4 - Patio Fascists and Domestic Worker Syndicates

Summary

Chapter 4 explores the relationship of Cuban law and government to domestic service from the late 1930s through the first year of the 1959 revolution. A law guaranteeing paid vacation days to Cuban domestics was met with such opposition that the government reversed course almost immediately. The opposition to Decree 1754 insisted that domestic workers were like “one of the family,” a notion with a long history in Cuba and in the history of domestic service globally. Transcripts of Cuban law, the 1940 Constitution, the papers of corporate personnel in Cuba, personal speeches and papers of radical feminists, and labor publications all demonstrate, first, that domestic workers did collectively organize and, second, that the depiction of domestic service as familial and feminine quasi-labor was deliberately used as a weapon to bludgeon the collective organizing of domestic servants. The chapter traces the evolution of domestic service activism in the late 1940s, looking both at radical action by Communist Party members and more moderate reform efforts by mutual aid organizations that organized across the country.