Borderlands, Brazil and Paraguay, 1954-1989. John Howard White
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2-9-2011 Itaipú: Gender, Community, and Work in the Alto Paraná Borderlands, Brazil and Paraguay, 1954-1989. John Howard White Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds Recommended Citation White, John Howard. "Itaipú: Gender, Community, and Work in the Alto Paraná Borderlands, Brazil and Paraguay, 1954-1989.." (2011). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/82 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i ITAIPU: GENDER, COMMUNITY, AND WORK IN THE ALTO PARANA BORDERLANDS, BRAZIL AND PARAGUAY, 1954-1989 BY JOHN HOWARD WHITE B.A., History, North Carolina State University, 1995 M.A., Latin American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2001 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December 2010 ii DEDICATION For my mother; In memory of my grandmother iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Drs. Elizabeth Q. Hutchison, Linda B. Hall, Judy Bieber, Samuel Truett, and Margo Milleret. To my advisor, Dr. Hutchison I would like to give special thanks and recognition for her generous and vital contribution of time and energy to both my graduate studies and the dissertation project. A further mention goes to Drs. Jane Slaughter and Melissa Bokovoy of the UNM History Department. In addition, I would like to thank my friends and colleagues at the University of New Mexico, specifically Carolyn Watson, Sue Taylor, Melissa Mann, Blair Woodard, Tiffany Thomas, Chad Black, and Roberta Rice, for their friendship and for the examples that they set for me to follow, and to the staff of the Spanish Colonial Research Center, particularly Dr. Joseph Sánchez, Angélica Sánchez- Clark, Elsa Delgado, and Edwina Abreu, for their support. Outside of New Mexico, I would like to thank Dr. Richard Slatta for the inspiration he provided me as an undergraduate history student and to professor Kent Lioret, for encouraging my early attempts to learn Spanish. Numerous institutions provided financial and research support to the dissertation. The UNM Office of Graduate Studies provided a Research, Project, and Travel Grant and the Latin American and Iberian Institute provided a Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant to conduct preliminary research in Paraguay during the summer of 2002. A Foreign Language Area Studies grant provided funds for a summer of Portuguese language instruction at the Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos in Rio de Janeiro in 2003. I am particularly thankful for a J. William Fulbright fellowship that generously provided the funds necessary to conduct a yearlong fieldwork stay in Paraguay and Brazil in 2005-06. Special thanks go to Jody Dudderar, at the Institute for International Education, and the Fulbright Commission of Brazil for travel and visa arrangements. Lastly, the UNM Department of History provided additional funds, by way of the Dudley Phillips dissertation fellowship, to help support the writing phase of this project. At the University of New Mexico, I am appreciative of the staff at the Inter- Library Loan office at Zimmerman Library and Andrew Ruíz at the Map and Geographical Information Center at Centennial Science and Engineering Library, who assisted me with the production of the maps included in this dissertation. In Asunción, Paraguay, I would like to thank the staff at Universidad del Norte, Centro de Documentación, Centro Paraguayo de Estudios Sociologicos, Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, Biblioteca del Centro de Documentación de Itaipú Binacional, and the Biblioteca Nacional. In Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, I would like to thank the staff at the Archivo de la Secretaría de la Diócesis del Alto Paraná, Biblioteca del Centro Administrativo de Itaipú Binacional, and the staff of the Municipalities of Ciudad del Este, Hernandarias, and Puerto Franco. In Brazil, I would like to thank the staff of the Biblioteca Muncipal and Itaipú Binacional of Foz do Iguaçu and, in Curitiba, I would like to thank the staff of the Arquivo Público do Paraná, Biblioteca Pública do Estado do Paraná, and the FIEP/SENAI. Special acknowledgement is in order for Sr. Victorino Vega Giménez, Sra. Rocio Llanes, Sra. Máxima Colman, and Sr. Ruben Colman of Itaipú Binacional (Paraguay). I would also like to thank fellow Fulbrighters Amber Wutich, Lana Alman, Dr. Donald Richards, and Dr. Susan Milner, for all of the conversations and friendship. And to all of iv the friends that I made during my fieldwork and travels, thanks to Andy, Marcelo, Luis, Paulo, Wilson, Eduardo, Francisco, Carlos, Ernesto, and Roberson. Last but not least, I would like to thank my friends and family who have supported me through the many years that it has taken to complete the dissertation. Specifically, I would like to thank Jeffress Wright for two decades of friendship and for being there through the good and the bad times and to Miguel Valdez for providing me (and Dante) with a home. Lastly, a heart felt mention goes out to my grandmother Mary Louise Standley (d. 2001), who did not live to see the dissertation, and to my mother, Ann L. Jones, who has always believed in me. I dedicate this work to them. Albuquerque, NM October 2010 v ITAIPU: GENDER, COMMUNITY, AND WORK IN THE ALTO PARANA BORDERLANDS, BRAZIL AND PARAGUAY, 1954-1989 BY JOHN HOWARD WHITE ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December 2010 vi ITAIPU: GENDER, COMMUNITY, AND WORK IN THE ALTO PARANA BORDERLANDS, BRAZIL AND PARAGUAY, 1954-1989 By John Howard White B.A., History, Spanish Minor, North Carolina State University, 1995 M.A., Latin American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2001 Ph.D., History, University of New Mexico, 2010 ABSTRACT In 1975 workers on massive earth-moving machines began excavations in the middle of the Paraná River for what later would become the site of the world‘s largest hydroelectric dam, Itaipú Binacional. During the period 1974-1991, the dam was constructed as a joint venture between the military regimes of Brazil and Paraguay and thousands of workers and their families migrated to the borderlands in search of employment. My study uses the conceptual framework of gender and sexuality in order to produce a comparative social history of the Itaipú hydroelectric dam project and the worker communities that it created in the Alto Paraná borderlands. This dissertation incorporates the story of dam workers, including their struggles and their lived experience in the ―company town‖ and in so-called ―peripheral communities,‖ into the grand narrative of technological advancement and ―order and progress‖ embodied by the ―Project of the Century.‖ Rather than being tangential to the story of ―Itaipú,‖ these protagonists—militant dam workers, housewives, shantytown residents, and sex workers, among others—form an essential piece of our understanding of the impact of infrastructure projects and national development on local communities and identities. The dissertation reconstructs the Alto Paraná as a historical place, shows how the borderlands became the locus of nation building for two Latin American countries, discusses the migration of single male workers and constructions of masculinity, analyzes corporate programs to ―remake‖ married dam workers into family men and their female partners into housewives, reconstitutes dystopian sexual communities and maps the changing itineraries of male sexual consumption, and concludes by narrating working class political struggles and labor conflict in the context of democratic transitions in both Brazil and Paraguay. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Maps, x List of Tables, xi List of Figures, xii-xiii Note on Orthography, xiv Introduction…………………………………………………………………......…………1 Borderlands of Gender and Sexuality………………... 2 Historiographies of Power…………………………… 6 The Pharaoh‘s Archives……………………………… 13 Organization of the Dissertation…………..…………. 16 Itaipú…………………………………………………. 19 Chapter 1: ―We All Belong to the River‖: Place, History, and Myth in the Formation of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, Alto Paraná, 1870-1950………...………………..…...20 The Triple Frontier, 1870-1889……………………… 23 Republican Borderlands, 1889-1950…………………. 37 Conclusion…………………………………………… 54 Chapter 2: The Project of the Century: Building Infrastructure and Hydroelectric Dams in the Alto Paraná Borderlands, 1957-1975……………………………………..………….62 The Road to Brazil…………………………………… 63 Brasil Grande………………………………………… 67 Building Dams……………………………………….. 72 Brothers-in-Arms…………………………………….. 77 Jupiá………………………………………………….. 81 The Gift of Light……………………………………... 87 The Project of the Century…………………………… 96 Conclusion…………………………………………… 99 Chapter 3: Prodigal Sons in the Promised Land: Migration, Work, and Masculinity at the Itaipú Hydroelectric Dam, Alto Paraná, 1976-1980……………..……………………..108 Conempa……………………………………………... 109 The Promised Land…………………………………... 110 A New Paraguay……………………………………... 117 Order and Discipline………………………………… 124 The Human Factor…………………………………… 130 Muscular Nationalism……………………………….. 135 Corporate