A2 · Elementary
12 min
foodpoliticslaborculturehistory
La Ley de las Cocineras: Indonesia y el Trabajo Doméstico
The Cooks' Law: Indonesia and Domestic Work
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Elementary level — perfect for beginners building confidence.
So here's something that got buried under all the war news this week, and it shouldn't have been.
Indonesia just passed a law protecting domestic workers.
After twenty-two years of debate.
Twenty-two years.
Bueno, es una ley muy importante.
Well, it's a very important law.
Hay muchos trabajadores domésticos en Indonesia.
There are many domestic workers in Indonesia.
Millions, actually.
And I want to come at this from a food angle today, because the thing is, a huge proportion of these workers, the ones this law is designed to protect, they're cooks.
They are the people making the food in Indonesian households every single day.
Mira, en Indonesia la comida es muy especial.
Look, in Indonesia food is very special.
La cocinera de la casa es importante.
The household cook is important.
Right, and that's what I want to dig into.
Because when we talk about domestic workers who cook, we're not talking about someone heating up a can of soup.
We're talking about people who carry entire culinary traditions in their hands.
Sí.
Yes.
Ellas cocinan rendang, nasi goreng, soto.
They cook rendang, nasi goreng, soto.
Es la comida de Indonesia.
It's the food of Indonesia.
Let's back up and nail the news first.
The Indonesian parliament passed the Domestic Workers Protection Bill last week, and this has been in deliberation since 2004.
Two decades.
It guarantees things like minimum wage, rest days, and protection from abuse for an estimated five million workers.
Cinco millones de personas.
Five million people.
Trabajan en casas.
They work in homes.
Muchas son mujeres.
Many are women.
Overwhelmingly women, yes.
And the reason it took twenty-two years is a story about power and class in Indonesia that goes back much further than 2004.
But let's get to the food, because that's where it gets genuinely fascinating.
Bueno, la comida de Indonesia es muy rica.
Well, Indonesian food is very rich.
Hay muchas especias.
There are many spices.
Many spices.
The extraordinary thing is that Indonesia sits at the center of what Europeans for centuries called the Spice Islands.
Cloves, nutmeg, pepper.
This archipelago of seventeen thousand islands was so valuable for its food ingredients that it triggered colonialism on a global scale.
Sí.
Yes.
Los holandeses llegan a Indonesia por las especias.
The Dutch arrive in Indonesia because of the spices.
Hay mucha historia.
There is a lot of history.
Three hundred and fifty years of Dutch colonial rule, give or take.
And that history is baked right into the food.
If you eat Indonesian food today, you're eating centuries of trade, migration, and yes, exploitation.
La comida tiene mucha cultura.
Food has a lot of culture.
No es solo arroz y carne.
It's not just rice and meat.
Not just rice and meat, exactly.
So talk me through the basics, Octavio.
What does a domestic cook in a Jakarta household actually make on a Tuesday morning?
A ver, hay arroz.
Well, there is rice.
Siempre hay arroz.
There is always rice.
Y tempeh, y sambal.
And tempeh, and sambal.
Sambal.
For listeners who don't know, sambal is a chili-based condiment, and I'd argue it's the soul of Indonesian cooking.
There are hundreds of regional variations.
Some fermented, some fresh, some with shrimp paste.
And every cook makes it differently.
Es que el sambal de cada cocinera es diferente.
The thing is, every cook's sambal is different.
Es su receta.
It's their recipe.
Her recipe.
Which she learned from her mother, who learned it from hers.
And here's the connection to this law that I keep coming back to: when a domestic worker leaves her village in Java or Sulawesi to cook for a family in Jakarta or Singapore or Riyadh, she takes that recipe with her.
And when she's mistreated, that knowledge is at risk.
Mira, muchas cocineras van a Singapur o a Arabia Saudí.
Look, many cooks go to Singapore or Saudi Arabia.
Trabajan lejos de casa.
They work far from home.
And they work in conditions that, until this law, had essentially no legal protections in Indonesia.
Indonesia is actually one of the world's largest exporters of domestic workers, and the treatment of those women abroad has been a diplomatic issue for decades.
La verdad es que muchas mujeres no tienen derechos.
The truth is that many women have no rights.
Es un problema grande.
It's a big problem.
A massive problem.
I covered a story years ago in Jakarta about Indonesian workers coming back from Saudi Arabia.
Some hadn't been paid in years.
Some weren't allowed to eat the food they were cooking, which is a particular cruelty I've never forgotten.
¿No comen la comida que cocinan?
They don't eat the food they cook?
Es horrible.
That's horrible.
La comida es para todos.
Food is for everyone.
Right.
Look, let me bring this back to something deeper.
Indonesia has something like 300 distinct ethnic groups, and each one has its own food traditions.
The domestic workers who move from region to region, or out of the country entirely, they become these quiet ambassadors of regional cuisine.
Bueno, en Sumatra la comida es muy picante.
Well, in Sumatra the food is very spicy.
En Java es más dulce.
In Java it's sweeter.
That's a real divide.
Sweet versus spicy.
The Javanese palate leans toward sweetness, a lot of palm sugar, gentle spicing.
Sumatran food, and you're talking about Padang cuisine specifically, is ferociously spiced.
Rendang comes from there, the beef dish that CNN once voted the most delicious food in the world.
El rendang es fantástico.
Rendang is fantastic.
Hay mucha carne, hay coco, hay especias.
There is lots of meat, there is coconut, there are spices.
Es muy lento.
It's very slow.
Very slow to cook.
We're talking hours, sometimes up to eight hours, over a low heat.
The coconut milk reduces completely, and the meat absorbs all those layers of galangal, lemongrass, chili, turmeric.
It's actually a preservation technique, not just a cooking method.
Rendang keeps for weeks without refrigeration.
Sí, las personas llevan rendang en viajes largos.
Yes, people take rendang on long journeys.
Es comida para el camino.
It's food for the road.
Food for the road.
Which is poetic, given what we're talking about.
These domestic workers are also on a road, a long and often lonely one, and they carry their food traditions with them the same way rendang was carried across the Minangkabau trade routes centuries ago.
A ver, también hay tempeh.
Well, there's also tempeh.
El tempeh es comida de Indonesia.
Tempeh is Indonesian food.
Es muy nutritivo.
It's very nutritious.
I'm glad you brought up tempeh because this is one of the great underappreciated foods in the world.
Fermented soybeans, pressed into a cake.
It originated in Java, probably around the sixteenth century.
And while tofu gets all the Western attention, tempeh is actually nutritionally superior, higher in protein, higher in fiber, rich in probiotics.
Es que en España no hay tempeh en los restaurantes normales.
The thing is, in Spain there's no tempeh in normal restaurants.
Es una pena.
It's a shame.
No, and it's an interesting case of how food cultures travel and which ones get absorbed into the global mainstream and which ones don't.
Japanese, Thai, Indian food is everywhere in the West.
Indonesian food, despite being arguably richer and more complex, hasn't made that leap.
Why do you think that is?
Bueno, en Holanda hay muchos restaurantes indonesios.
Well, in Holland there are many Indonesian restaurants.
Los holandeses conocen la comida.
The Dutch know the food.
The colonial connection again.
The Dutch brought Indonesian food back with them, and the Netherlands actually has one of the most vibrant Indonesian food scenes outside of Indonesia itself.
The rijsttafel, this Dutch-Indonesian tradition of serving dozens of small dishes with rice, was literally invented during the colonial period.
La verdad es que la comida colonial tiene una historia difícil.
The truth is that colonial food has a difficult history.
Pero la comida es buena.
But the food is good.
I mean, that is the tension, isn't it.
The food is extraordinary and the history behind how it traveled to Europe is painful.
And the domestic workers we're talking about today are part of that same long story of Indonesian labor being exported and undervalued.
Sí.
Yes.
La ley nueva es un paso importante.
The new law is an important step.
Las personas merecen protección.
People deserve protection.
They do.
And the law does several things.
It sets a minimum wage for domestic workers for the first time.
It mandates one day off per week.
It requires written contracts.
It establishes a complaints mechanism.
These sound like basics, and they are, but for five million workers who had none of these things, this is significant.
Mira, un día libre es normal para todos los trabajadores.
Look, one day off is normal for all workers.
Pero no para ellas.
But not for them.
Not for them.
The skeptics, and there are some, point out that enforcing this law inside private households is going to be extremely difficult.
How do you inspect a kitchen in someone's home?
How does a worker report her employer when she lives under that same roof and has nowhere else to go?
Es que la ley es buena, pero la vida real es difícil.
The thing is, the law is good, but real life is hard.
Las dos cosas son verdad.
Both things are true.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And this is where labor activists in Indonesia are cautious.
They've been fighting for this for twenty-two years, they're not going to pop champagne until they see enforcement.
But the symbolic weight of it, the formal recognition that this work has value, that matters.
Cocinar bien es un trabajo serio.
Cooking well is serious work.
La cocinera trabaja muchas horas.
The cook works many hours.
Many hours.
I've thought about this since I started cooking more seriously myself, which happened, embarrassingly, when I was about fifty.
The preparation time alone for a proper Indonesian meal, grinding spice pastes by hand, the soaking, the marinating, it can start before dawn.
And someone has been doing that work, invisibly, for centuries.
A ver, hay un mortero especial en Indonesia.
Well, there is a special mortar in Indonesia.
Se llama cobek.
It's called cobek.
Las especias son frescas.
The spices are fresh.
The cobek.
Flat, made from volcanic stone, and the way it grinds releases oils from chilies and shallots that you simply cannot replicate in an electric blender.
And every Indonesian cook will tell you that.
The food tastes different.
It tastes better.
That knowledge, that tactile tradition, lives in these workers' hands.
Sí, la máquina no es igual.
Yes, the machine is not the same.
Las manos saben más que la máquina.
Hands know more than the machine.
Hands know more than the machine.
I'm going to remember that line.
So here's where I want to land this.
The Indonesia domestic workers law is, on the surface, a labor story.
But underneath it's a food story, a class story, a colonial story.
When we protect the people who cook, we protect the culture they carry.
Bueno, la comida es cultura.
Well, food is culture.
La cocinera es importante para la familia y para el país.
The cook is important for the family and for the country.
For the family and for the country.
And for listeners trying to connect this to their own Spanish practice today, think about the word 'cocinera.' Not just the word but what it holds.
It's not a job title.
It's a role, a tradition, a form of knowledge that gets passed down.
And for five million people in Indonesia, it finally has legal recognition.
La verdad es que ahora yo tengo hambre.
The truth is I'm hungry now.
Quiero comer rendang.
I want to eat rendang.
You and me both.
Octavio, gracias.
And to everyone listening, 'hasta la próxima.' We'll be back next time with more language and more food, in whatever order they arrive.
Mira, el orden no importa.
Look, the order doesn't matter.
La comida siempre es buena.
Food is always good.