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Many domestic workers were laid off during the crisis
Photo: YASUYOSHI CHIBA / AFP
49-year-old Peruvian María Elena Tintaya thought she had a dream job.
Her sister had found her work in Chile as a domestic servant in Chicureo, a wealthy town in the greater Santiago area.
"I had a lot of expectations and dreams," says Tintaya.
"That's why I left my five grown-up children in Peru."
She wanted to transfer the majority of her wages, the equivalent of around 430 euros per month, to Peru to support her family - the minimum wage there is around 200 euros.
At the beginning of March she moved in with her employers, she took care of the household and the two children.
But after just a few days, the dream job turned into a nightmare.
The corona crisis reached Latin America and the Chilean government imposed a curfew to contain the spread of the virus.
"My employers have told me that if I leave the house I will lose my job or I will go to jail," recalls Tintaya.
"I cried every night."
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María Elena Tintaya started her new job in March - then the crisis came
Photo: private
Although she continued to receive her wages, she was not allowed to go out once in the following five months, not even on her birthday.
In the telephone interview, she said that sometimes she only got one meal a day.
The roof in her room was leaking and it rained through in winter temperatures.
She was released entirely at the end of August.
"They just put me on the street," says Tintaya.
"I was desperate because I didn't know anyone."
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Fear of decline: Millions of people have lost their jobs
Photo: Ivan Alvarado / REUTERS
Across Latin America, millions of people like the Peruvian domestic worker María Elena Tintaya have suddenly lost their jobs.
In the pandemic, most states tried to protect their fragile health systems from collapse with early, strict lockdowns - at a high price: companies are struggling to survive, and per capita income and consumption have plummeted.
"Of all regions worldwide, Latin America is hardest hit by both the pandemic and its economic consequences," said Felix Klauda, regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean of the state-owned Reconstruction Loan Corporation (KfW), to SPIEGEL.
"In many countries, forecasts predict economic slumps of ten to fifteen percent."
The International Labor Organization (ILO) warns of an unprecedented crisis in the labor markets; around 34 million jobs were lost in Latin America in the first half of 2020 alone.
According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), almost 45 million more people will be driven into poverty this year alone - tens of millions of them probably into extreme poverty.
CEPAL warns of a "lost decade" as the progress made in recent years will be undone.
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Most domestic workers work informally, they don't even have a contract
Photo: Bruna Prado / AP
Latin America is also one of the regions with the highest social inequality worldwide, the corona crisis is now widening this gap - and is particularly affecting the informal sector, in which more than half the population works in many countries in the region.
"It is generally easier for the middle and upper classes to switch to working from home," says Klauda.
"Informal workers lose their livelihood in a lockdown, and wherever state programs do not take effect quickly enough or only insufficiently, it is immediately a matter of existence."
In Chile, seven out of ten domestic workers have lost their jobs
Housework is one of the hardest hit industries: according to CEPAL, between 11 and 18 million domestic workers, mostly women, worked in Latin America - more than two thirds of them in informal backgrounds and poorly paid.
Almost two thirds of them suffered unemployment, reduced working hours or lost wages.
In Chile alone, according to a study by the Universidad de Chile, seven out of ten domestic workers such as the Peruvian María Elena Tintaya have lost their jobs in the past twelve months;
half of them have no contract and no health and safety at work, many are migrants.
In Mexico, US suppliers are laying off workers in droves.
Pedro Chavira Juárez, President of the Index business association, estimates that two out of ten workers in the assembly industry, around 60,000 workers, could lose their jobs.
The lawyer Susana Prieto Terrazas from the border town of Ciudad Juárez criticizes the fact that the factories mainly get rid of employees who are more susceptible to the virus or simply less efficient due to their age or diseases such as diabetes.
"They're firing workers over 40 and replacing them with 16-year-olds who are faster," says Prieto Terrazas.
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In a factory, workers sew protective masks - they themselves are often poorly protected
Photo: Carlos Tischler / Cover-Images / imago images / Cover-Images
The workers toil not only at low wages, but also with considerable health risks - in factories, where hundreds of them work without sufficient distance and with insufficient ventilation, they are not protected from infection.
In cities like Ciudad Juárez or Matamoros, factory workers keep taking to the streets.
The corporations often respond to complaints with dismissals, as the 24-year-old Daniel from Ciudad Juárez had to learn.
The young Mexican had worked for a US pharmaceutical company for the past five years, he screwed together medical devices such as diagnostic catheters in Juarez, and earned the equivalent of around 11.50 euros per day for a nine-hour shift.
When a relative of Daniel's got Corona, the company sent him home for two weeks and continued to pay him.
But then he should go back to the assembly line, although his corona test result was not yet available.
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Factory workers protest against the corona danger in the factories
Photo: Luis Torres / Agencia EFE / imago images
"There were several older women on my production line and I didn't want to infect anyone," recalls Daniel, who complained to his boss about it.
When his negative test result came a few days later, he had already been fired - allegedly because he had not done his job.
Street vendors and other workers from the informal sector, on the other hand, are more afraid of hunger than they are of the virus.
In Chile and Honduras there were therefore protests against the lockdown measures.
"In countries like Peru, Colombia and Brazil, social programs were tackled quickly; most countries in Latin America have taken between seven and twelve percent of the gross national product in hand to set up or strengthen social programs and business promotion programs," says KfW expert Felix Klauda.
"However, the programs cannot completely offset what triggered the pandemic."
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In Honduras, street vendors protest against the closure of markets
Photo: ORLANDO SIERRA / AFP
In Colombia, the government wants to have invested the equivalent of more than 33 million euros in social assistance in the Valle del Cauca department alone, to which the city of Cali belongs.
The Colombian street vendor Marlyn Garcia says, however, that she did not see a cent of it - and the other vendors felt the same way as she did.
"The government should finally begin to take the most vulnerable people seriously," says the 42-year-old, who has been running a fruit and vegetable stand in Cali for more than 20 years.
She has two children whom she has to get through on her own.
"Without the help of neighbors and friends, we wouldn't have had bread on the table every day," she says.
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Marlyn Garcia, 42, criticizes the government for not receiving help
Photo: Antonia Schaefer
Latin American countries are currently loosening their lockdowns, although the crisis is far from over.
They simply can no longer afford the tough social and economic restrictions.
Colombia also introduced the so-called "New Reality" in September, since then markets have opened again - and Marlyn Garcia takes the bus from Villa Rica in the department of Cauca to the same street corner in Cali every day, where she sits at a small wooden table Spring onions, peppers, potatoes and banana leaves sold with a red umbrella.
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In Latin America's markets, business continues despite the risk of contagion
Photo: Gustavo Graf Maldonado / REUTERS
"I thank God I can go back to work," says Marlyn Garcia.
She is also glad that her children survived the lockdown so well.
Her son is 13 and had to study from home during the time - "digitally," she says, as if it were a word from a distant future.
"I'm glad he understands."
Meanwhile, domestic servant María Elena Tintaya is desperately looking for a new job in Chile.
She is currently living with a union leader who has taken her on temporarily and would like to find a job as a housemaid again, because she has no other professional experience - but in the current crisis that is almost hopeless.
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