Mixed feelings: Latinos hire Latinos

Years ago when Cleo Molina was a single mom and a graduate student, she was with some fellow students fantasizing about the day when, with robust incomes, they could hire housecleaners.

"And I remember saying, 'Oh, no. I'd never do that,' " recalls Molina, a Bellevue business consultant. "I was thinking, 'Could I hire someone? And if so ... what would that say about me?' "

What it could say is harried parent or maybe, strung out professional. But what happens when ethnicity is factored in?

To be sure, throughout Latin America, Latinos hiring Latinos for domestic work isn't new.

But in the United States, the experience can raise all sorts of emotional issues. We'll call it The Squirm Factor, an occurrence not exclusive to Latinos but one increasingly familiar as a new generation of U.S. Latinos reach and act oh-so middle class.

"We've been talking about a nanny," says Lolo Florentino Arévalo. He and his wife, Marita, live in Kent with their 6-year-old daughter, Julia.

The couple are building their financial services business and, if things go as planned, could soon have an annual income topping $200,000.

On one level, the thought of hiring a nanny, specifically a Latina, is exciting. They want their daughter to grow up with the language and customs of their own heritage. Both parents have grandparents from Mexico. And employing a Latina would feel like they're helping one of their own, they say.

But, "I'd worry about the class issue and about looking elitist," says Lolo Arévalo, who grew up in Grandview, in the Yakima Valley, and was the first person in his family to go to college. He studied public administration at the University of Washington.

He tells a story about a time he hired a Latino man to do some landscaping. He initially felt good about the prospect, figuring the man employed his own crew. "I thought I was helping them out."

But then as he sat in his living room, his friend looked outside the window and asked, Do you know who's doing the work?

"The man, along with his wife and kids, were mowing the lawn," Arévalo recalls. "And I was so uneasy. It felt a little weird."

It was one thing to see an entire family working. But what was also striking was how Arévalo saw himself in them. He remembered those times growing up when people saw his brown skin and dismissed him as being less-than, or worse, completely ignored him. There was that time when he was a grad student working as a caterer and an Anglo man grabbed his arm and asked, Do you speak English?

Classic imbalance

For the most part, domestic work in this country has largely been done by poor, immigrant or women of color, according to Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, a sociologist at the University of Southern California.

That in itself can make the hiring experience uncomfortable. The class imbalance is conspicuous and moreover, it's taking place in that most intimate of spaces: your home.

In her book on domestic workers, she writes about the ambivalence many Americans feel; about not wanting to see themselves as "employers" or preferring to think of housekeepers or nannies as "family members." Otherwise, the relationship might feel too much like "master / servant."

More and more Americans can judge for themselves whether that ambivalence rings true. American Demographics predicted 10.7 million households — a 7.4 percent increase over six years — would turn to outside help for house cleaning next year.

More financial power

Latinos will be among those doing the hiring. The rapidly growing population group is increasingly U.S.-born which means they'll be better educated and more affluent, says David Perez, founder and CEO of Latin Force, a marketing strategy firm in New York. Among all racial groups, he points out, Latinos have the fastest growing rate of purchasing power.

According to Scarborough Research, the fastest growing segment within the Latino household population over the past five years: households earning more than $100,000 a year. Hardly the income of a Karen Walker on "Will and Grace"; but at least closer to being able to hire Rosario, the TV maid.

Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney, a state representative, grew up in Wapato and Toppenish. Her parents were migrant farmworkers and she not only worked in the fields, she's also waited tables and once cleaned houses.

"I try not to ever forget where I came from," she says.

The mother of eight children, she once employed an Anglo woman as a nanny. And she's hired housecleaners off-and-on over the years, preferring to hire Latinas, she says, because of the cultural connection.

"And I know where I started from and I know where they can go if they want to, and where their kids can go," Kenney says. She's never felt any embarrassment whatsoever about hiring.

But it was different for Ricardo Martinez, a federal judge in Seattle. He's also the son of farmworkers and his mother at one time also cleaned houses.

"I can remember her coming home and talking about the houses she'd been in. And there was like this envious tone to it. How big the houses were, the bathrooms."

He's always felt an unease when it's come to hiring people. Part of it has to do with a deeply-ingrained do-it-yourself sensibility. And part of it is, well, he has a hard time articulating an explanation.

Martinez, an affable man, is seated in his luxurious judicial chambers, recalling an incident from years ago, but still vivid. It was the weekend and he was out mowing the front lawn of his Eastside home. And he saw a Latino gardener at his neighbor's house, also mowing the lawn. They proceeded to small talk in Spanish.

"And he said to me, 'Who do you work for? I've never seen you.' And I hesitated. It took me a couple of seconds and I said, 'No, actually, I live here.' "

He felt a similar anxiety on a different occasion when his wife, Margaret, hired some housecleaners through an agency. The first few people who arrived at the house were white.

"Nothing. I'd see them and I'd say, 'Hello,' " Martinez says.

"But then came a husband and wife. They were Mexican. "I thought about my mom. They were self-conscious talking to me. And I'm getting this feeling of, 'Oh, this feels bad.' "

Coming from humble origins has pushed him to succeed, he says. "To prove you're just as good as anybody else."

Aware of inequality

But having been on that bottom-rung, he's also aware of the class inequality around him, always noticing the Latinos and Latinas doing the low-wage jobs: busing tables, cleaning houses.

Maids and housekeepers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn a mean hourly wage of $8.67, or $18,030 a year.

"I guess I feel good that they're working, but I feel bad because I see the work that they're doing," he says.

Norma Ureńa, a Seattle attorney, remembers the first time she stayed at a fancy hotel while she was a law student. "A Marriott. In San Francisco," she says.

A Latina housecleaner walked into her room.

"I felt guilty. I felt I needed to help her," she recalls.

And that's what she does now when she stays at hotels. "I strike up a conversation with [the maid] and I'll start helping her make the bed. She might look at me strange but she might look at me and smile and there's a recognition. I do it with busboys, too."

Ureńa has family working as housecleaners and farmworkers. "It keeps me honest," she explains, about why she initiates such contact. The guilt, she adds, has diminished over the years. She now regards her economic status more as an opportunity for others.

"If I have a good job and make good money, I also have the opportunity to hire others or frequent restaurants and leave a better tip."

Close relationships

For Molina, the business consultant, the class issue first arose as a child in Southern California. Her mother cleaned houses and cooked for wealthy Anglo families, sometimes living on-site. Molina sometimes accompanied her mother to work.

"She'd help a family prepare for a big dinner party and I'd get in the middle of things," she says.

But she watched how her mother developed close relationships with the families, maintaining them even after her employment ended. "She'd send them Christmas cards and vice versa. Sometimes they'd visit her.

"They didn't see her as domestic help. I wouldn't say she was a member of their family, but she was a woman who fulfilled a very important function and they paid her for that. And she cared about them."

The class issue resurfaced many years later. Molina had always regarded herself as being working class but then, during some argument she can't entirely remember, her 13-year-old daughter, Leah, pointed out the house they lived in; her mom's master's degree; her white-collar job; even her mother's suits and high heels.

You're so middle class, her daughter huffed. "And I was genuinely shocked to my roots," Molina recalls. "In my mind I was blue collar. And that's why, when my friends were talking about hiring someone, I couldn't imagine it."

She did end up hiring a cleaning service once while she was recovering from a car accident. "Not the same as hiring an individual," she says. And who did the agency send? An Anglo man, which Molina found hysterical.

Recommendations from friends then led her to a Mexican immigrant, Claudia de Luna. And what's emerged over the last couple of years, Molina says, is a relationship that's both functional "and fun."

"I recognize my role and I think I pay her a good wage. And I'm helping her support her family. And she's helping me live comfortably."

What's helped make it all work? "I recognize people are human beings, that regardless of their status they're worthy of recognition and respect."

Seattle Times researcher David Turim contributed to this report.

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com