When the Cumbia Stops

By Anthony Sanchez / Winter 2023

“Baila, baila esta cumbia, mueve, mueve la cintura” (dance, dance this cumbia, move, move your waist), Selena’s Baila Esta Cumbia was an everyday event as a child. Coming home from school the moment I entered the apartment, my nostrils were attacked by the poignant aroma of Pine-Sol, my skin began to sweat from the heat of food cooking in the kitchen and the cumbia began to ring in my ears. From elementary until middle school, this was an everyday scene, and at the center of it, was my mother dancing around the apartment as she cooked, cleaned, and cared for my brother, father, and me. It was truly a spectacle as my mom would dance from one task to another, managing to make the illusion of having octopus tentacles with the number of different things she would take care of at once. It was almost as if the cumbia gave her superpowers. She became empowered, rising to a superhuman level.

Meanwhile, my dad was passed out on the couch with his head leaning backward and mouth wide open as if he were waiting for someone to feed him. My dad owns a sweeping business, in which he works all night driving all over Orange County sweeping, hauling trash, and power washing. Since he worked all night he would catch up on sleep throughout the day. He would only wake up for three things: to eat, poop, and work on the cars. Since the work vehicles were driven daily, they often needed maintenance work done on them. My mom would not work and rather stayed home caring for us and the household through her cumbia. Therefore at times my aunts and uncles would drop off my cousins at our apartment, otherwise known as the Sanchez daycare. My mom would feed them, as well as take us out for ice cream and swimming at the community pool. It was truly a fun childhood, as everyday life was a dance party with my mom.

This was the family dynamic for a while, until one day in middle school when I arrived home from school and no longer did I smell the Pine-Sol, the apartment temperature was distinctly not hot, and most importantly of all, there was no cumbia playing. I began to question if I was in the right home until I noticed both my parents slouched over on the couch sleeping. It was a different mood in the apartment, no longer was there the vibrance of my mom dancing around. It was a much more dull atmosphere. I began to question why the cumbia had suddenly stopped. Why is she now tired like my father?

Growing up seeing my mom dance around the apartment while my dad rested gave me a shallow view of my mom’s caretaking as a form of entertainment and not really work. While she danced, my dad worked all night, being the family’s sole breadwinner. My dad brought what modest money we had, without his contributions to the family unit, we would be living out on the streets. Therefore I unconsciously praised my dad more than my mother as he was the one giving us a home. So I was confused as to why my mom needed to rest, as that was something gained from hard work in my view. It wasn’t until later that I learned that my mom had started working with my dad. My father’s health had been declining due to his debilitating disease, therefore my mom started helping him at work. However, I still questioned my mom’s work ethic. I understood that my father was drained by his disease so he needed the extra rest. But on the other hand, my mom is perfectly healthy. She would also minimally work with my dad, only helping him haul big trash and pick up the trash that the sweeper couldn’t. So I was confused as to why the cumbia stopped. I began to label my mom as lazy and blamed her for the decline in my dad’s health. If only she would have helped my dad at work from the start. Why couldn’t she get a job to ease the financial burden on the family? How has she not learned English after so many years in the US? Why did she have to stop the cumbia?

It was a toxic view of my mom’s character. While I understood that she needed to rest from working with my dad, I never comprehended the laborious job that was caretaking. In my view, it was a form of entertainment where we danced and went out for ice cream. It never dawned on me that caretaking was a 24/7 job. Especially with my father sleeping through most of the day, my mom took on more parental roles than a typical mother. I realized that by viewing my mother as superhuman in the way she would manage to care for the household and our family, I was inadvertently dehumanizing her and holding her to expectations above what should be expected from the average human. Only then, did I realize how shallow of a view I had of my mother. The cumbia masked the fatigue and exhaustion my mom would face at the end of every day. Cumbia was a way for her to cope with the labor she had to endure. It made it easier to work throughout the day as it brought her jubilation. While I was soundly sleeping, she was setting up for the next day. My mom would ensure my dad was taking his medication, help me with my algebra homework and manage our finances through budgeting wherever she could. While my dad was the reason we had a home, my mom is the one who cared for and maintained it. My mom is the gear behind the machine that keeps our family running. I was very naive as a child, unbeknown to the hard labor my mom would do on a daily basis. It wasn’t just cleaning the house. Domestic work included much more, especially when she was treated as a daycare by my aunts and uncles. The worst of it all was that despite the extraneous labor she would endure, she was treated as if it was a game.

However, this isn’t an issue distinctively unique to my mom. Caretakers of all kinds are often devalued by our social matrix, perpetuating consistent exploitation of them. The shallow view I held of my mom is quite common among individuals in our society. When I reference our society, I am specifically speaking about the United States. Our distinctive culture and values. In our social matrix, we live in a capitalist society where value is associated with wealth. Such as Martin Luther King Jr. had stated in his speech Beyond Vietnam, he diagnosed us to be living in a “thing-oriented” society. In which the things you own dictate your value. Thus, to understand how as a society we measure someone's worth, we can look at what monetary values we give them. In this instance when you look across all caretaking jobs you will find that they are often in the lower half of paying jobs. For instance, in California, the average caretaker's salary is $24,000 a year, while the average salary in the state as a whole is $46,500 according to Intuit Mint. Then we must factor in the caretaking jobs that are not paid. Caring for a child, a relative, or an elder is largely work done by women that goes unpaid. In a 2019 Oxfam research paper, they found that had women’s domestic work been paid at a minimum wage, it would equate to $1.5 trillion. Therefore, not only is domestic work severely undervalued, but oftentimes not even paid.

Mothers across the US have to face this reality since the insinuation of women joining the workforce. Silvia Federici speaks on this topic, as she notes how women’s empowerment is measured “by their presence and influence in the workplace”, recategorizing domestic labor as ‘maternal’ duties that are often ignored. There is no compensation nor appreciation for domestic labor, as it is now transformed into a parental necessity. It is expected that mothers will fulfill this role as their ‘natural maternal’ duties. Therefore this was coined as the second shift. After work women have to pick up the second shift of domestic duties at home despite working 8, 9, or 10-hour shifts. Before women joined the workforce, this was often their ‘role’ in the family unit, and thus even after joining the workforce, they must still complete it. It was a role that became the embodiment of what as a society we consider to be a women’s duty. Therefore, once both parents started working, who would take up the second shift? Well, the mother of course. For the rich and powerful, they can offset these duties to domestic workers, in child care or elder care. However, for the working class such as my family, it is up to the mother to fulfill these responsibilities. This recategorization of domestic work also disenfranchises mothers who stay home and only do domestic work. Societal pressure now forces both parents to be working. Looking down upon the stay-at-home mom. My mom definitely felt this pressure, as she would often talk about wanting to get a job so she can help out the family. Not only did I and society as a whole not view domestic work as valued work, but as well as my mom herself.

A big turning point for society to acknowledge the value of domestic work was during the pandemic, as access to domestic work became limited. Jordan Kisner writes about this in his New York Times article “The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew.” as he explores how the unavailability of domestic workers during the pandemic made Americans realize how caring for a family “[matches] or even [exceeds] the requirements of the full-time jobs”. Parents struggled at home as they realized how much they undervalued the care that was put into their children whether at school or in a daycare. No longer can they offset this care elsewhere but had to pile it upon their jobs. This societal self-realization made people question why we devalue care. Well as Federici stated, it is the capitalistic system upon which our society is built that allows for the devaluation of care. Our economy is built upon years of racism and sexism, as that is what became the most powerful for the wealthy and powerful. With their power, it became the norm. Looking back during slavery, domestic care wasn't paid then either and rather forced to be done by slaves. Nowadays it has been pushed onto women. Despite it being a vital need to sustain life, it does not create profits. For that reason, it goes unpaid. Therefore it is cheap to push on these duties toward a disenfranchised minority group that does not hold the political power to change the system. For that reason even paid domestic workers are often women of color.

Now how do we change this? How do we move forward in reversing years of conditioning our society to devalue care? Well as Martin Luther King Jr. stated, we must go from a “Thing oriented society to a person-oriented society”. We must reevaluate our values and replace profits and wealth with people. People must be our number one priority, not living a lifestyle of glamor. We must be a cohesive human race in which the sorrow you feel, is sorrow felt by me and others. We are a united cohesive human race. We must no longer put profits over people, but cherish and value the people who give us life and sustenance. Altering our motivations to be that of keeping peace and harmony amongst the people who give you life. We saw a bit of this with the pandemic, as people began to value the work of care, and even nicknamed them to be ‘essential workers’. Well, we must not stop there, there is much more to do rather than just call care workers by another name. We must work towards fully recategorizing care work to be essential work. No longer should it just be a nickname, but full on a depiction of what our society stands for. Given we live in a capitalist society, we show that our society values care work by paying them a fair share. We must advocate for equal payment of domestic work, such as the Marshall Plan For Moms, which advocates for a monthly stipend to pay mothers for their domestic work.

Furthermore, much of this can seem daunting, as it requires a massive shift in the ideals and beliefs of a society. But it doesn't require much to get the ball rolling. To start change we as individuals must first recognize the racist and sexist views our society is built upon. We must also recognize the ones we carry, and hold judgment. As it is key that we are only but a factor of our collective environment. We act and believe the way we do as a product of our environment.

So when looking deeply within us, let us not judge each other harshly by the beliefs we hold, but give space to understand why we hold those beliefs. Only then can we see what aspects of our environment need altering. Once we can recognize this, we can pinpoint where we must act to achieve a person-oriented society. A person-oriented society where the cumbia, what brings me life and sustenance, will once again start playing.

Works Cited

“Caretaker Salary in California – $24,000.” Mint.

“Financial Representative Salary in California – $46,500.” Mint.

Kisner, Jordan. “The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Feb. 2021.

Sherlock, Steve. “MLK: ‘We Must Rapidly Begin the Shift from a 'Thing-Oriented' Society to a 'Person-Oriented' Society.’” MLK: "We Must Rapidly Begin the Shift from a 'Thing-Oriented' Society to a 'Person-Oriented' Society", 17 Jan. 2022.