Remembering the tatas: an oral history of the Tetouan elite about their female domestic slaves

Abstract

Affluent families in Tetouan (Morocco) had female domestic servants from slave origins until well into the twentieth century. I present here a reconstruction of the trajectories and living conditions of those women, based on the recent memory of the slave-owning families themselves. This exercise raises different methodological challenges about the use of memory, while allowing us to present the transformations that the slavery system underwent in colonial Morocco. The position of female domestic servants was diverse and paradoxical, since in many cases they achieved a degree of closeness with the families, while at the same time finding themselves under a system of class and gender domination.