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Alejandro Hernandez<\/strong> digs out two important and interlinked political backstories from the Netflix movie Roma, about state-sponsored violence against progressive social movements, and how unequal class and gender power relations are expressed in the daily violence against domestic workers’ conditions.<\/em><\/p>\n Recently,\u00a0Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n<\/a>\u00a0was\u00a0awarded<\/a>\u00a0best foreign language film and best director at the Golden Globes for\u00a0Roma<\/em><\/a>. He is fittingly\u00a0being praised<\/a>\u00a0for both technical features and the powerful stories\u00a0Roma<\/em>\u00a0tells about daily life in Mexico in the 1970s.<\/p>\n The film, however, contains other subtle but important elements that have been largely ignored by critics so far.\u00a0Two of these elements are Mexico\u2019s political context in the early 1970s and the ongoing conditions that have characterized domestic workers\u2019 lives since. The main character of\u00a0Roma<\/em>\u00a0is Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio), a domestic worker based on a woman named Liboria Rodr\u00edguez (known as Libo) who worked for Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s family when he was a child.<\/p>\n Who were Los Halcones?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Cuar\u00f3n situates\u00a0Roma\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0characters amid significant historical events: the fight of some Mexicans for social progress and their opposition to a political, authoritarian regime that worked to maintain its privileges through various means.\u00a0One of these means is exemplified in the film by the character Ferm\u00edn \u2014 Cleo\u2019s boyfriend (played by Jorge Antonio Guerrero) who belongs to the paramilitary group\u00a0Los Halcones<\/em>\u00a0(The Hawks).<\/p>\n We know now by\u00a0various direct sources<\/a>\u00a0and United States government declassified documents that high-ranking Mexican government officials\u00a0secretly organized<\/a>, financed,\u00a0trained and armed<\/a>\u00a0various groups, including\u00a0Los Halcones<\/em>, to help quash progressive social movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s.<\/p>\n Los Halcones<\/em>\u00a0were composed of around 2,000 young men, aged 18 to 29,\u00a0distributed in squads<\/a>\u00a0of 200 members each.\u00a0The squads\u2019 leaders were middle-class university students<\/a>\u00a0who, for their participation, received free education, weekly stipends and the promise of a bright future in the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).<\/p>\n The assailants and hit-men were\u00a0gang members<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0working class<\/a>\u00a0and unemployed young men. They were paid half of what the leaders received.\u00a0Los Halcones<\/em>\u00a0were also trained by Mexican military and police personnel<\/a>\u00a0who,\u00a0subsidized by USAID<\/a>,\u00a0had previously received training<\/a>\u00a0at the International Police Academy in Washington.<\/p>\n An attack on Mexican democracy<\/strong><\/p>\n On June 10, 1971,\u00a0around 10,000 demonstrators<\/a>,\u00a0mainly students<\/a>, marched to demand improvements to Mexico\u2019s democratic, economic and social conditions.\u00a0In\u00a0Roma<\/em>, Cleo and others pass these demonstrators on their way to a furniture store. They also pass, in a depiction of real life, a long row of riot police trucks and idle police officers, while\u00a0Halcones<\/em>\u00a0patiently wait at the corner.\u00a0Armed with canes and M1 and M2 rifles,\u00a0Halcones<\/em> attacked demonstrators<\/a>, producing the second bloodiest event in modern Mexican history (El Halconazo<\/em><\/a>), only after the\u00a0Tlatelolco massacre of October 1968<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is estimated that around 120 people were killed and hundreds more injured, including\u00a0children, women and seniors<\/a>. Although the military and uniformed police\u00a0knew beforehand about the attack<\/a>, they\u00a0stood by and did nothing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Masculinity and violence<\/strong><\/p>\n Ferm\u00edn belongs to the second-tier group of\u00a0Los Halcones<\/em>. In the hotel, he confesses to Cleo: \u201cI owe my life to martial arts [to\u00a0Halcones<\/em>]. I grew up with nothing, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n Portraying the real\u00a0Halcones<\/em>\u00a0youth, Ferm\u00edn\u2019s participation offered him certain social mobility but only in exchange for committing atrocities.\u00a0Some young men\u2019s allegiance to\u00a0Los Halcones<\/em>\u00a0and their corrupt decisions were thus mediated by class aspirations, ideology and violence.<\/p>\n Los Halcones\u2019<\/em>\u00a0violence also\u00a0manifested in gender violence.<\/a>\u00a0This is depicted in\u00a0Roma<\/em>\u00a0when Ferm\u00edn dismisses his paternity and threatens to beat Cleo and their unborn daughter if she insists on looking for him.\u00a0Moreover, despite his low-class background, Ferm\u00edn ends the scene yelling \u201cgata<\/em>\u201d at Cleo, an upper class-based insult aimed only at domestic servants, reflecting the latter\u2019s low ascribed social status.<\/p>\n Domestic workers in Mexico<\/strong><\/p>\n A second element that has not been widely discussed, which\u00a0Roma<\/em>\u00a0touches on, is the historical conditions of domestic workers.\u00a0As of June 2018, there were\u00a02.2 million domestic workers in Mexico<\/a>. Around 95 per cent are women, mostly young and middle-aged (some are even children<\/a>).<\/p>\n In 2010,\u00a058 per cent of Indigenous women were domestic workers<\/a>. Many migrated from the countryside to the city. This means that, as Indigenous migration researcher\u00a0S\u00e9verine Durin asserts<\/a>, domestic work is strongly shaped by ethnicity.\u00a0It is not a coincidence then, that Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s former nanny Libo or the characters Cleo and Adela in\u00a0Roma<\/em>\u00a0are (young) Indigenous women.<\/p>\n Mexican laws\u00a0do not offer domestic workers the same rights and benefits<\/a>\u00a0that other workers enjoy, such as paid sick days and holidays. They can also be dismissed without warning at any time.\u00a0Only as recently as December 2018,\u00a0the Mexican Supreme Court determined<\/a>\u00a0that it is unconstitutional for employers to deny domestic workers access to social security, meaning mainly access to public health services.<\/p>\n It is commonplace for domestic workers<\/a>\u00a0to face low wages, long working hours and no holidays. Some also experience humiliation, mistreatment and discrimination for\u00a0speaking their Indigenous language<\/a>, wearing traditional clothes,\u00a0practising cultural customs<\/a>\u00a0and for their physical traits.\u00a0Others experience forced confinement or\u00a0sexual abuse<\/a>\u00a0by the men of the family or teenage sons. Yet, domestic workers are expected to thank their employers for the \u201copportunity\u201d to have a job.<\/p>\n Only one in 10 women file a complaint<\/a>\u00a0when they encounter a problem with their employers.\u00a0Domestic workers with children also need to make extraordinary arrangements for their own children to be taken care of, meaning prolonged separation many times while they take care of other families\u2019 children. Their caring and affection not only become commodified, but also dislocated.<\/p>\n Some employers consider domestic workers as \u201cpart of the family.\u201d However, uneven power relations, class differentials, discrimination and racism make them not really part of the family.\u00a0Cuar\u00f3n mentioned<\/a>\u00a0that he was forced to recognize several decades later, and only after he started working on\u00a0Roma<\/em>, that Libo was, first, a woman, and second, an Indigenous woman. He then realized that Libo belongs to a \u201cworld of affective needs, a world of sexual desires,\u201d and also to \u201ca more dispossessed group, a world of injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n In\u00a0Roma<\/em>, the family members are unaware of the domestic workers\u2019 social and personal lives.\u00a0When Cleo is taken to the delivery room, the grandmother, Teresa, is asked by a nurse about Cleo\u2019s second last name, her date of birth and if she has insurance. But Teresa cannot answer those questions.<\/p>\n Cleo picks up after the family dog\u2019s, feeds the family, prepares the kids for school, puts them to bed, washes and irons the family\u2019s clothes and cleans the house. Still, the grandmother ignores everything about Cleo despite living in the \u201csame\u201d house (usually, domestic workers sleep and even eat apart from the family).\u00a0Cleo is \u201cpart of the family\u201d but she is not really part of the family.<\/p>\n Daily violence<\/strong><\/p>\n Overall,\u00a0Roma<\/em>\u00a0contains various stories that subtly unveil different forms of violence: poverty, social exclusion and gender-based violence promoted by\u00a0sexist and misogynistic<\/a>\u00a0forms of masculinity.<\/p>\n Moreover, domestic workers\u2019 quiet but endless work, which in\u00a0Roma<\/em>\u00a0takes up over half of the film, expresses uneven power relations which are mediated by class, gender, age, affection, ethnicity, race and the urban\/rural divide.<\/p>\n These factors intersect to maintain domestic workers, mainly (Indigenous) women, in subordinate positions. They are conveniently imagined as \u201cpart of the family,\u201d but they are never really part of the family, neither in Mexico, nor\u00a0in Canada<\/a>, nor anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n