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Women, Peonage, and Industrialization: Argentina, 1810–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Donna J. Guy
Donna J. Guy*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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In recent years, a body of literature analyzing development and modernization since the world wars has emphasized the diverse tasks women perform in premodern agrarian societies as compared to incipient industrial economies. The greater input of women in many nonmechanized societies, compared to their role thereafter, has been seen as the key to understanding why the introduction of machine technology has often resulted in the subsequent general unemployment or underemployment of working-class women.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , 1981 , pp. 65 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

Part of this research was conducted with the help of a Fulbright-Hays Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and a University of Arizona Sabbatical. The author wishes to thank the following people for their comments on an earlier draft: S. Deeds, G. Hearn, C. Niethammer, M. Dinnerstein, and S. Smith.

References

Notes

1. The number of theoretical and case studies of women and work has increased significantly in the past ten years. Among the pioneering works are Ester Boserup, Women's Role in Economic Development (New York, 1970); Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, 1974); Nadia H. Youseff, Women and Work in Developing Societies (Berkeley, 1974); and June Nash and Helen Icken Safa, eds., Sex and Class in Latin America (New York, 1976). Marysa Navarro, “Research on Latin American Women,” Signs 5:1 (Autumn 1979): 117–19 discusses the most recent literature on women's work in rural areas of Latin America.

2. Elizabeth Jelin, “The Bahiana in the Labor Force of Salvador, Brazil,” in Sex and Class in Latin America, p. 129. See also Emily M. Nett, “The Servant Class in a Developing Country: Ecuador,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 8 (July 1966): 437–52; Margo Lane Smith, “Domestic Service as a Channel of Upward Mobility for Lower-Class Women: The Lima Case,” in Female and Male in Latin America: Essays, ed. Ann Pescatello (Pittsburgh, 1973), pp. 191–207; and the essays on women and development in Latin American Perspectives 4: 1–2 (Winter and Spring 1977) and Signs 3:1 (Autumn 1977). For general and bibliographic discussions of women and work in Latin America see Asuncion Lavrin, ed., Latin American Women; Historical Perspectives (Westport, 1978), pp. 302–20; Navarro, “Research on Latin American Women,” pp. 111–20; and Zulma R. de Lattes and Catalina Wainerman, “Empleo femenino y desarrollo económico,” Desarrollo Económico 17:66 (jul.–set. 1977): 301–17.

3. For a review essay of recent literature on peonage, which fails to question what happened to women during the transition from slave to free labor or during the process of modernization in general, see Arnold J. Bauer, “Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression,” Hispanic American Historical Review 59:1 (Feb. 1979): 34–63.

4. Tulio Halperin Donghi, Politics, Economics and Society in Argentina in the Revolutionary Period; Cambridge Latin American Studies Vol. 18 (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 57–58; 12.

5. Ibid., pp. 57–58; Pedro Santos Martínez, Las industrias durante el virreinato (1776–1810 (Buenos Aires, 1969), p. 48.

6. These are adjusted figures based upon Zulma Recchini de Lattes' study in Zulma Recchini de Lattes and Alfredo E. Lattes, comps., La población de Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1975), pp. 149–67. See also R. de Lattes and Wainerman, “Empleo femenino,” pp. 301–17; Nancy Caro Hollander, “Women in the Political Economy of Argentina,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1974, p. 55.

7. Ernesto J. A. Maeder, Evolución demográfica argentina desde 1810 a 1869 (Buenos Aires, 1969), passim; Alfredo E. Lattes, La migración como factor de cambio de la población en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1972).

8. Letter from Manuel Lanfranco, Síndico Procurador to Cabildo, Jujuy, 25 June 1812, Jujuy Province, Archivo Capitular de Jujuy, 4 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1974), 4: 564–67 graphically describes the initial impact of the independence struggle on the commerce and industry of Jujuy; Halperin Donghi, Politics, pp. 239–69.

9. Captain Andrews, Journey from Buenos Ayres Through the Provinces of Cordova, Tucumán, and Salta, to Potosi, thence by the Deserts of Caranja to Arica, and subsequently, to Santiago de Chili and Coquimbo …, 2 vols., reprint of 1827 ed. (New York, 1971), 1:159, 302–3; 2: 14–16.

10. Sir Woodbine Parish, Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata (London, 1838), pp. 256, 265, 269, 288; A. Belmar, Les provinces de la Fédération Argentine et Buenos Ayres, description générale de ces pays sous le rapport géographique, historique, commercial, industriei et sous celui de la colonisation (Paris, 1856), p. 77; Victor Martin de Moussy, Description Géographique de la Confédération Argentine, 3 vols. (Paris, 1864), 3: 110. Inventories of cloth for Indians still formed part of the bookkeeping process in the Tucumán sugar factory and plantation of San Pablo in 1888, although the origin of the weaver is unknown; San Pablo Factory, Inventario I, 1876–1890, pp. 201, 218.

11. Esther Hermitte and Herbert Klein, Crecimiento y estructura de una comunidad provinciana de tejedores de ponchos: Belén 1678–1869 (Buenos Aires, 1972); pp. 37–38; Martin de Moussy, Description Géographique, 3:370–71; Federico Espeche, La provincia de Catamarca (Buenos Aires, 1875), pp. 192–93; Esther Hermitte, “Ponchos, Weaving and Patron-Client Relations in Northwest Argentina,” in Structure and Process in Latin America: Patronage, Clientage and Power Systems, eds. Arnold Stricken and Sidney M. Greenfield (Albuquerque, 1972), pp. 159–77.

12. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Recuerdos de provincia (Navarre, 1970), pp. 99, 102–4.

13. Susan Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires 1778–1810: Family and Commerce, Cambridge Latin American Studies, Vol. 30 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 34. Middle-class women in the interior were allowed to work throughout the nineteenth century, although they soon shifted from needlework to teaching. Other early examples are found in Hermann Burmeister, Descripción de Tucumán (Tucumán, 1916), p. 51.

14. List of poor people to be put to work on public projects, Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Córdoba [hereinafter referred to as AHC], Gobierno, 1835, T. 139, ff. 310–11; expense account for Córdoba police, Anexo B, 15 February and March 1838, AHC, Gobierno, 1838, T. 555, ff. 323, 325.

15. Scattered evidence of women's arrests abound in the Córdoba archives and need a more comprehensive analysis. Having picked several years at random, I found accounts of women's arrests for all years. An example of this was the year 1859 in which the Subintendente de Policía reported arrests for February, May, June, and November. During those months women were sent to jail, among other reasons, for running away from their employers; for their employers' dissatisfaction with employees; for helping other women, especially minors, flee employers; and for refusing to serve employers assigned to them by the police. AHC, Gobierno, 1859, T. 3, ff. 297, 285, 302, 396, 398, 400, 428, 392, 394, and 581.

16. Marcela B. González, “Sobremonte y la papeleta de conchabo,” in Academia Nacional de Historia, Primer congreso de historia argentina y regional (Buenos Aires, 1973), pp. 526–32; Manuel Lizondo Borda, Historia de Tucumán (siglo xix) (Tucumán, 1948), p. 78; Julio López Mañan, Tucumán antiguo (Tucumán, 1972), p. 51; Tucumán province, Actas del Cabildo, Prólogo y notas de Manuel Lizondo Borda, 2 vols. (Tucumán, 1940), 2: 398–400.

17. Jujuy Province, Registro Oficial. Compilación de leyes y decretos de la provincia de Jujuy desde el año 1835 hasta el de 1884, 3 vols. (Jujuy, 1885), 1: 41, 43–44.

18. Decree of 1 October 1843, ibid., pp. 167–68; 7 October 1849, p. 248; 12 April 1851, p. 323.

19. The classic literary treatment of this theme is José Hernández, El gaucho Martín Fierro y la vuelta de Martín Fierro (Buenos Aires, 1960). See also Gastón Gori, Vagos y mal entretenidos, 3d. ed. (Buenos Aires, 1974); and Ricardo E. Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho (Buenos Aires, 1968). There are also studies of labor legislation for interior provinces that are less widely known. Aníbal Arcondo, “Notas para el estudio del trabajo compulsivo en la región de Córdoba,” in Homenaje al Dr. Ceferino Garzón Maceda (Córdoba, 1973), pp. 133–45; Jorge Balán, “Migraciones, mano de obra y formación de un proletariado rural en Tucumán, Argentina, 1870–1914,” Demografía y Economía 10:2 (1976); 201–34; Donna J. Guy, “The Rural Working Class in Nineteenth Century Argentina: Forced Plantation Labor in Tucumán,” LARR 13: 1 (1978): 135–45; and Marcela B. González, “Sobremonte y la papeleta de conchabo.”

20. Gori, Vagos y malentretenidos, p. 11.

21. Ibid., pp. 8, 63.

22. These comments are based upon an examination of compilations of laws for the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos, and Santa Fe. I wish to thank Jan Stepan of the International Relations Library of the Harvard Law School for his permission to use these and other volumes in the collection. Specifically, the works consulted were Buenos Aires Province, Leyes y decretos promulgados en la provincia de Buenos Aires desde 1810 á 1876, 9 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1877–79); Entre Ríos, Recopilación de leyes, acuerdos y decretos de la provincia de Entre Ríos desde 1821 á 1873, 2 vols. (Uruguay, 1875); Entre Ríos, Recopilación de leyes, 6 vols. (Paraná, 1922); Santa Fe, Leyes y decretos de la provincia de Santa Fe, recopilación oficial, 1815–1891, 16 vols. (1892). George Reid Andrews claims that even though the need for female domestic labor existed in Buenos Aires between 1830 and 1853, no special laws were passed. George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800–1900 (Madison, 1980), pp. 60–61.

23. To date little work has been done on the relationship of women to the Catholic Church in colonial Argentina. However, studies such as Asunción Lavrin, “The Colonial Woman in Mexico,” in Latin American Women, ed. Lavrin, pp. 23–59, should serve as models.

24. Argentine Republic, Superintendente de Censo, Primer Censo de la República Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1872), p. xlv.

25. Ibid., pp. 69–73, 118–25. Since the 1869 census does not reveal sex in occupations, these figures include some male workers. However, the 1895 census does separate male from female workers, and at that time these professions were practiced by men who rarely comprised more than ten percent of the total work force for each category.

26. Ibid., pp. 642–48.

27. Córdoba Province, Compilación de leyes, decretos, acuerdos de la exma. Cámara de Justicia y demás disposiciones de carácter público dictadas en la provincia de Córdoba desde 1810 hasta 1900, 2 vols. (Córdoba, 1870), 2: 675, 827–28.

28. Ezequiel N. Paz, Derecho de exportación. Mercad americano y nuestros productos. Serie de artículos publicados en la prensa del Rosario, 2da. ed. (Rosario, 1869), pp. 33–34.

29. Aníbal Arcondo, “Notas para el estudio compulsivo,” p. 143; report on police statistics from Oficina de Estadística, 20 June 1882, AHC, Gobierno, 1882, T. 5, f. 169; Córdoba Province, Oficina de Estadística, Memoria de la Oficina de Estadística General. 1887 (Buenos Aires, 1888), p. 85.

30. Chart indicating statistical composition of arrests made between 1 April 1888, and 31 March 1889, with indications of nature of the crime, AHC, Gobierno, 1889, T. 19, ff. 101–09. Foja 110 lists 434 women in the Servants' Register during the same period of time.

31. Donna J. Guy, “The Rural Working Class,” especially footnotes 25 and 26 and figures 1 and 2; Archivo Histórico de Tucumán, Comprobantes de Cortaduría, 1870, T. 176, ff. 130, 311, 628.

32. “Criminal Statistics, Admissions to the Police Jail of Tucumán City During 1882 According to Crimes, Sex and Education of Delinquents, Tucumán Province,” Registro estadístico correspondiente al año 1882 (Buenos Aires, 1884), p. 77.

33. Alfredo L. Palacios, Pueblos desamparados. Solución de los problemas del noroeste argentino (Buenos Aires, 1942); Ian Rutledge, “Plantations and Peasants in Northern Argentina: The Sugar Can Industry of Salta and Jujuy, 1930–1943,” in Argentina in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Rock (Pittsburgh, 1975), pp. 88–113; Donna J. Guy, Argentine Sugar Politics: Tucumán and the Generation of Eighty (Tempe, 1980), p. 132.

34. Argentine Republic, Comisión Directiva de Censo, Segundo Censo de la República Argentina, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1898), 2: 513–16, 552–55, 365–66.

35. Ibid., pp. cxliv, cxciii, cxlii.

36. Sociedad Industrial de Río de la Plata, Lista de accionistas. Discursos pronunciados en la inauguración de la fábrica de paños (Buenos Aires, 1874), p. 13.

37. James R. Scobie, Revolution on the Pampas: A Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860–1910 (Austin, 1964).

38. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Special Agents Series No. 37, “Shoe and Leather Trade in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay,” by Arthur B. Butman (Washington, 1910), p. 11; No. 177, “Boots and Shoes, Leather and Supplies in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay,” by Herman G. Brock (Washington, 1919), pp. 52, 54–55. As late as 1910, 90 percent of all shoe uppers were finished at home by women, although eight years later most work was done in the factory.

39. Adrian Patroni, Los trabajadores en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1897), pp. 94–95, 99–100.

40. Argentine Republic, Comisión Directiva del Censo, Segundo Censo, 2:cxcl, 48–50, 139–42, 297–300.

41. Lattes and Lattes, La población de Argentina, p. 154.

42. Oscar Cornblit, “European Immigrants in Argentine Industry and Politics,” in The Politics of Conformity in Latin America, ed. Claudio Veliz (Oxford, 1967), p. 227. See also James R. Scobie's fine study of urbanization patterns in Buenos Aires and how it affected immigrant women and their work. James R. Scobie, Buenos Aires, Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910 (New York, 1974), pp. 152–53, 226. He also stresses the agglomeration of European immigrants by nationality into tenement housing; see table 8, p. 267.

43. Edward Chase Kirkland, Industry Comes of Age; Business, Labor and Public Policy, 1860–1897 (Chicago, 1967), pp. 1, 325–32, observes that the U.S. textile industry was the first to create a foreign market and that its main workers were women and children. In fact, “the movement of industry toward pools of labor was usually a movement toward women and child laborers” (p. 328). Tom Kemp, Historical Patterns of Industrialization (New York, 1978), chapter 4, reviews the historical viewpoints regarding the relationship of the textile industry to the industrial revolution and points out that in the mid-nineteenth century, Marx was aware that textile and metal trades were still outstripped as employers by rural work and domestic service, but patterns of the future had already been set in England. Samuel Lilley, “Technological Progress and the Industrial Revolution 1700–1914,” in The Fontana Economic History of Europe, The Industrial Revolution, ed. Carlo M. Cipolla, pp. 187–226 integrates the history of the modernization of textile manufacture with other trends in European economic history.

44. U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Manufactures, Special Agents Series No. 40, “Cotton Goods in Latin America, Part III, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay,” by W. A. Graham Clark (Washington, 1910), p. 24.

45. Argentine Republic, Tercer Censo Nacional, 10 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1917–1919), 4: 384–89; Emilio J. Schleh, La industria algodonera en la Argentina, consideraciones sobre su estado actual y su desarrollo futuro (Buenos Aires, 1923) summarizes efforts made after the war to stimulate the cotton and textile industries.

46. Juan Bialet Massé, El estado de las clases obreras argentinas a comienzos del siglo, 2d. ed. (Córdoba, 1904, 1968), p. 423.

47. Ibid., p. 596.

48. Ibid., p. 611; Mark Jefferson, Peopling the Argentine Pampa; Research Series No. 16 (New York, 1926), p. 33.

49. Bialet Massé, El estado, p. 424, 553–54, 151, 566. Among the interior provinces, Mendoza provides the exception to the general status of women in that region during the nineteenth century.

50. Ibid., p. 426.

51. Ibid., p. 429.

52. Richard Walter, The Socialist Party of Argentina 1890–1930 (Austin, 1977), Chapters 4 and 5.

53. Law No. 4.661, Congreso Nacional, Cámara de Diputados, Diario de Sesiones, 1905, 3:811–12; 1907, 2:192–93. It was up to the Argentine president to determine which industries were dangerous or unhealthy. Ministerio de Agricultura, Dirección General de Comercio e Industria, Censo Comercial e Industrial de la República, Boletín No. 20, Capital Federal (Buenos Aires, 1914), pp. 22–23, 60–61; Nancy Caro Hollander, “Women and the Political Economy of Argentina,” pp. 109–11; Carolina Muzzilli, “El trabajo femenino,” Boletín Mensual de Museo Social Argentino, 15–16 (1913):65–90. Boletín Mensual de Museo Social Argentino, 15–16 (1913):65–90.

54. La Vanguardia, Leyes del trabajo nacionales y provinciales con sus decretos reglamentarios hasta el año 1943, 8th ed. (Buenos Aires, 1943), pp. 495, 542. These laws were passed between 1905 and 1908.

55. 1906 law, ibid., pp. 636–37, 481–82.

56. Santa Fe Province, Ley 11.317, trabajo de mujeres y menores. Decreto reglamentario (Santa Fe, 1927), p. 408.

57. República Argentina, Segundo Censo, 2: 139–42.

58. Elizabeth Jelin, “Migration and Labor Force Participation of Latin American Women: The Domestic Servants in the Cities,” Signs 3:1 (Aug. 1977): 131.