Ara's Story – Heritage

– March 16, 2009

Ara left our Oaxaca office in December of 2006, in pursuit of a secured job.

One of her uncles was working for the federal government. And, this is hard to believe but pretty easy to understand: he "gave" his job to her. It is the Mexican way.

It applies to most federal, state, and local government jobs. If someone holds a job (for example, public school teacher) for a number of years, he or she can decide to "give" the job to anyone he/ she choose, whether or not the recipient of the position has any qualifications at all.

Ara's uncle, retiring, gave her his old job. The job was to go to the outlying mountain areas in Oaxaca to check on the effectiveness of federal assistance programs: Micro-loans for a housewife who wants to buy a sewing machine; training of the husband to become a carpenter; and such. Ara has high school education, and worked 18 years in hotel reservations. Now she is a government employee carrying out administration and accounting responsibilities.

We have a photographer friend who used to be hired by the Oaxaca State tourist office for freelance work. Eventually he got himself hired by the State accounting office. A few months later he gave it to his wife and went back to his photographer job. Neither he nor his wife had any training in accounting. But that is not the point. He had connection, and now she is "in".

All those government jobs are just "iron rice bowls" – nothing fabulous, but they are secure. And Ara did even better: Hers is a "super iron rice bowl": She will not lose her job even when the federal government changes hands every 6 years (Mexican constitution limits presidency to one term only). And, in case the federal government closes this agency, she is guaranteed another job in the government.

Oaxaca in late 2006 was a huge mess. Riots went on for six months. Thousands of people lost their jobs. Timing was in her favor that her uncle was retiring. Ara quit her job with us and started her new job the very next day.

Sometimes the agency would provide car and driver, but more often she would take public bus for her trips to those mountain villages. Even though those villages are not really that far away, most of them don't have paved roads to reach them. So Ara would be sitting in an old, broken down bus on the bumpy and dusty road for hours to get to those villages.

Very often she arrives her destination in the afternoon, and has to stay overnight to finish her work. If it is a bigger village, there might be a hotel for her to stay. And she would be really in luck to find a hot bath and relax for the night. But most likely she will sleep on the floor of the town hall in the village or share a room with some family. The village folks will provide some mats and blankets. Some women would bring food for her. And then it's her and the dark mountain night.

Ara grew up in Zaachila, a small village outside of Oaxaca. Her upbringing was very modest. But these visits are still quite rough for her. She sold her car and rented out her house, as she is "out of town" most of the days, and because her government job does not pay enough to support a car and the mortgage. For all the practical reasons, she moved back to her parents' house in Zaachila.

There, she became the "unmarried daughter" again.

FOOTNOTE:  THE ECONOMIST newspaper pointed out in the Latin American Special Report (Sep. 11, 2010)：If it is to become a middle-class society, Latin America's first priority must be to improve the quality of schooling..... The main task is to train better teachers and to link extra spending to teacher performance. Attempts to do this in Mexico have largely foundered on opposition from the powerful teachers' union. Teachers there have jobs for life, which can be bequeathed, bought or sold. Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, got the union to agree that posts would be filled by public competition, but enforcing this has proved hard.