Asian and Latino Labor in the End Times

• In Event: Afro-Asia in Latin America: Religion, Literature, and Film

Abstract

While there are many examples of economic ruin and actual ruins of buildings as a result of overleveraging and greed, I examine the documentary, The Queen of Versaille (2012), which highlights a very particular colonial dynamic of neoliberal capitalist culture. It features David and Jacqueline Siegel who are in the process of building the largest home in the U.S. modeled on the French royal palace of Louis the Fourteenth in Orlando, Florida. David Siegel is the owner, founder, and CEO of Westgate Resorts or the largest privately owned time share company that sells the experience of temporary luxury dwellings to lower middle class clients. It is a story of the rise and fall of an elite class who benefit from the loose lending and easy money prior to the financial crisis of 2008. Or, as David Siegel admits, his business is dependent on “easy access to cheap money.”
The Siegel household is completely run by Filipina nannies and Latina housekeepers whose work highlights the family’s malaise and slovenliness. The Filipinas and Latinas are part of a global network of female and feminized domestic workers from the Philippines and Latin America sent out to care for First world families, leaving their own dependents in the care of others. This “chain of care” is not the only series of displacements featured in the documentary. There is also a chain of dwelling. This paper explores the hidden reality of U.S. American ruins through the example of the Siegels within the context of popular cultural framing of the collapse of the U.S. housing market and its impact on those on the bottom of the labor market.

Author

• Camilla M Fojas, DePaul University