A detail from a mural in London, June 2006
Ever since the news broke last week about former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love child by ex-maid/mistress Mildred Patricia Baena, the stories and headlines relating to ethnicity (she’s Guatemalan) have ranged from the somewhat engaging (like a piece about Baena’s MySpace page) to the groan-inducing, not to mention the inevitable SEO-friendly list.
But it was interesting, if sad, to see the scandal put in cultural perspective today by a Asian-Pacific Islander writer for the immigration blog Feet in 2 Worlds. Cristina Pastor, founder of a New York-based Filipino American magazine called the The FilAm, wrote:
In the Philippines, where I come from, it is not unusual for the head of the household to help himself to a servant. When the wife finds out, the maid is often kicked out of the house.
Sometimes, the amo (employer) and the atsay (maid) find true love, they both leave the household and stay together as man and wife. As there is no divorce in the Philippines, most certainly no alimony is expected by the family left behind. If the man has means, maybe he’s a lawyer or a company executive, he will support both of his families. But many middle-class machos just leave and see no need to provide for their wife and children.
Sometimes the employer gets to keep both the wife and the maid. To avoid gossip, especially concerning a couple enjoying an exalted position in the community, the wife will just learn to accept her husband’s brutish behavior. Sometimes, the teenage son may find the maid a convenient way to be initiated into sex; sometimes there is paternal incitement, sometimes not.
In some cases, she wrote, the wife will keep and raise the illegitimate child as her own. Pastor, who also discussed the story of the immigrant hotel maid from Guinea allegedly attacked by IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York, went on to write:
In most cases the woman meekly accepts her fate and moves on with the help of some hush money. In the rare instances that she finds the courage to fight back, she is ridiculed as the seducer.
It’s not the most uplifting piece, but it’s an interesting and realistic perspective.
