Parenting Empires and the Moral Economy of Privilege in Brazil and Puerto Rico

Abstract

, the photo of a dark-skin and uniformed babá (nanny), walking behind a white Brazilian couple while pushing twin toddlers in a stroller through Ipanema, captivated the Brazilian media. The couple, sporting the colors of the Brazilian flag, and the nanny were participating in one of the early marches protesting Partido dos Trabalhadores (pt, or Workers' Party), which a few months later would lead to the impeachment of demo cratically elected president Dilma Rousseff. The nanny in the photo was eventually identified as forty-five-year-old Maria Angélica Lima, who served as babá folguista (weekend nanny) for the children of Carolina Maia Pracownik and her husband, Claudio Pracownik, the vice president of finance for the Flamengo, one of Rio's soccer teams. The irony behind the photo of a wealthy Ipanema family bringing their nanny along to a demonstration against the pt, a party that for more than a de cade had been responsible for, among other things, establishing legislation to protect the labor rights of nannies and domestic workers, was not lost to some. Media interviews with Carolina, the employer, and Angélica, the nanny, followed. "I went to the streets with my whole family, and I would go again! If this country seems good to others, it is not good for us. We went to protest against all this embarrassing corruption, " stated Carolina, who claimed to be "shocked and scared" by the vio lence of critics who viewed her as the classic dondoca (snobbish, superficial woman). Carolina defended her decision to ask Angélica to wear the all-white nanny uniform, a source of polemic in Ipanema at the time: " There is a 'dress code' for many professions: doctors, nurses, doormen.. .. Why wouldn't nannies, now a regulated profession, wear white, transmitting peace to the children they care for? That argument