They present a film based on the real life of women who clean the city

Carolina Gomez Mena

La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, November 11, 2024, p. 18

The cleaning of public spaces in cities and, above all, in the most densely populated ones like Mexico City, is a fundamental task, and, therefore, the people who carry it out are also essential.

However, even though they are there, day after day, cleaning up after us, no one sees them, and even less knows about their difficult working conditions.

The documentary film Invisibility Treaty tells the lives and experiences of young and older women who clean public spaces in this metropolis: at the Mexico City International Airport, in the Metro and the streets of the country’s capital.

Most people consider cleaning work to be dirty work, when we are the dirty ones. These people really do a very important job, they collect our garbage. What would be of the cities if they were not there?points to The Day Luciana Kaplan, director and producer of the film that will premiere in various commercial movie theaters in our city and other states, as well as in the National Cinematheque, on November 21.

The material, filmed in black and white, builds an intimate portrait of job insecurity and the feeling of invisibilityand also addresses some personal aspects of women who have no choice but to dedicate themselves to this work, because as some mention, without or with little education, they cannot aspire to another activity.Claudia (37 years old), a cleaning worker at the Metro, whose case is addressed in the film material, tells this medium that he has been in this activity for three years.

He receives 3,100 pesos fortnightly, and says that After reporting a supervisor to the bosses, retaliation began: unjustified discounts, intimidation and threats of physical violence.

We have no benefits, we have no insurance, we have nothing, and there is no union as such. We want to be paid for the holidays we work, which should be double or triple, and they don’t pay us like that, and if you are absent on event days they deduct an exorbitant amount of money.

It indicates that if they complain they are easily replaced, which is why many choose silence. The workers whose cases are captured in the documentary film agree that they are victims of subcontracting by companies that use tactics to avoid responsibilities, such as constantly changing the company name.

Tania Espinosa Sánchez, coordinator for Latin America of the Program of Laws on Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (Wiego), interviewed at the presentation of the work, pointed out that Women constitute the most affected sector in the informal sphere.

Women hold more risky and precarious jobs, and a lower salary, sometimes only three-quarters of what men earn.