Relaciones internacionales.indb - HOMINES

MARÍA CRISTINA RODRÍGUEZ
where the margins have grown to the point that the centre has less people
even if they hold the power to employ, sell, rent, and decide who steps up
the ladder.
The restrictions on women in Caribbean societies, whether English,
French, Spanish or Dutch-speaking, make living in the white western world
a very appealing option. In the metropolis, it is expected that women
work, live on their own, be sole providers of their families, and negotiate
by themselves their work and living arrangements. Although this might be
a very hard task for women to undertake, the experience allows them to
make choices, be responsible for them, manage their own economics, and
make decisions based solely on their judgement. Women discover that they
have earned a place in the social structure of the metropolis, even if this
means struggling against open racial, ethnic and class prejudices.
The female characters in Julia Alvarez’s first and third novel When the
García Girls Lost Their Accent (WGGLA) and ¡Yo!, remember, recall,
and relive a life where they were privileged girls in a household propped
by invisible women functioning as maids, nannies, cooks, and all kinds of
servants. As Yolanda reimagines her “lost past”, these dark-skinned women
acquire a face, a voice and a life. This essay focuses on these women whose
race in the Dominican Republic automatically placed them in the invisible
spaces of kitchen, maid quarters, backyard, sheds, and slums, but who in
New York acquire a collective visibility and presence that will allow them
to break from the island stronghold on class and race.
If we rely on Nicholas Van Hear and D. Massey’s theories of international
migration, women who migrate can be placed under two of their six
categories: first, migrant networks and institutions, and second, migration
order shaped by the macro-political economy. Women establish relationships
that link former, current and potential migrants and those who do
not migrate, in countries of origin and destination—host country—through
kinship, friendship, neighborhood, ethnicity, and other types of community
and affinity (Van Hear 15). According to Patricia Pessar in A Visa for a
Dream: Dominicans in the United States, Dominicans describe their
migration to New York, as a cadena meaning that they form “a migration
chain or seek to link themselves with an established chain” (11). These
migrations are also shaped by historical ties—colonial, imperial—between
places of origin and destination (Van Hear 16). Regarding the Dominican
Republic, there was very little migration during the Trujillato (1930-1961),
except by the upper classes—like the García’s grandparents and parents—
who came to the United States as tourists, diplomats, or seekers of political
asylum. After the 1965 U.S. invasion, the numbers soared dramatically and
now included middle—and working—class. The number of Dominicans
who sell the little they have to pay a yolero to smuggle them into Puerto
Rico or Miami is still uncountable.
• HOMINES • Vol. XX, Núm. x - xxxxx de 2005 325