The recent emergence of Las Kellys from Lanzarote into public life was akin to the timely yawn of a volcano when it erupts, to its explosive fury after hearing and feeling its tremors for years underground.
A good percentage of the economic benefits generated by the development of tourism in Lanzarote is related to the labor slavery to which the maids are subjected, the kellys, named so because they are "the ones who clean."
Until now, the development of societies has been based on the work of those who occupy the last rung, women, even though in tourism they are numerically the largest group. Lanzarote receives three million tourists annually to spend their leisure days. They seek the comfort, relaxation, sun and sea that the Lanzarote business community offers them for the sole purpose of achieving their own economic benefits. The modern slavery endured by the maids multiplies economic benefits to the business community. But while some get rich, this model generates serious social, economic and health problems for these women.
It also harms the environment because tourist exploitation inevitably leads to significant environmental, social and trade union attacks, accentuating social inequality. Impoverishment always falls on those at the bottom. There is no equitable distribution of tourism revenue. And that is a palpable reality.
The number of tourists may increase every year and the island corporation will be pleased about it, but in Lanzarote there will still be a lack of beds in the two hospitals, desks in the schools and roofs for the homeless.
The broken backs of tourism will continue to clean 20 complete bathrooms every day, handling toxic products, carrying tons of clothes and traveling 11 kilometers, the same journey that separates the offices from the swimming pools. The women who sustain the current tourism model will continue to live with the smell of detergent mixed with the fragrance of coconut sunscreen and their own sweat, the result of the excessive effort to which they are subjected.
We are very far from achieving co-responsibility and reconciliation between the maids and the business community. But this path is now somewhat shorter due to the demands of Las Kellys, who have sustained part of the recent "economic crisis" that has usurped women's rights.
The public administration and the business community show their concern for modernizing tourist spaces, for adapting destinations to new demands such as less motorized mobility, the increase in the offer for the care of the body or personal health and even for that of pets. But, we ask ourselves, how is it that they do not deal with a modernization plan to alleviate the overload of work, the modern slavery of the maids? Can there be sustainable tourism that is not respectful of human rights in terms of quality of employment, wages and labor rights? Yes, this is the point where the modernization of the tourist offer must begin, in respecting the rights of workers and healing the broken backs of the blood tourism that Lanzarote exhibits.
Las Kellys represent the organized labor struggle against exploitation, the empowerment of women representing themselves. I admire them for their ability to get up and stand up to face the leisure sellers. Their struggle reached greater repercussions when Mariano Rajoy, being president of the government of Spain, spoke with them and Pedro San Ginés had them much closer, but he was not curious to talk with them. These powerful, capable and hardworking women, who despite their broken backs advance upright, confident and defiant towards the conquest of their improvements, which are also ours.
From the presidency of the Cabildo we will create a work area that questions what is established in tourism to stop labor exploitation, especially that of women, to develop social, economic and environmental issues, poverty and discrimination in a coherent manner. We want to establish other tourist promotions that are managed with a unified criterion of tourist spaces to stop extractive capitalism, to guarantee the production and consumption of ecological and local food away from contact with poor quality water, which unmasks the current propaganda of food sovereignty, the made-up culture, the museums passed through sea water, the tapas at a peseta, the political campaign of happy birthday.
In short, to work for the rights violated in the tourism scenario, reorienting all activity to stop climate change. One thing is the right to leisure, free time, rest or paid vacations and another is that the business community, in order to guarantee that right to those who visit us, enslaves the workers to increase their own economic benefits.
The right to rest and to visit these islands should not be above the rights of the workers, nor of the people who reside here. But the business community of Lanzarote - which does not know how to have everything - treats and conceives the tourism that arrives as merchandise from which it reserves its benefits exclusively, generating increasingly marked inequalities and the Island Council contributes to this, and both play to twist the destiny of La Graciosa and Lanzarote, stripping them of their territorial planning to meet the demands of the business community.
The last stories with a happy ending were written by Walt Disney before the middle of the last century, but at the beginning of the XXI we write our history standing with a successful and lasting ending because Podemos, we want, we need it and we are going to do it.
By Nona Perera, candidate of Lanzarote on its Feet-Yes We Can to the presidency of the Cabildo of Lanzarote