In conversations about ethical research, we don’t typically consider the material circumstances of archivists and librarians, whose labor furthers the career trajectories of so many researchers.
If you’ve done research in the Global South, you’ve likely relied on the labor of these archivists and librarians, who don’t inevitably receive a living wage.
In Cuba, where I have conducted archival research, archivists/librarians often go to sleep without eating, suffer through the rolling blackouts, and wonder how they’ll get to work with so few buses running. Unless they have family abroad who support them with remittances, they inevitably experience economic precarity. They climb the stairs and unbox the dusty records that we need to complete our dissertations, write our books, and gain recognition for ourselves—often through tenure and promotion. And yet, their material circumstances do not change.
I met my dear friend X nearly fifteen years ago when she was working as an archivist at a prominent Cuban research institution. She entered the room all energy and all business, and she has buoyed me and my research for these many years.
We lost contact for awhile, when Cubans didn’t have the consistent access to the internet that most do now. Now, in the era of WhatsApp, we message several times a week. I celebrated with her when her child’s baseball team had another victory, and we worried together when there was a cancer scare in my family.
I send remittances too—every other month. At her state job, X makes $11 USD per month. But that salary barely goes anywhere. A dozen eggs cost $3.15 USD. A liter of vegetable oil is $2.70 USD. Her need is urgent, and my support is never enough.
Companies like SuperMarket123 and CubaLlama make shipments to the island easier than before—but to receive these shipments, Cubans must have a caring someone abroad.
The government salaries that archivists/librarians receive is just barely enough to take them to work in the morning, where they support foreign (and domestic) researchers on trips often funded by fellowship money. As the weeks and months pass, as one cohort of foreign researchers is replaced with another, Cuban archivists/librarians remain untouched by the success of those they support.
We must do better by archivists and librarians in the Global South. There needs to be more reciprocity in the research process. By that I mean we cannot overlook the economic precarity of those whose labor sustains our research. And when we explore best practices for ethnical research, archivists and librarians from the Global South must be at the proverbial table.
**
On a more personal note, I have come to realize that, for me, the material support I send to X is both an obligation and a blessing. My career exists because of X and her colleagues. And the ability to help X keeps me from falling into despair. She is also a good friend; and she reminds me that even as we struggle, we must be patient—that we must let the waters even out (dejar que las aguas tomen nivel).
If you’d like to like to support X, you’ve got two options!
1) Send funds to my PayPal (email: Rachel.Hynson [at] gmail.com); all money goes to X.
2) Hire X to do research. She is a freelance archival researcher and ethnographer based in Havana. Message me for details.
“Because life is self-organizing and regenerating, even the very tiny shifts we make away from harm and towards sustenance of life open up possibilities that compound upon themselves.”
—Elizabeth Sawin, Ph.D., as recently quoted by Mariame Kaba in her email newsletter