By Naiara Galarraga Gortázar (El País)
Madame Maria is 85 years old.
She has been a servant in Rio de Janeiro by inheritance, for more than three generations.
The universe of this woman was shattered on the first Monday of May, when a stranger told her that she would no longer return to the family with which she had shared the roof since her adolescence, from the age of 13.
His world collapsed.
She understood nothing of it.
Filled with anguish, she implored to allow him to return home.
"The level of submission became apparent when she started to say: 'I have to go back to their place, to give Madame Yonne a meal, to take care of her, to bathe her… Otherwise, she will die.' She felt entirely responsible for the life of the lady who employed her”
, recalls on the telephone Alexandre Lyra, the labor inspector at the origin of her rescue after 72 years of service with the Mattos Maia without salary or vacation.
A life spent with only the four walls of the…
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