Mester

In March of 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic, provoking uncertainty around the world. In particular, the pandemic produced instability in domestic workers’ employment in Mexico. During the surge of COVID-19, such instability revealed the marginal importance that Mexican society has placed on the lives of domestic workers, especially on their health, independence, and labor rights. This uncaring attitude and impassivity triggered a spiral of instability where the domestic worker’s emotional and socioeconomic state fluctuates in the face of historical events. Through literature and film, the domestic worker’s spiral of instability phenomenon is confirmed in the unfavorable situations that occurred in The Corpus Christi Massacre in 1971, evidenced in Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma (2018), returning the domestic worker to everyday life, revealed in Elena Poniatowska’s “Esperanza número equivocado” (1979) and Andres Clariond Rangel’s Hilda (2014) and, again, placing the domestic worker in a state of instability during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 explained through press report interviews. I will compare the aforementioned works to the domestic workers’ situation in Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify the oppressive conditions described in literature and film and to highlight the urban numbness that has lessened solidarity.