ABSTRACT
The history of immigrant British Caribbean domestic servants in North American-dominated economic zones in Latin America thus provides an interesting preface to the patterns of global domestic work. Leading migration scholar Jose Moya has argued that the feminization of domestic service is a key feature of modernity, and that this relationship was embedded in international migratory patterns. United States corporations operating in the region employed a strict racial division of labor, in which managerial, clerical and technical positions were reserved for white Americans. In the Brazilian Amazon, Barbadian women were the domestic servants of choice for foreign merchants during the rubber boom, with the British Consul at Para noting that they were 'highly appreciated' and earned 'good wages'. The recruitment of domestic servants was essential to the projection of power and modernity by elite white American enclave households, and those local elites who aspired to be like them.
