Women’s Actions, Women’s Words. Female Political and Cultural Responses to the Argentine State by Susanne Meachem A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Hispanic Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham March 2010 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. To my husband Keith whose belief in me never faltered and whose unconditional love and support has made this work possible The political activism in the literature of Latin American women, like the political actions of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and similar groups has become an activity of incalculable force. Marjorie Agosín, 1986 Contents Acknowledgements Abstract Introduction i Part 1 Women and Political Participation Chapter 1 Sarmiento – A Tale of Two Cultures 1 Chapter 2 Part 1 Gender and Nation 28 Part 2 The Identity of Motherhood 54 Chapter 3 Peronism 87 Chapter 4 Muchachas de Mirada clara 123 Part 2 Women’s Literary Engagement Chapter 5 Women Writers in 19th Century Argentina 160 Juana Manuela Gorriti Juana Manso Chapter 6 Feminine Literature and Peronism 209 Marta Lynch Beatriz Guido Chapter 7 Women Writers and State Terrorism 252 Luisa Valenzuela Liliana Heker Conclusion 293 Appendices 297 Bibliography 304 Acknowledgements Many thanks, Dr. Conrad James. You always lifted my spirits and my confidence. Your ample knowledge and constructive criticism guided me through the sometimes tough process of writing. Working with you was most enjoyable. Thank you, Susanne Schicht, my best mate, for always being there for me. Your astute advice and unique friendship helped me through my darkest hours of self- doubt. Thank you, Dr. Franz Reischl, my dear friend, for always lending me a helping hand in philosophical matters. Sincere thanks to you, my lovely friend, Ms Rosa Sánchez Riobó, for always, without fail, helping me out with tricky bits of translation. Thank you, mother; although distant, your love is always with me. Thank you, dad, for your encouragement and unwavering belief in me. I wish you could still be with us. I also would like to express my sincere gratitude to the School of Humanities of the University of Birmingham for partially funding my studies; your financial support made my life considerably easier during the process of this work. Abstract This thesis explores the interaction of gender and the construction of the Argentine state. It pays particular attention to the emergence of women’s movements as well as women’s writing and the way in which both reflect and express the history of the Argentine state after independence. Beginning with a brief account of Argentine independence and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento as founding-father of the Argentine nation, part one focuses on the historical periods of the Liberal State, Peronism, and the military dictatorships of the 1960s and early 1970s. It investigates how national discourse incorporated gender discourse without including women as citizens in their full right. It then explores how women’s movements articulated their ensuing discontent with the patriarchal system that attempted to ensure continuity of this exclusion. Part two identifies and analyzes selected texts by nineteenth and twentieth century Argentine female authors. Written from a specifically female standpoint, these novels and short stories articulate women’s grievances with the political developments addressed in part one. Introduction This thesis explores female political activism and female literary engagement in Argentina as a response by women to the Argentine state. Taking into account women’s multiple identities and interests, this thesis investigates these activisms chronologically in two parts during the Liberal State, Peronism, and the military governments of the 1960s and 1970s. The first Latin American political women’s movements emerged in Argentina shortly after independence. Moreover, with an uninterrupted presence in the tradition of female authors since 1830, women’s cultural activism in Argentina is one of the most potent in Latin America. In order to effect social reform, women have reacted and responded to political developments, with either civil rights campaigns or with literary production amongst others. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how both these activisms have provided a space for women to give expression to a specifically female historical perspective of Argentine culture and society. Furthermore, it underlines the need for an interdisciplinary approach in the investigation of women’s activisms in order to reveal links between different forms of female expression and gain insight into specifically female concerns which have largely been disregarded by the political classes. Chapter one is concerned with the complexity of nation-building in the Argentine republic after independence from Spain. The wars of independence in the early nineteenth century precipitated the first crisis of the cultural pattern that had been established gradually since the conquest.1 The French Enlightenment of the 1 From the first encounter of Spanish with indigenous culture a new cultural model emerged, heavily influenced by Catholicism, leaning towards political authoritarianism and not very open to scientific i eighteenth century, British Liberalism and, later in the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte’s positivism played an important role in this process. New forms of stratification emerged that did not depend on racial criteria as had been the case until then. Scientific rationality of nineteenth century Europe began to influence the dominant Latin American classes as well as academics and intellectuals. They thought that the new scientific criteria were the only way to ‘order and progress’ for the new republics (Larrain, 1994:41). As the subject was replaced by the citizen and the institutions of popular sovereignty became established, it was necessary to define the populace: self government requires a community that is to be the self. The demand for popular sovereignty was accompanied by the difficult task, the fundamental problem of defining the nation or community that was to exercise this sovereignty (Kamenka, 1976:14). Establishing the self, however, requires the positioning of an ‘other’ against which the self can be defined and which represents everything that the self is not. An important element in that self-recognition is the position of ‘liminal groups’ who confuse the boundaries between the inside and the outside. As Norton has argued: “Liminars serve as mirrors for nations; at once other and alike, they provide the occasion for the nation to constitute itself in reflection upon its identity” (1988:55, cited in Dodds, 1993). In the case of the Argentine state the gauchos, mestizos by and large, Afro-Argentines or Indian peoples as well as women in general were prime examples of liminal groups. They all served as a source of identification for the state. The chapter focuses on Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s work Facundo, a thesis that has characterized the Argentine nation in terms of two opposing cultural trends: urban civilization and rural barbarism. Sarmiento and the famous ‘Generation of 37’ delineated the parameters of the Argentine nation with the reason. This model coexisted comfortably with slavery, the inquisition and the religious monopoly of the Catholic Church. ii objective of establishing a European, urban, ‘civilised’ culture, which, in order to be created, needed the selection of a set of representations that involved, by inclusion and exclusion, various social sectors. The early Argentinean nation- builders perceived the violence that plagued the republic in its early stages as an inherent characteristic of its people which they, in time, came to believe was a decisive element of their destiny. With Facundo, Sarmiento established a dichotomous Argentine founding ethos which has influenced the country’s subsequent state formations and governments in terms of exclusionary politics and the justifiable use of state violence In Argentina, like elsewhere, cultural representations constituted a key tool in the socio-cultural construction of the ‘other’ and, therefore, in the creation of new identities, not only in terms of nation but also of class, race, and gender; all of which contributed to the formation of the collective imaginary which supported the ‘imagined community’(Marre, 2001:29). Chapter one also addresses the place of women within this community as imagined by Sarmiento. Despite his success in creating numerous academic institutions aimed at the advance of women’s education, their instruction was limited to the improvement and expansion of traditional female activities related to the home and child-rearing. Furthermore, only women of a certain class and status became the beneficiaries of Sarmiento’s educational reforms, while others remained excluded. Further investigation into Sarmiento’s exclusionary politics in terms of class, race and ethnicity as well as