What Architecture Can Say About Injustice

Postwar public housing in the United States looms large in respect to its social and racial implications. From the 1940s through the end of the 1970s, a series of high-rise developments were constructed in Chicago Illinois. Specifically, I want to take a look at the Cabrini-Green development and the Robert Taylor Homes taking into consideration the text Spatializing Blackness by Rashad Shabazz.

Graffiti on the wall of a Cabrini-Green Building

Cabrini-Green much like the Robert Taylor Homes (RTH), were high-rise development buildings that were constructed for the purpose of reducing violence while providing a home for low-income earners. However, the intended purpose for these developments often left its tenants in oppressive and violent environments. High-rise housing refers to buildings that exceed at least 13 stories (Bureau of Planning, 2013). With that in mind, we can start to take into perspective the capacity that the urban structures provided. Thousands of people stacked on top of one another - sound familiar? Shabazz creates a strong argument in comparing urban developments as structures holding strong carceral power; they are prisons. Stigmas already attached to the area in which both Cabrini-Green and the RTH were built seeped into its social structure. Contributing to such carceral power, as Shabazz mentions, is city planning and architecture. 

How does architecture influence such social and racial implications in urban settings?

Le Corbusier the designer of RTH, “thought that American cities needed management, and he sought to do precisely that through planning” (Shabazz, 2015). An element one could consider is who is the person in charge making these decisions and who are they supposed to benefit? In part with a grandiose plan of urban renewal, the Housing Act was implemented removing the African American population out of areas the city deemed as slums (Shabazz, 2015). With the population disenfranchised grounds were clear so carceral power was enabled. The Robert Taylor Homes as Shabazz writes, “As Blacks were seen as criminally inclined, managing this criminality and containing the residents was a central function of the RTH’s architecture” (Shabazz, 2015). In the eyes of RTH's developers there was something unjust about the way the tenants were received, but it's important to point out, an individual is able to succeed as much as the environment allows. Le Corbusier thought open space would create community and bring people together but, in the Robert Taylor Homes it only created isolation (Shabazz, 2015). Conversely to the experiences of the RTH, tenants of Cabrini-Green were able to find a sense of community; camaraderie in hardship. To them, Cabrini-Green was a community with problems, but not a “problem community” or a “slum” (Vale, 2012).

It is important to have a discussion about architecture. Although buildings are “simple structures," they can provoke so much emotion (Shabazz, 2015). We want to consider all of those who could use the space now and in the future, something that failed with both postwar public housing developments.

Resources: 

Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, et. al. 2013. Portland, Oregon. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/564018 

Lawrence Vale, “Housing Chicago: Cabrini-Green to Parkside of Old Town,” Places Journal, February 2012. Accessed 30 Oct 2019. https://doi.org/10.22269/120220

Shabazz, Rashad. 2015. “Carceral Interstice: Between Home Space and Prison Space.” Chapter 3 in Spatializing Blackness. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Comment on Emilia Boue’s post street children in Congo Kinshasa

Reflecting on Emilia Boue’s post that centered on Congolese Street Children the way you connect it to the creation of “home” invokes several issues in a society that need to be understood about the plight of these children. Simultaneously, I noted how fascinating these children had created the meaning of home and their experiences. In a similar connection, it reminded me about the Street Children in Senegal, where society and culture are created based on the Muslim belief system. These Street Children called Talibe, which literally means Muslim students in Senegalese and most West African countries. Basically, these children are sent by their parents to learn and be discipline in the Quranic schools locally call Daaras, mostly siuated in urban cities. These Quranic schools are run t by koranic instructors called as Sering Daara. Unfortunately, these Talibe/Street children mostly lives their life on the street begging of passersby instead of been in the Daaras learning. These kids stays for about 10 more years with their Serings/ instructors without seeing their parents. Furthermore, they are meted all form of physical abuse, dress in rag, beg for food day and night. Sometimes, if one of them did not go back to the Daara/school with money or on time, tantamount to sever punishment.

https://www.senenews.com/actualites/etude-sur-la-mendicite-54-837-talibes-recenses-a-dakar-dont-30-mille-enfants-mendiants_106454.html

According to Human Right Watch Report (2019), hundreds of thousands of Talibé children in Senegal live in residential Quranic schools, or Daaras, with the teacher as their de facto guardian. While many respects the rights of children under their care in the Daaras, others operate their Daaras as businesses under the pretext of religious education. The report also highlighted that mere than 100,000 Talibés in Senegal are forced to beg daily for food or money in towns and cities across Senegal. Furthermore, thousands live in conditions akin to slavery, suffering from abuse, neglect, and exploitation. In a similar narrative, Perry (2004), argues that Talibes in the city streets of Senegal spend many hours a day begging for food and money. The author also mentioned that for Talibes the ways they are seen in society are both destitute and dirty: they generally have the light powdered look of a black child smudged with dry dirt, and wear filthy, torn clothing several sizes too large. Additionally, the author indicated that these “Talibes sleep on crowded, hard floors, receive frequent beatings, work long hours, are nutritionally deprived, and seldom receive adequate medical care” (Perry 2004, p. 49).

Conversely, due to these harsh treatments of Talibes, many of them have no choice but force to runway from their Quranic schools. Some prefer to live on the street rather than go back to their family house for the fear of been send back. As a result, they choose to live on their own, some live on the street, markets and other safe places to create their own home. These runway Talibes most of the time do not have the experience of home both in their family houses or de facto guardian.  Notwithstanding, they improvised and care for themselves at an early age without any support from their families or society.

On the good note, there are many good Quranic schools that instills good teaching and character to children. Many people wander why some parents send their kids to some faraway Quranic schools rather than using nearby one to monitor and care for children. Perry (2004), argues that some parents believing that the marabout's discipline would mold their child's moral character and bring him closer to Allah. After spending years at a Qur'anic school as a "slave to God," a son would emerge as a virtuous adult able to withstand the difficult life that awaited (Perry 2004, p.59). Although there are many narrative to why parent sent their children to Quranic schools.

Reference:

Human Right watch report 2019 access from: https://www.hrw.org/africa/senegal

Perry, D. L. (2004). Muslim child disciples, global civil society, and children's rights in Senegal: The discourses of strategic structuralism. Anthropological Quarterly, 47-86.

The street children in Congo Kinshasa

The armed conflict and the critical social-economic situation prevalent in Congo Kinshasa contributed to the dismantling of millions of families across the country, pushing thousands of children to live in the street. “Les enfants de la rue” in English “the street children” is the expression used while referring to them. Degrading, but at the same time full of meaning, this expression tells in a few words the present situation of these children who have as father and mother “the street.”

The street children find in the dangerous corners of streets the solace and for some the security that they could not get inside their home. As Kellet & Moore 2003 mentioned in their article, “homelessness may be the short-term answer to a difficult home situation such as domestic violence.” In fact, the story of the street children starts inside the walls of a house but within dysfunctional families. A large percentage of these children have been abused by family members or rejected by their parents under the pretext of being wizards (the phenomenon of child sorcerers in Congo). The desperate financial situation of families undermines their abilities to care for their members, and this extreme poverty creates an environment where children are seen as a financial burden or the cause of their precarious situation. Thousands of children have been forced or have chosen to leave their homes to escape the prevalent violence. According to Medecins du Monde, approximately 20,000 Congolese children today are living in the street, left on their own (no education, no health care, no food), and to the danger of the street (rapes, violence, drugs, prostitution, robberies).

These children are considered homeless since they do not have a fixed domicile anymore; however, when looking closely at their struggle, we realize that those children put in place a survival mechanism that creates a “home” in this unique place, which is the street. Indeed, they cluster in different small bands that play the role of families. 

They care about each other; the older ones protect the younger ones, and they also share the product of their illegal activities such as robberies or prostitution. They created this system for somehow getting back the familial support that they lost and the feeling of belonging, which are critical in the process of creating an identity. Moreover, the street children were able to tame the street and create a “physical home” in this boundaryless space. They know all the safer places to sleep at night (cemetery, or market), they also know where they can have access to water for showering or for laundry and the location of NGOs, church, or restaurants where they can have the meal of the day. In this precarity, the street children are still able to find their way around and create a “home” whatever imperfect, but still with the same ideology of “Home” which includes “home” as a physical place to sleep, take a shower, play and eat but also “home” as an emotional and social place that provides the necessary support to thrive, but in this case, to survive. This example gives us an understanding of the concept of “home making” as a process and its importance in the development and survival of humans as social individuals. 

References 

(All references are in French, but the videos has subtitles that can be translated in English) 

Articles:

Kellett, P., & Moore, J. (2003). Routes to home: homelessness and home-making in contrasting societies. Habitat International, 27(1), 123-141.

http://www.trigone.univ-lille1.fr/complexite2010/actes/Kasongo.pdf

https://www.la-croix.com/Monde/Afrique/Au-Congo-associations-denoncent-peu-moyen-secourir-enfants-rues-2018-11-26-1200985521

https://www.hrw.org/fr/report/2006/04/04/quel-avenir/les-enfants-de-la-rue-en-republique-democratique-du-congo

Videos: 

https://youtu.be/7OWVbcHAip8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V-9g0RBRd0

A Room in a Closet, Literally

           

The reading on Spaces and Societies by Gill Valentine reminded me of a very hurtful reality in my country: the way in which domestic maids are treated in the households where they work and live 6 out of the 7 days of a week. And one way in which discrimination, post-colonial idiosyncrasy, and disregard of them as ‘less valuable’ occur can be seen in the architecture of the so called ‘service rooms.’ These are the rooms for the “cama-adentro” (living-in) maids, in their employers apartments. You will be beyond outraged if you will have to see what I saw when I was looking to rent an apartment for me and my two kids in a residential area in Miraflores, in the capital of Perú, where I used to live. I wouldn’t have believed myself had I not seen it with my own eyes. This is a case in which as Valentine points out, houses "are not merely neutral containers", but can be also "read as a map of the social structures and values which produced it" (p. 64).

First, for some context, I should say that Lima is an enormous capital that holds more than 10 million people, this is one third of the country’s population of 32 million. This has its origin in migrations that occurred in the 1980s from the rural areas of the country to the capital because of national terrorism attacks and deaths of a left-wing group that wanted to take over power through violence starting from the fields to the city. We defeated them in 1992. But many Peruvians left their homes in rural areas during this time to go to the capital. Another reason is that the Peruvian Capital concentrates all of the economic and political power institutes, and that the provinces (analogue to the US States) even though they have resources, lack technical knowledge to use those resources to advance their provinces, whenever there is no corruption that hampers it.

“The world population became more urban than rural in 2007. In Peru this happened  almost 50 years before[1]”

 In the last couple of decades the migration to the capital city was more for economic opportunities than for safety. One of many consequences of these migrations has been the availability of workforce for domestic jobs, mainly women and many times teenagers or even underage, often exploited by their employers who make them work 6 out of 7 days a week with no limit on the hours of work a day, and very low wages. Adding to that, some employers of the maids that live-in with them give them a different food menu than their family’s (usually less expensive); and the topic that interests us drawing from the reading, the conditions of the rooms they are given to live in are sometimes beyond human dignity. According to a 2014 study “De puertas para adentro” (From the Doors Inside):

“This job, traditionally undervalued and insufficiently regulated, is almost exclusively performed by women (95,8%) between 30 and  44 years of age (32.6%) and 14 to 24 years-old (23.6%). In average their wages are still below minimum wage or sometimes
inexistent[2]”

 A Real State Boom happened from 2009 to 2012 in Lima. Peru was considered one of the world fastest growing economies, and one of the effects was the social, economic and urban transformation of Lima, the capital. Its construction landscape started changing with the vertical expansion of buildings for residential (and other) purposes.

The toilet is inside the shower floor. Photo: Pinterest.

This is when the hidden cultural values and social meanings of the homes encountered a manifestation in the way the rooms for the maids were built or even adapted. As property owners and architects tried to squeeze the most out of the spaces and at the same time please a market of an expanding middle class that wanted a living-in maid, the results were repulsive.

As I made appointments to go see apartments with 3 bedrooms including room/bathroom for live-in service maids- for me and my children (3 year-old and 12 year-old) - I was horrified with what I saw. One of the apartments, with an ocean view, very pretty and all said in the ad it had a service room but after touring it with the owner I hadn’t see it, so I ask her about the room for the maid and she takes me to the room where the laundry machine was. Behind the door to get into that room was a closet with sliding doors. She stands by those and slides one of the doors announcing THAT was the bedroom!! I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of joke so, I look at her perplexed and she said to me: they are used at not needing much space, but if you want you can put her bed in the laundry room. I run away from this old lady as fast as I could still feeling nauseous.

Maids in Peru are mostly people who come form the mountains
or the jungle to the Coast where the capital is. Photo: Panchitas

Another place I visited also said in the ad that it had place for a live-in maid but I hadn’t seen an extra room so when I asked I was taken to the kitchen, and right by one of the kithcen walls (and I swear on my kids I will never forget this either) the woman unhooks a sort of wood stretcher that had been tight to the wall. As she locked it for it to resemble a bed, she tells me that in this way the kitchen will always be clean because the maid will have to sleep there. I remember this time I did talk my guts to this person about the humiliation and denigration she was permitting with such placements.

Even though the Maids Law establishes that live-in maids have to be offered a “adequate lodging” by

the employer and the National Building Regulations[3] prohibits rooms to be built without natural light and ventilation most of the time in Peruvian apartments the maids’ rooms don’t have any of these and are usually placed between the kitchen and the laundry room. The ironing of the family’s clothing done inside their rooms with piles of clothing that are not theirs occupying the small space. And the bathrooms many times don’t have a sink and maids have to use the laundry’s, or the toilet is put exactly underneath the shower to save space.

In this apartment design you can see the maid's room right by the kitchen. Its size
is the size of the bathroom in the rest of the apartment; while the maid's bathroom
is the size of a bed. Photo: Coherencia.

As Valentine highlights,"architecture seems to make a physical representation of social relations in the way it organizes people in space," (p.66) and this is what has been happening in Lima. The situation has somewhat improved in the latest years, thanks to local NGOs that are defending the maids' rights, but it is still recurrent, and  unfortunately just a symptom of a deeper social problem; a manifestation of how some of the worst social habits such as discrimination and racism materialize in the places/spaces we call home.



**Two things I should add: this is such a hidden practice in society, that even though it is very extended I couldn't find pictures of these rooms. Maybe because they are so private and because the maids don't want to risk their jobs. And on the side of the owners of such places, they almost never feature the maids rooms in their online ads for rent where they post many other pictures of the apartments. Unfortunately, during the time when I witnessed all of this, I think we still did not have smart phones, so I did not take pictures.

This has givien me an idea of a project in my country.  

  

References:
http://www.coherencia.pe/ese-cuartito-de-servicio/

  

https://blogs.upn.edu.pe/arquitectura/2018/05/11/el-fenomeno-de-inmigracion-del-campo-a-la-ciudad-en-lima/

https://andina.pe/agencia/noticia-la-gran-migracion-del-campo-a-ciudad-iniciada-los-40-ya-no-existe-sostienen-298743.aspx

http://ve.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1316-37012010000200007

http://gruporedes.org/weblog/2013/03/cuarto-de-servicio-una-forma-de-discriminacion/

http://tratadepersonasenelperu.blogspot.com/2013/10/el-cuarto-de-servicio-en-este-boom.html

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[1] Ignacio Pacheco Díaz, Architecture, Sustainability, and Urbanism blog in Universidad Privada del Norte. https://blogs.upn.edu.pe/arquitectura/2018/05/11/el-fenomeno-de-inmigracion-del-campo-a-la-ciudad-en-lima/

[2] Ariana Jáuregui and Emily Button, Academic Area and Research at IDEHPUCP, Pontificial Catholic University of Peru.  http://idehpucp.pucp.edu.pe/notas-informativas/trabajo-domestico-una-forma-trata-personas-invisibilizada/

[3] Nicolás Kisic, Architect for Coherence http://www.coherencia.pe/ese-cuartito-de-servicio/

Maid in America and Home

PBS

As we deconstructed “home,” I was reminded of Maid in America, a documentary that follows three domestic workers in Los Angeles. Prado’s (2005) film showcases how family, prosperity, and diligence varies from Telma, Judith, and Eva. Despite different nationalities, these women appear similar “Under Western Eyes.” Mohanty explains they are perceived as third-world women, oppressed and restricted to following identifiers: ignorant, uneducated, domestic, poor, and family-oriented (1995, p. 261). All are English-language learners confined to the domestic sphere, working as nannies, maids, or housekeepers. Eva, Judith, and Telma may be perceived as oblivious or unqualified because they lack proficiency in this second language. Their jobs, in turn, focus on manual labor and reside in the private sector, in which individuals determine employment eligibility. While they diligently scrub toilets, fold laundry, and oversee other household affairs, these individuals are not proportionally compensated for their efforts, earning as little as five dollars per hour without health benefits (Prado). Judith, Eva, and Telma do not have many employment avenues to explore without a social security card or worker’s permit.  

Without autonomy and security, a third world woman transforms into an exile. They are “cut off from their roots, their land, their past” (Said, 1984, p. 51). Judith, Telma, and Eva uprooted their life, prospecting for opportunities to improve their condition. Unable to fully transplant to the United State or exemplify Western expectations, las domésticas acquire a “discontinuous state of being,” not quite belonging to a particular geographical region nor resembling their prior selves (p. 51). These exiles then develop “contrapuntal consciousness,” or an awareness of two cultures, settings, homes (p. 55); even though Los Angeles is the setting of Maid in America, Eva, Judith, and Telma have varying home countries: Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, respectively. They are aware of expectations as a worker, but also their role as caregivers or housekeepers, undocumented immigrants, and mother or family member. Juggling these scripts, consequently, grows too onerous that an exile’s achievements “are permanently undermined by his or her sense of loss” (p. 49). Even though wages and circumstances might seem better in the United States, Eva misses her grandmother’s death and fails to mourn this tragedy with loved ones, whereas Judith departs from four children which causes the youngest to give the title ‘mom’ to her biological aunt. Becoming a tax accountant or business owner are undercut by key, transient moments with family, which is an integral component of the third world woman stereotype.

I couldn’t help but think of bell hooks. Maid in America complicates “mother worship” as Telma, a Latina woman, works for an African American family. She particularly cares for Mickey Marbury, their six-year-old son, to such an extent that he calls Telma “mom.” Not only does Karol Marbury, Mickey’s mother, bring this up but she then analyzes her own maternal role; she considers her work important yet her son even more so, rationalizing why she sought a nanny. While there should be further analysis on “mother worship” in this documentary, Maid in America supports the notion of home as political. Prado’s (2005) juxtaposition of the domestic worker’s homes with those of their employers exemplifies a disconnect, geographically, materially, and symbolically. Eva, Telma, and Judith’s work in homes and may have shelter yet lack place. They embody hook’s deduction: “For when a people no longer have the space to construct homeplace, we cannot build a meaningful community of resistance” (p.47). Their exploitation continued because of social and legislative obstacles.

References

hooks, b. (1990). “Homeplace: a site of resistance.” in Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, pp. 41-49. Boston: South End Press.

Mohanty, C. T. (1995). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, & H. Tiffin (Eds.), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, pp. 259-263. London: Routledge.

Prado, A. (Director). (2005). Maid in America [Motion Picture]. Impacto Films.

Said, E. W. (1984, September). The Mind of Winter. Harper's, pp. 49-55.