B o r n
–in–

B l o o d
& F i r e

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books by john charles chasteen:
Getting High: Marijuana through the Ages

Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for In de pen dence

Heroes on Horse back: A Life and Times of the Last Gaucho Caudillos

National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Pop u lar Dance

Translations by john charles chasteen:
The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil by

joaquim Machado de Assis

Juan Moreira: True Crime in Ninteenth-Century Argentina by Eduardo Gutiérrez

The Contemporary History of Latin America by Tulio Halperín Donghi

The Lettered City by Angel Rama

The Mystery of Samba: Pop u lar Music and National Identity in Brazil

by Hermano Vianna

Santa: A Novel of Mexico City by Federico Gamboa

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 2 13/06/16 10:49 AM

B o r n
–in–

B l o o d
& F i r e

A C o n C i s e H i s t o r y o f L At i n A m e r i C A

J o h n C h a r l e s C h a s t e e n

U n i v e r s i t y o f n o r t h C a r o l i n a

a t C h a p e l h i l l

B
W . W . n o r t o n & C o m p A n y

n e W y o r k • L o n d o n

F o u r t h E d i t i o n

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 3 13/06/16 10:49 AM

W. W. Norton & company has been in de pen dent since its founding in 1923, when
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Library of congress cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: chasteen, john charles, 1955- author.
Title: born in blood and fire : a concise history of Latin America /
john charles chasteen.
Description: Fourth edition. | New York : W.W. Norton & company, 2016. |
Includes index.
Identifiers: LccN 2016014210 | ISbN 9780393283051 (pbk.)
Subjects: LcSH: Latin America–History.
classification: Lcc F1410 .c4397 2016 | DDc 980–dc23 Lc record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016014210

ISbN 978-0-393-28305-1 (pbk.)

W. W. Norton & company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & company Ltd., castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London
WIT 3QT

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 4 13/06/16 10:49 AM

To my grandchildren,

Maya and Sam Ackerman,

now discovering their own Latin American roots

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 5 13/06/16 10:49 AM

V i

m A ps … ix

ACknoW Ledgmen ts … xi

time Line … xii

1 W eLCome to L Atin A meriCA … 1
Not Your Father’s Version … 4
Old Thinking on Latin America … 11

2 enCoun ter … 17
Patterns of Indigenous Life … 18
Origins of a crusading Mentality … 22
The brazilian counterexample … 29
Africa and the Slave Trade … 34
The Fall of the Aztec and Inca Empires … 38
The birth of Spanish America … 43
Countercurrents: Friar bartolomé de las casas … 50

3 CoLoni A L CruCibLe … 55
colonial Economics … 56
A Power called Hegemony … 62
A Process called Transculturation … 68
The Fringes of colonization … 75
Late colonial Transformations … 82
Countercurrents: colonial Rebellions … 91

4 in de pen denCe … 95
Revolution and War in Eu rope … 97
The Spanish American Rebellions begin, 1810– 15 … 101
The Patriots’ Winning Strategy: Nativism … 107
Patriot Victories in Spanish America, 1815– 25 … 112
Unfinished Revolutions … 115
Countercurrents: The Gaze of Outsiders … 122

C o n T e n T S

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 6 13/06/16 10:49 AM

V i i

5 postCoLoni A L bLues … 127
Liberal Disappointment … 128
Patronage Politics and caudillo Leadership … 132
brazil’s Different Path … 139
continuities in Daily Life … 143
Countercurrents: The Power of Outsiders … 156

6 progress … 161
Mexico’s Liberal Reform … 165
Other countries join the Liberal Trend … 171
The Limits of Progress for Women … 174
Models of Progress … 178
Countercurrents: International Wars … 189

A tour of L Atin A meriCA … m-2

7 neo Co Lo ni A L ism … 193
The Great Export boom … 194
Authoritarian Rule: Oligarchies and Dictatorships … 206
Links with the Outside World … 213
Countercurrents: New Immigration to Latin America … 227

8 nAtionA Lism … 233
Nationalists Take Power … 239
ISI and Activist Governments of the 1930s … 249
Countercurrents: Populist Leaders of the Twentieth

century … 263

9 reVoLu tion … 267
Post–World War II Pop u lism … 269
Onset of the cold War … 275
The cuban Revolution … 282
Countercurrents: Liberation Theology … 293

C o n t e n t s

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 7 13/06/16 10:49 AM

V i i i

10 re ACtion … 297
National Security Doctrine … 298
Military Rule … 303
Dictatorship Almost Everywhere … 309
The Last cold War battles: central America … 314
Countercurrents: La Violencia, Pablo Escobar, and

colombia’s Long Torment … 324

11 neoLiber A Lism A nd beyond … 329

gLossA ry … A 1

f urtHer ACknoW Ledgmen ts … A 25

index … A 27

C o n t e n t s

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 8 13/06/16 10:49 AM

i x

Modern Latin America … 13

African and Iberian background … 27

Indigenous Groups and Iberian Invasions … 37

Original Areas of colonization, 1500– 1700 … 60

colonial Administrative Divisions … 83

campaigns of In de pen dence Wars … 114

New Nations of Latin America, 1811– 39 … 141

Mexico and the US border before 1848 … 156

Liberals vs. conservatives at Midcentury … 166

Paraguay in Two Wars … 189

chilean Gains in the War of the Pacific … 191

Neo co lo nial Export Products … 204

Neo co lo nial Investments and Interventions … 217

Latin America in the cold War … 310

central America in the 1980s … 315

Neoliberal Economies … 333

M A P S

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01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 10 13/06/16 10:49 AM

x i

Ack now l e d gm e n ts

At least one hundred of my students at the University of North caro-
lina read this book before it was published. To them, my grateful
ac know ledg ment. Their enthusiasm encouraged me to keep it infor-
mal, vivid, and short. “I feel like this book wants me to understand it,”
said one of them.
When the first edition appeared, several professors and gradu-
ate students helpfully set me straight on factual errors. Much appreci-
ated! I also got, and still get, e-mails from undergraduate readers who
write just to say “I like your book.” Thanks for those e-mails. It’s really
your book.
And I can’t believe this is the fourth edition of it! The recent
past has shifted in my rearview mirror. Thanks to Phillip berryman
for helping me appreciate just how much has changed since I first
traveled to Mexico over forty years ago.

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 11 13/06/16 10:49 AM

x i i

T i M e l i n e

m e x i C o b r A z i L A r g e n t i n A

E n c o u n t E r
1 4 9 2 – 1 6 0 0

the fully sedentary

Mexicas, who built the

aztec empire, were

conquered and their

empire was taken over

by the spaniards, but

Mexican blood still runs

in Mexican veins.

the semisedentary

tupi people of the

Brazilian forests were

destroyed and their

labor replaced by afri-

can slaves whom the

portuguese brought to

grow sugarcane.

the nonsedentary,

plains- dwelling

pampas people were

eventually wiped out.

Much later, eu ro pe an

immigrants took their

place on the land.

c o l o n i a l
c r u c i b l E
1 6 0 0 – 1 8 1 0

Because of its dense

indigenous population

and its rich silver mines,

Mexico (or much of it)

became a core area of

spanish colonization.

profitable sugar planta-

tions made the north-

eastern coast a core

area of portuguese

colonization, but much

of Brazil remained a

poorer fringe.

Most of argentina

remained on the fringe

of spanish coloniza-

tion until 1776, when

Buenos aires became

the capital of a new

spanish viceroyalty.

i n d E p E n d E n c E
1 8 1 0 – 1 8 2 5

the large peasant

uprisings led by hidalgo

and Morelos frightened

Mexican Creoles into a

conservative stance on

in de pen dence, which

they embraced only in

1821.

the portuguese royal

family’s presence kept

Brazil relatively quiet

as war raged else-

where. prince pedro

declared Brazilian

in de pen dence himself

in 1822.

Without massive popu-

lations of oppressed

indigenous people or

slaves to fear, Buenos

aires Creoles quickly

embraced the May

revolution (1810).

p o s t c o l o n i a l
b l u E s
1 8 2 5 – 1 8 5 0

the national govern-

ment was frequently

over thrown as liberals

and conservatives

struggled for control.

the career of the

caudillo santa anna

represents the turmoil.

the stormy reign of

pedro i (1822– 31) was

followed by the even

stormier regency

(1831– 40). But the

Brazilian empire

gained stability in

the 1840s as coffee

exports rose.

the conservative

dictator rosas

dominated Buenos

aires (and therefore,

much of argentina) for

most of these years,

exiling the liberal

oppo sition.

p r o g r E s s
1 8 5 0 – 1 8 8 0

the great liberal reform

of the 1850s provoked

the conservatives

to support a foreign

prince, Maximilian. the

liberals, led by Juárez,

emerged triumphant by

the late 1860s.

pedro ii (1840– 89)

cautiously promoted

liberal- style progress

while maintaining a

strongly hierarchical

system. Brazil ended

slavery only in 1888.

liberals took over

after the fall of rosas

(1852), but not until the

1860s did they manage

to unite all argentina

under one national

government.

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 12 13/06/16 10:49 AM

x i i i

t i m e L i n e

m e x i C o b r A z i L A r g e n t i n A

n E o c o l o n i a l i s m
1 8 8 0 – 1 9 3 0

the dictatorship of

porfirio Díaz, called the

porfiriato (1876– 1911),

embodied neo co lo-

nial ism in Mexico. Díaz

invited international

investment and used

it to consolidate the

Mexican state.

Brazil’s first republic

(1889– 1930) was a

highly decentral-

ized oligarchy built,

above all, on coffee

exports. the leading

coffee- growing state,

são paulo, became

dominant.

Buenos aires and

the surrounding

areas underwent

an agricultural and

immigration boom

of vast proportions.

various regional

oligarchies ruled until

the election of 1916.

n a t i o n a l i s m
1 9 1 0 – 1 9 4 5

the Mexican revolution

led latin america’s

nationalist trend in

1910. the presidency

of lázaro Cárdenas

(1934– 40) marked

the high point of its

accomplishments.

Getúlio vargas, presi-

dent 1930– 35, defined

Brazilian nationalism

in this period. in 1937,

vargas dissolved

Congress and formed

the authoritarian

estado novo.

argentina’s radical

party was driven by the

ballot box. it displaced

the landowning

oligarchy but remained

mired in traditional

patronage politics.

r E v o l u t i o n
1 9 4 5 – 1 9 6 0

Mexico’s revolution

became more conserva-

tive and institutionalized

(in the pri) even as radi-

cal change accelerated

elsewhere.

pop u lism and the

electoral clout of

or ga nized labor (led

first by vargas, then

by his heirs) energized

Brazilian politics after

World War ii.

Juan and evita perón

(1946– 55) made the

working class a leading

force in argentine

politics. perón’s

followers remained loyal

long after his exile.

r E a c t i o n
1 9 6 0 – 1 9 9 0

overall, the pri used its

revolutionary imagery

to absorb challenges

from the left— except

when it used bullets, as

in the 1968 tlatelolco

massacre.

the Brazilian military

overthrew the populist

president Goulart in

1964 and ruled for

twenty years in the

name of efficiency and

anticommunism.

taking control in

1966, the argentine

military won its “dirty

war” against peronist

guerrillas but bowed

out in 1983 after

losing to Britain in the

falklands war.

n E o l i b E r a l i s m
a n d b E Y o n d
1 9 9 0 – 2 0 1 5

the post–Cold War

pri shed much of its

nationalist heritage to

embrace neoliberalism,

fending off new

challenges from both

left and right.

the Workers’ party, of

the orthodox left but

also indirectly heir to

vargas, showed the

world that Brazil is a

serious country.

peronist politics and

neoliberal economics

dominated argentina

in a period of steadily

declining living

standards.

01_BBF_28305_fm_i-xiii.indd 13 13/06/16 10:49 AM

Pa b l o . Pablo was a little boy who lived at a Colombian boarding house in 1978, when I

lived there, too. On hot afternoons, Pablo sometimes took a bath in the back patio of the

house, the patio de ropas, where several women washed the boarders’ clothes by hand.

Until I so rudely interrupted him, he was singing on this par tic u lar afternoon, as happy as

any little boy anywhere, despite the modest character of our dollar- a-day accommodations.

Snapshot taken by the author at the age of twenty- two.

02_BBF_28305_ch01_xiv-015.indd 2 13/06/16 10:49 AM

w e l c o m e t o l a t i n a m e r i c a

1

L
atin America was born in blood and fire, in conquest and slavery.
It is conquest and its sequel, slavery, that created the central
conflict of Latin American history. So that is where any history

of the region must begin. On the other hand, conquest and slavery is
old news, and partly, well, it’s “history.” The Latin America of 2016 is
no longer your father’s version.

Still, conquest and colonization form the unified starting place
of a single story, told here with illustrative examples from many coun-
tries. We need a single story line, because rapid panoramas of twenty
national histories would merely produce dizziness. And, before begin-
ning the story, we must set the stage in a number of ways. We need to
ask, first of all, whether so many countries can really share a single
history. At first blush, one might doubt it. Consider everything that
story will have to encompass. Consider the contrasts and paradoxes of
contemporary Latin America.

1

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C h a p t e r 1 | W e L C O M e t O L a t I N a M e r I C a

2

Latin America is the “global south,” still struggling to attain the
standard of living of Europe or the United States. It has deep roots
in indigenous cultures. Most of the world’s indigenous Americans, by
far, live south of the Rio Grande. Yet Latin America is also the West,
a place where more than nine out of ten people speak a European
language and practice a European religion. Most of the world’s Roman
Catholics are Latin Americans, which has much to do with the first
non-European pope, chosen in 2013, being Argentine.

Some Latin Americans still grow corn and beans on small plots
hidden among banana trees and dwell in earthen-floored houses with
sagging red-tile roofs. International travelers who jet in and out of
sprawling Latin American metropolises rarely see them. You have
to go to the countryside, with its awful roads. Most Latin Americans
these days live in noisy, restless cities, some of them postmodern
megacities. Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Mexico City have far out-
stripped the ten-million mark. Rio de Janeiro, Lima, and Bogotá are
not far behind.

Next, consider the contrasts among countries. Brazil is a be-
hemoth, occupying half the South American continent, its population
surging beyond 200 million. Mexico follows at around 120 million.
Thanks partly to their burgeoning internal markets, both countries’
economies have even spawned their own multinational corporations.
Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela constitute a second rank,
with populations between 30 and 50 million. Chile’s population of
17 million carries disproportionate economic weight because of its
high standard of living. The remaining, roughly one quarter, of Latin
Americans, live in a dozen sovereign nations, most with populations
under 10 million. In sum, the major Latin American countries are
global players (though nothing like China or India), while many oth-
ers are ministates with a single city of consequence and two or three
main highways.

Latin American climates and landscapes vary more than
you may realize. Most of Latin America lies in the tropics, with
no well-defined spring, summer, fall, and winter. Many read-
ers of the global north will envision beaches replete with palms.
Latin America’s coastal lowlands do often match that description,

02_BBF_28305_ch01_xiv-015.indd 2 13/06/16 10:49 AM

3

but this tourist’s eye view is misleading overall. Tropical high-
lands cooled by their altitude, often semiarid, have played a larger
role in Latin American history. Mexico City stands above seven
thousand feet; Bogotá above eight thousand. Latin American moun-
tains are the world’s most densely populated for historical reasons.
Meanwhile, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay—sometimes called
the “Southern Cone” of South America—lie mostly or entirely
outside the tropics, with climates similar to parts of the United
States. The continent’s craggy southern tip is a land of glaciers and
Antarctic influences.

Socially, Latin America is a place of extreme inequalities. Enor-
mous disparities of wealth and well-being exist within countries and
between them. Today many Latin Americans live and work in cir-
cumstances not so different from those of middle-class people in the
United States. But many, more than those who seem middle-class by
international norms, still inhabit hovels and endure a poverty and
deprivation rare in the developed world. The Southern Cone countries
have long stood respectably high in global rankings of social develop-
ment, and most Latin American countries now hold middling rank,
globally, in a combined measure of people’s education, life expectancy,
and buying power. The small countries of Central America (notably
excepting Costa Rica) are worse off, as are those with large and his-
torically oppressed populations of indigenous people, like Guatemala
and Bolivia.

Latin America is probably the most racially diverse of world
regions, fed from the gene pools of Europe, Africa, and indigenous
America. All three elements are present in every country, and the pos-
sible configurations vary kaleidoscopically. Guatemala and Bolivia,
along with Peru and Ecuador, are characterized by large populations
of indigenous people who continue to speak native languages such as
Quechua or Aymara, live more or less separately from Spanish speak-
ers, and follow distinctive customs in clothing and food. African genes
are a predominant element of the mix in Brazil and on the shores
of the Caribbean. Latin America was the main destination of the mil-
lions of people enslaved and taken out of Africa between 1500 and
1850. Whereas the United States received about 523,000 enslaved

C h a p t e r 1 | W e L C O M e t O L a t I N a M e r I C a

02_BBF_28305_ch01_xiv-015.indd 3 13/06/16 10:49 AM

C h a p t e r 1 | W e L C O M e t O L a t I N a M e r I C a

4

immigrants, Cuba alone got more, Brazil at least 3.5 million. In
addition, there are places in Latin America where people look notably
European, particularly where large numbers of Italian immigrants
were added to the population around 1900, such as in Argentina
and Uruguay. Probably most Latin Americans consider themselves
to some degree “of mixed race,” or mestizo, a key concept in Latin
American history.

Returning to our initial question, then, do these twenty coun-
tries in their startling variety really have a single history? No, in the
sense that a single story cannot encompass their diversity. Yes, in
the sense that all have much in common. They experienced a similar
process of conquest and colonization. They became independent more
or less the same way, mostly at the same time. They then struggled
with similar problems in similar ways. Looking back after two centu-
ries of independence, one sees that similar trends have washed over
the entire region, giving Latin American history a well-defined ebb
and flow.

No t You r Fat h e r ’ s V er sioN

Lately, it’s been more flow than ebb. Enormous changes have come
to Latin America in the forty years since I traveled there for the first
time, at the height of the Cold War. Yes, youngsters, that was before
the Internet! Telephones and postal services worked poorly or not
at all in many countries of Latin America. It was impossible to stay
connected to the United States on a daily basis. One experienced
total immersion.

There was a hint of timelessness, too—even still the occasional
burro or ox-cart to glimpse from the window of a cross-country bus.
Few rural dwellings had electricity or running water. The countryside
seemed a feudal zone, dominated by large landowners who were rarely
to be found on their rural estates because they lived in the cities. The
poor people who did live in the countryside were amazingly isolated,
although fairly well fed compared to the urban poor. I remember stay-
ing a few nights in a house that stood on an Andean mountainside,

02_BBF_28305_ch01_xiv-015.indd 4 13/06/16 10:49 AM

5

N O t Y O u r F a t h e r ’ s V e r s I O N

a ten- or fifteen-minute climb from the road, impassible by any sort
of vehicle. The family who lived up there reckoned the hour by the
sun and the passage of two or three buses a day visible on the road
that threaded a yawning chasm, far below. An unimaginable variety
of fruit grew around them, but any kind of store was half a day away.

Rural-urban migrants had been flowing into Latin American
cities for decades before my arrival, although the only accompanying
construction boom had been the improvised housing that the migrants
built for themselves. At the height of the Cold War, Latin American
cityscapes still mostly resembled the 1940s or 1950s. There were no
malls, or practically none, and few major infrastructural projects in
the cities. There were few US brand-name consumer goods for sale be-
cause high import tariffs made them too expensive for almost anyone.
The idea was to protect and encourage local industries. There was
already a rising tide of Asian imports, although not yet from China,
which has become so suddenly a player in Latin America. Cold War
China was Mao’s China, where people wore only blue and rode only
bicycles and factories were a thing of the future. Latin America’s high
protective tariffs meant that imported blenders, televisions, and audio
tape players had to be smuggled in, or sold in a variety of “free trade”
venues created by various governments of the region in recognition
of the inevitable. Before the era of inexpensive Asian manufactures,
the clothing of Latin America’s destitute millions was put together by
hand and often seemed about to come apart at the seams like the first
pants that I had made in Colombia by a tailor who worked sitting in
the doorway of his shop, the size of a large closet.

The streets of cities were not studded with US fast-food fran-
chises, as now, nor did they overflow yet with cars, which were too
expensive for most people to own. Thus there was no need, yet, to create
laws keeping cars (with odd numbered plates, for example) off the
road on certain days or hours, as many Latin American cities do today
for sheer lack of street space. Diesel-belching buses, yes, however—
lots of those. Innovative bus rapid transit systems with dedicated
high-speed lanes, such as the one first created in Curitiba, Brazil
(and now re-created in a series of major Latin American cities)
remained on the drawing board. There were a few supermarkets in

02_BBF_28305_ch01_xiv-015.indd 5 13/06/16 10:49 AM

C h a p t e r 1 | W e L C O M e t O L a t I N a M e r I C a

6

the richest parts of town, but most people did not buy food in super-
markets. Instead, there was a complex of open markets for produce
and commodities and neighborhood stores and bakeries for daily sta-
ples. In sum, Latin America’s middle classes were smaller and much
less Americanized than today. Strong trading blocs like NAFTA and
Mercosur were decades away.

Nobody had a cell phone until the 1990s, and many people had
no telephone at all. Then cell phone use rocketed in Latin American
cities, precisely because landlines had always been scarce. At least in
Colombia, where I first rented a place, you had a telephone in your
house, or you didn’t, period. Forget about getting one if you didn’t,
because state-run telephone companies rarely added lines. Houses
were rented, bought, and sold with existing lines. A house with a tele-
phone brought a better price, obviously. Before the era of plastic digi-
tal watches, a wristwatch of any kind was a prestige item in Latin
America. People sometimes wore watches that didn’t keep time, just
to maintain their image. Few urban people seemed to possess a credit
card, wear seat belts, have insurance coverage, or fuss over their
diet except to worry about their weight if they were women. No one
had heard of multiculturalism or of threats to the rain forest.
Sociology was for revolutionaries, and psychology was for the insane.
Remittances from people working in the United States were not a
yet major source of income in the region. Mexican immigration to
the United States was growing, but not yet a flood, and Central
American immigration had hardly begun. Large cities were well-
known hotspots, but, overall, street crime was moderate by compari-
son with recent decades.

Yes, those were the good old days—for me, anyway. I noticed,
by the way people treated me, that I had become better looking. At
greetings, I learned to embrace my buddies and shake hands with
their girlfriends. The relationships between men and women seemed
to me very old-fashioned and stylized. My first Spanish-language flir-
tations were supervised by dutiful younger sisters who were assigned
to surveil me constantly. Fortunately, they could be bought off with
money to go get a Popsicle, or better yet, go see a movie. In Mexico,
at least, girls still did a lot of courting at the evening paseo, when

02_BBF_28305_ch01_xiv-015.indd 6 13/06/16 10:49 AM

N O t Y O u r F a t h e r ’ s V e r s I O N

7

people walked in circles around the town plaza, half in one direction
and half in the other, occasionally switching, so that everyone eventu-
ally saw everyone. Daytime park benches were full of teenagers kiss-
ing because young people didn’t have cars. (Wait. Maybe that hasn’t
changed.) The evening meeting place, on the other hand, was at the
girl’s house, under the watchful eye of her family, not inside but at the
doorway, or even—although this was pretty old-fashioned even then—
at the window, he outside, she inside, separated by wrought-iron bars.
Companionate marriage (focused on the personal compatibility of the
couple) was far from unknown, but didn’t seem to prosper. Male in-
fidelity was the rule, rather than the exception. I’m not so sure how
much has changed, in that regard. But clearly, these days middle-
class women are much more likely to hold a job and middle-class
husbands are more likely to accept, at least in principle, that they
ought to share household duties.

Many thought patterns were quite conservative. People rarely
went to mass, but their Catholicism was automatic and unquestion-
able. Young people of a respectable family did not cohabit before
marriage. The ubiquitous public presence of Catholic religious de-
votion had yet to be challenged by growing numbers of evangelical
Christians. Perfectly ordinary middle-class people had live-in maids
who earned an unbelievable pittance, inhabited tiny windowless …