alicea was born in Newark, New Jersey, of Puerto Rican parents. She is a frequent visitor to the island where her parents have retired. She received her BA from NYU while working full time and has been working in the cataloguing division of the Elmer Bobst Library there since 1988. Currently, she is enrolled in a masters’ program in Cultural Reporting and Criticism with an eye to a position with UNESCO, the United Nations cultural arm, or working in the Spanish language media.

Lucia Pulido was born in the eastern countryside of Colombia. She moved as a child to Bogotá where she was primarily raised. She has lived in New York for the past nine years. She has a degree in music education and teaches young children in a pre-school program. But Lucia has always been a singer and performs frequently with an ensemble playing traditional Colombian music set to modern arrangements.

We met informally over a light supper one summer evening to talk about these women’s experiences as Latinas in the working world. Our conversation has been edited for brevity. With Mayra sitting to my left, most responses began with her.

What were your early work experiences and was your family supportive of you as a young woman going out into the workaday world?

Janet: I first started working, when I was 15 or 16, part time as a cashier in a supermarket. Neither my mother nor my father wanted me to work. My father was really against it, but I really got tired of asking my parents for money. They would give me money, but I decided I didn’t want to ask. I had that job for a few years. Then I started college for a year, but I stopped going to school because I fell in love with someone and I wanted to move in with him. The family didn’t quite like him, so I started working full time right away. I was about 19. School was kind of a part time gig for me, something that I would start and stop for a while. Then I got my bachelor’s degree and I began working in the city. I worked at Rockefeller Center then moved down to NYU. I’ve been there for about 15 years. A little long, but, while I’ve been working full time, I’ve done different things with my free time.

Lucia: I studied pedagogy in Colombia. Teaching music to children. I did it because my mom asked me to be a professional. It was her dream. For many years after I graduated, I worked with a friend of mine who is a song writer, Ivan Benavides. [Benavides has been producer/composer for Colombia’s pop music idol, Carlos Vives.] We had a group, then we worked together as a duo singing his music. This was the 80s. We worked for about 15 years until I came to New York. For love. Of course, it was also because it was New York.

Right now I am also a teacher, I work with children, I am doing exactly what I never wanted to do in Colombia. But that’s what my mom said: “You never know what’s going to happen. You may, one day, want to do it.” But I’ve just always wanted to be a singer.

Mayra: When I started working, 15 or 16, I was also a cashier in a grocery store, a part-time job. Then I worked in a clothing store. Definitely when I was younger my mom discouraged me from working. She felt so sorry for me, because in our country, you don’t get out of school and then go work until 9 o’clock at night unless you’re very poor. A lot of people had part time jobs, but she just didn’t get it. The one restriction she put on me was never any food service work. There was good money to be made, waitressing or as a bartender, but she just couldn’t bear the thought I was going to be serving somebody, depending on tips. She was worried that some man would flirt with me, and I would have to accept it because I was needing the tips.

Lucia: When I decided to do music she [my mother] let me work in bars. She gave us a lot of responsibility and that made us strong.

How much of an influence have your mothers had on you and your choice of career?

Mayra: My mother was really open-minded, incredibly progressive and she’s a feminist and she’s been an activist, but when it comes right down to it she’s putting a lot of pressure on me: “Why do you want to go to more school? You’re waiting too long to have kids.” She’s proud of me, but in the same breath, she’ll say “Enough already!” When I share something, an accomplishment with her, she’ll say, “That’s great, but you’re missing out on the most important accomplishment in life, and that’s motherhood. You’re so focussed on your career that you’re really going to miss the boat.”

Lucia: I owe everything to my mom. The music is from my father. He’s a party guy. My mom, she encouraged me to go out into the world. They wanted me to be a lawyer or an architect. But they didn’t mind. They always trusted whatever we decided. Anything you do, you do it well. We were raised in a very small town. She decided to take us out of that environment because all my friends, all the girls in the town, they were getting married with, not just local guys, but there was an army base. She sent us to Bogota then she came to stay with us. And she had to learn again to be with us. My father didn’t come with us. She supported us so much.

Did your mothers work?

Mayra: My mom worked. We moved to the States when my mom married an American. He was doing research in Panama in the medical field, and my mom worked in the same hospital. Then they split up and here she was in San Diego with these three small kids. In Panama, she did really well. She went to school and was part of a vibrant community at a time when there was a big leftist movement with students. Then she found herself in California totally alienated. But she decided to stay and stick it out. She worked in a factory for many years and she was allergic to the metal solvents they used. Her skin even now is ruined. She didn’t speak English and she stuck it out with the three of us, knowing she could have such a better life in Panama.

Janet: My mother worked as a young girl. She was taken out of school — along with her older brothers — when my grandfather died because they owned a large finca that employed a lot of peones and she had to help run the house. When she came to this country she worked, but after she had 2 children she stopped.

Lucia: My mother worked. She worked very hard for us. She’s still working. She’s never going to retire.

Venezuelan singer Irene Ferrera observes that Latinas are multi-taskers: the fact that they take care of a household and are now going out to work, makes them more dynamic and capable. Do you agree?

Mayra: I think we grow up seeing our moms handling work, handling home, handling everything. Like my mom did. I really feel we do a tremendous job having to juggle a lot of things at once because you have that responsibility always to your family. When you’re at school, when you’re working, you’re far from home [but] you always have the responsibility to stay connected to your family. It’s another task. Even when you go to college, your counterparts are focused on school, they don’t bring with them what’s going on at home.

Lucia: Maybe that’s why we women are women and men are men. It’s a matter of gender in that being able to be pregnant makes women become stronger, do more things. In a different way of being strong.

None of you have kids, so right there there’s a break from traditional domesticity. As working women, have you also broken from your connection to the hearth?

Janet: You know Latina women are always cleaning. You know, when I’d wake up in the morning, my mother has a cup of coffee and she’d be working. My mother, regularly, would take down everything that’s in the cupboard, wash and dry it and put it back. She comes to my house, and I wake up and she’s already…”Oh, I think I’ll do this and then I’ll do that.” My mother never sits still. There’s something wrong for them to sit still. You’re lazy. You’re not supposed to sit still, especially women. Women have more work to do than men. Women have to take care of the house.

Mayra: My mom gets up so early. Still. Cleaning, cleaning, always washing. By the time I’d get up she’d already done so much. And by the time she’d get home at night time, she’d go right to the sink and wash off dishes that were waiting. You know, you kind of grow up that way.

Is Latino culture sexist or more sexist than the so-called anglo?

Mayra: I think in the personal, Latino culture is very different from Anglo culture, but I think in work, they’re equally sexist. You hear of machismo…you hear of the jealous Spanish man, etcetera, but in work there’s really not much of a difference. In Latino culture, women are under-represented in every workplace. Government, academia…women are really underrepresented in both. [On the other hand] we have more female leaders in Latin America than here. My country has had a woman leader. Here, you’d never hear of a woman leader.

Lucia: I wouldn’t sing any song that doesn’t support women, the machista way of being. Caderas [‘hips’ in the connotation of women’s allure] talk is different. What I’m talking more is about being macho, possessive, it’s about rights that women have to be in new roles, about men’s power jealousy.

Do Latinas and Anglo women have different issues over the struggle for equal rights?

Janet: I think women here have more issues. Too many issues. I think Anglo woman talk about it all the time and are always hitting people over the head with it, something Latinas tend to do less, a lot less.

Mayra: Women of color have never really identified with the women’s movement. The women’s movement is white, middle class. Their issues are glass ceilings: “I’m a vice president in this big corporation and I can’t get to be executive vice-president,” while our issues are: “I’m really trying to get the minimum wage at the sweatshop where I work."

Rights don’t mean anything if you don’t feel you can assert them. We can have all the rights in the world on the books. Say like in my Mom’s situation, a lot of Latina workers, they have more at risk. They might be a single mom. They might not have papers. They might feel the weight of not wanting to assert their rights and stay complacent. It might not be a priority. They might not go to meetings with other women in the evenings and plan how to empower themselves politically because they have to get home and they have to cook and clean and they have four kids and take care of their elderly parents. It’s just kind of a different risk factor.

Lucia: I think a lot depends on the level of education in these communities. Every time I do a performance in high schools, I see teenagers from public schools. Most of the kids I see are girls, young women. And I wonder what’s the information they’re getting from the schools? When they graduate, what future do they have and who, at the end, is going to university to become a professional? Latinos? African Americans? You can see how hard it’s going to be for them to survive and go for a professional career and become more comfortable, do something different from their background. That makes a difference. It’s a big difference between who gets to high school and who gets beyond high school, who crosses over into that different level of education. How this community, when they can become leaders or get information about their rights.

Irene feels that all womens grounding comes from their willingness to show their vulnerability and emotional sides. Do you agree, and do you take that vulnerability and emotionality to the work place?

Janet: In graduate school I think that my vulnerability displays itself because I do have certain passions about things that I don’t have problems in displaying. It’s something people ascribe to me that they don’t ascribe to the other people in my program that aren’t Latino.

Mayra: I’ve worked with almost all Latinas in my last work site and it was more emotional. People cried, people argued and they’d say “Ay, carajo!” Every one expressed themselves because we all felt comfortable. We were from the same cultural background and we would show that. In another work site, we would know to not express that. It’s felt really good, when I was there to be able to just let out whatever I was feeling if I was upset. I’ve seen my boss cry. And I’m a really emotional animal. I feel like I’m very sentimental, emotional, expressive. It’s been really good with my clients. I’ve had relationships with other people where it doesn’t go over so well professionally. Where it’s really not acceptable.

We recently had a press conference after settling this huge case. It just settled a few weeks ago for over a million dollars. So the press conference announcing the settlement. Everyone was there, and I was saying my thing and I couldn’t fight back my tears. I heard the workers telling their stories: “I demand dignity and respect.” “I’m not an animal, I’m here to work and I should be paid.” And it just made me emotional. So, when it was my turn to talk, I couldn’t hold it back. I started completely crying during the press conference and then every single person there was crying. And I felt so bad after the press conference, so mad at myself that I couldn’t fight them back. I would have wanted it to go differently. I wanted to go up, and be composed and talk about the settlement. Afterwards everyone said it was o.k. you brought a human side to it. But I still felt, you don’t show that.

Janet: I do feel that my emotions do get the best of me and it’s something I’m continually wrestling with because I know when I’m in a professional situation, it’s not gonna help to let the emotional side come through. One time in school, we were presenting articles and someone was presenting an article making a case for bullies, saying it’s o.k. for teenagers to be bullies. And I just said, “This is a crock of shit,” while everyone else was loving it. Do you think that Latino kids are going to be allowed by the whites to be bullies? Or African Americans? And they’re saying, “I don’t read racism in this article,” and I’m saying, “But I do!” and I’m shaking. And they think I’m crazy because I’m shaking with emotion.

How widely has the cantadora tradition affected the lives of women in Colombia? (Cantadoras are Colombian wonder-women, from the Caribbean region, the keepers of Colombia’s African-infused folk traditions. They are midwives, traditional healers, arbitrators, farmers, composers, singers and dancers.)

Lucia: I think people into being part of the tradition, they just are. They represent everything about life. They compose their own music, but not in a way to compete with men. But men play for them. They sing. They are midwives, too. The women are the support of the whole family as descendents of that culture. I am not from that tradition, but I can see much and I have learned from that tradition.

Do you have a commitment to giving back to your community?

Lucia: For me I want the chance to bring my work to Colombia. I haven’t been able to go and perform my music. The infrastructure, we don’t have it. We need outside support. And because of the economy. It’s just starting to happen now. Now I have a cultural ambassador. >From my town. They are like my embassy, they are supporting me and trying to bring my work to Colombia. Yes, I want to go back with my music.

Janet: I feel a need to be a part of my community, and if I could give back through my work, I would. I think that that is the function of being in this country. The need to keep your identity and maintain your ties becomes stronger.

Mayra: I definitely have a need to give back. I’ve had so many great opportunities. I’ve been lucky. My mom has given me so much, I feel the responsibility to use what I have gotten. It’s not Panamanians or even Central Americans or even Caribeños: I work with a lot of Mexicans and they’re from a completely different culture from me. Nothing in common with Panama, but there’s the pan-Latino sense that we’re all from the same area in the world.

How important is language for you, especially in the workplace?

Janet: We’re all from the same language. Language is such a big thing. There’s no expressing that enough. When you talk about Celia Cruz being black, sure that’s one thing. But the real thing is her singing in her language. That’s such a big deal.

Mayra: I think language, in the end, is what keeps me in my field. There are so few Spanish speaking attorneys. You lose so much in the translation. You can’t develop the same kind of relationship through a translator. They’ll never really understand a client. They’ll never open up to you. I feel a responsibility. If I leave the field, that’s one less Spanish-speaking provider. Somebody who they can really, in every part of their life, they’re challenged by the language. They can’t do their banking properly, they can’t do their shopping properly. But in our relationship they can express themselves eloquently, express complicated ideas because we share the same language. It allows them to be at the table as a full participant. Language is huge.

When I worked with Latinas in my last job, it was a comfort. You expressed yourself in whatever language you felt comfortable with. Puerto Ricans in my last job, they don’t feel comfortable speaking only in Spanish, but if there’s a concept that they only knew in Spanish, they would. We could all have that comfort at work and it makes for a better work place.

Lucia: I have to confess. I feel I say more intelligent things in Spanish. I feel more comfortable. In English I say, “That’s not exactly what I wanted to say.” But if I can say it in Spanish, it would be a different conversation, I know. I’m always saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I know. It’s third world—to apologize.

Janet: I have some Spanish speaking coworkers. The guy that I work with, I don’t mind speaking Spanish with him sometimes. But sometimes I feel it’s inappropriate. Like if the director walks by, and says something and then walks away and we continue in Spanish he might feel we’re talking about him. I don’t think that’s correct to do. I try to be strategic about it not to engender chances of having him think it. But, I’m also very proud of my language.