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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 March 2022
This article analyzes the characteristics of domestic service in the city of Buenos Aires at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, showing the importance it had in a porteño society undergoing profound societal transformation. It reconstructs the changes in the sociodemographic profile of the sector and investigates the living and working conditions therein. It describes how that particular labor market was structured. It shows that the complexity of the sector was not only due to the existence of different occupational categories, functions, and hiring conditions, but also to the coexistence of various remuneration concepts, “arrangements” in which work and family life were interwoven in a particular way. It explores domestic service in the light of phenomena such as immigration, urbanization, family dynamics and child-rearing practices, state assistance policies, and the social reproduction processes of the working classes.
The author is grateful for the comments and suggestions of the reviewers of this article, thanks to which the text is undoubtedly much better.
1. Blofield, Merike and Jokela, Merita, “Paid Domestic Work and the Struggles of Care Workers in Latin America,” Current Sociology Monograph 66 (2018): 532Google Scholar.
2. In 2016, there were more than one million registered domestic workers who, in relative terms, represented about 16 percent of employed women. See Pereyra, Francisca, “Trabajadoras domésticas y protección social en Argentina: avances y desafíos pendientes,” Serie Documentos de Trabajo 15 (2017)Google Scholar, OIT Argentina.
3. The words used for naming those who worked in domestic service have varied over time: servants, domestics, household helpers, domestic employees, private home workers. These categories have been the subject of political and ideological debate and stances by the trade unions that have been organized by sector and by women's movements. On occasion, changes in their conceptualization meant changes in the social value of the profession of serving and even the achievement of rights. In this article, I use the terms domestic service, servants, and criados/as because they are historically situated categories.
4. Geneviève Fraisse, Femmes toutes mains. Essai sur le service domestique (Paris,1979); Pierre Guiral and Guy Thuillier, La vie quotidienne des domestiques en France au XIX° siècle (Paris, 1978); Cármen Sarasúa, Criados, nodrizas y amos: el servicio doméstico en la formación del mercado de trabajo madrileño (Madrid, 1994); Anne Martine-Fugier, La Place des bonnes, la domesticité féminine à Paris en 1900 (Paris, 2004).
5. I am referring to forms of forced labor, self-employment, hourly work, domestic and reproductive work, unpaid work, work outside the market, family work. Van der Linden, Marcel, “Rumo a uma nova conceituação histórica da classe trabalhadora mundial,” História 24 (2005): 11–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6. Dinah Rodríguez and Jennifer Cooper, El debate sobre el trabajo doméstico (Mexico City, 2005); Cristina Carrasco, Cristina Borderías and Teresa Torns (eds.) El trabajo de cuidados. Historia, teoría y políticas (Madrid, 2011); Silvia Federici, Revolución en punto cero: trabajo doméstico, reproducción y luchas feministas (Madrid, 2013).
7. On the characteristics of the development of the field of studies in Latin America and the United States, see Tinsman, Heidi, “The Indispensible Services of Sisters: Considering Domestic Service in United States and Latin American Studies,” Journal of Women's History 4 (1992): 37–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olcott, Jocelyn, “Introduction: Researching and Rethinking the Labors of Love,” Hispanic American Review 91 (2011): 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the characteristics of the research in Brazil: Lautier, Bruno, “Las empleadas domésticas latinoamericanas y la sociología del trabajo: algunas observaciones acerca del caso brasilero,” Revista mexicana de sociología 65 (2003): 789–814CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Souza, Flavia Fernandes, “Trabalho doméstico: considerações sobre um tema recente de estudos na História Social do Trabalho no Brasil,” Revista Mundos do Trabalho 7 (2015): 275–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the field of studies in Europe, see Sarti, Raffaella, “Historians, Social Scientists, Servants, and Domestic Workers: Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work,” International Review of Social History 59 (2014): 279–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Antionette Fauve-Chamoux (ed.), Domestic service and the formation of European Identity. Understanding the Globalization of Domestic Work (Bern and Berlin: 2004); Dilk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk and Silke Neunsinger (eds.), Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers (Leiden, 2015), 1–61.
8. Jelin, Elizabeth, “Migración a las ciudades y participación en la fuerza de trabajo de las mujeres latinoamericanas: el caso del servicio doméstico”, Estudios Sociales 4 (1976)Google Scholar; Arzipe, Lourdes, “Women in the Informal Labor Sector: The Case of México City,” Signs 3 (1977): 35–63Google Scholar; Carlos Zurita, La participación de las mujeres en el sector informal urbano: el caso del servicio doméstico en Argentina, II Seminar-Course “Empleo, distribución del ingreso y necesidades básicas,” PREALC, Santiago de Chile, 1979.
9. Some references: Rosalba Todaro and Thelma Gálvez, Trabajo doméstico remunerado: conceptos, hechos, datos (Santiago de Chile, 1987); Elsa Chaney and Mary García Castro (eds.), Muchacha, cachifa, criada, empleada, empregadinha, sirvienta y más nada (Caracas, 1993); Goldsmith, Mary, “Sindicato de trabajadoras domésticas en México (1920–1950),” Política y Cultura 1 (1992): 75–89Google Scholar; Quezada, William Elvis Plata, “El sindicato del servicio doméstico y la obra de Nazareth: entre asistencialismo, paternalismo y conflicto de interés, Bogotá 1938–1960,” Revista de Estudios Sociales 45 (2013): 29–41Google Scholar; Acha, Omar, “La organización sindical de las trabajadoras domésticas durante el primer peronismo,” Revista de Estudios Marítimos y Sociales 5/6 (2012–2013): 27–39Google Scholar; Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, “The Problem of Domestic Service in Chile, 1924–1952,” Towards a Global History…, Silke Neunsinger (et al.); Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, “Identidades y Alianzas: el movimiento chileno de las Trabajadoras de Casa Particular durante la Guerra Fría,” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos 13 (2013); Acciari, Louisa, “’Foi difícil, mas sempre falo que nós somos guerreiras’ – O movimento das trabalhadoras domésticas entre a marginalidade e o empoderamento,” Mosaico 7 (2016): 124–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mary Goldsmith, “Disputando fronteras: la movilización de las trabajadoras del hogar en América Latina,” Amérique Latine Histoire et Mémoire. Les Cahiers ALHIM 14 (2007).
10. Some references: María Elena Valenzuela and Claudia Mora (eds.), Trabajo doméstico: un largo camino hacia el trabajo decente (Santiago de Chile, 2009); Hidalgo, Sara, “The Making of a ‘Simple Domestic:’ Domestic Workers, the Supreme Court, and the Law in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” International Labor and Working-Class History 94 (2018), 55–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Merike Blofield and Merita Jokela, “Paid domestic work”; Remedi, Fernando, “Los de arriba y los de abajo. El servicio doméstico y su ‘reglamentación’ en Córdoba (Argentina) en las primeras décadas del siglo XX,” Historelo 12 (2020): 123–55Google Scholar; Ania Tizziani, “El Estatuto del Servicio Doméstico y sus antecedentes: debates en torno a la regulación del trabajo doméstico remunerado en la Argentina,” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos 13 (2013); Francisca Pereyra and Lorena Poblete, “¿Qué derechos? ¿Qué obligaciones? La construcción discursiva de la noción de empleadas y empleadores en el debate de la Ley del Personal de Casas Particulares (2010–2013),” Cuadernos del IDES 30 (2015): 73–102; Poblete, Lorena, “Empleo y protecciones sociales, ¿dos caras de la misma moneda? Reflexiones en torno a la regulación del servicio doméstico en Argentina,” Revista Latinoamericana de Derecho Social 22 (2016): 153–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Inés Pérez (et.al.), Senderos que se bifurcan. Servicio doméstico y derechos laborales en la Argentina del siglo XX (Mar del Plata, 2018).
11. Some references: Elsa Chaney and Mary García Castro (eds.), Muchacha, cachifa, criada…; Isabel Cárdenas, Ramona y el robot, el servicio doméstico en barrios prestigiosos de Buenos Aires (1895-1985) (Buenos Aires, 1986); Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Proteção e obediência: criadas e seus patrões no Rio de Janeiro, 1860-1910 (Sao Pablo, 1992); Lesley Gill, Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia (New York, 1994); Maria Izilda Santos de Matos, “Porta adentro: criados de servir em São Paulo de 1890 a 1930,” Novos olhares: mulheres e relações de gênero no Brasil, ed. Maria Cristina Bruschini and Bila Sorj (Sao Paulo, 1994); Flávia Fernandes de Sousa, “Para casa de família e mais serviço: o trabalho doméstico na cidade do Rio de Janeiro no final do século XIX,” (MA diss., Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2010); Solene Bergot, “Caracterización y mapeo del servicio doméstico en Santiago de Chile. Una radiografía en 1895 a través del diario ‘El chileno’,” Historia 396 (2017): 11–41; Silke Staab and Kristen Hill Maher, “The Dual Discourse About Peruvian Domestic Workers in Santiago de Chile: Class, Race, and a Nationalist Project,” Latin American Politics and Society 48 (2006): 87–116; Fernando Remedi, “Las trabajadoras del servicio doméstico en la modernización argentina. Córdoba (Argentina), 1870–1910,” Actores, escenarios y representaciones (Argentina, Chile y México, siglos XIX-XX), Fernando J. Remedi and Teresita Rodríguez Morales (eds.) (Córdoba, 2011), 49–70; Séverine Durin (et al.), Trabajadoras en la sombra dimensiones del servicio doméstico latinoamericano (Mexico City, 2014); Débora Gorbán and Ania Tiziziani, ¿Cada una en su lugar? Trabajo, género y clase en el servicio doméstico (Buenos Aires, 2018).
12. Some references: Ann S. Blum, “Cleaning the Revolutionary Household: Domestic Service and Public Welfare in Mexico City, 1900–1935,” Journal of Womeńs History 15 (2003): 67–90; Anne Blum, “Speaking of Work and Family: Reciprocity, Child Labor, and Social Reproduction, Mexico City, 1920–1940,” Hispanic American Historical Review 91 (2011): 63–95; Nara Milanich, Children of Fate. Childhood, Class and the State in Chile, 1850-1930 (Durham and London, 2009); Nara Milanich, “Women, Children, and the Social Organization of Domestic Labor in Chile,” Ibid.: 29–62; Macarena Ponce de León Atria, Gobernar la pobreza. Prácticas de caridad y beneficencia en la ciudad de Santiago, 1830-1890 (Santiago de Chile, 2011), 206–21; María Marta Aversa, “Colocaciones y destinos laborales en niños y jóvenes asilados en la ciudad de Buenos Aires (1890–1900),” Las infancias en la historia argentina. Intersecciones entre prácticas, discursos e instituciones (1890–1960), (comps.) L. Lionetti and D. Míguez (Rosario, 2010); María Marta Aversa, “Un mundo de gente menuda. El trabajo infantil tutelado. Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1870–1920” (PhD diss., Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2014); Agostina Gentili, “Veladuras. El servicio doméstico de niñas y jóvenes en la narrativa judicial de los años sesenta en Córdoba, Argentina,” Secuencia (2018): 85–118.
13. Some references: Sônia Roncador, Domestic Servants in Literature and Testimony in Brazil, 1889–1999 (New York, 2014); María Julia Rossi and Lucía Campanella, Los de abajo: tres siglos de sirvientes en el arte y la literatura en América Latina (Rosario, 2018); Solène Bergot, “Las figuras del sirviente en la producción literaria chilena (1870–1920),” Anales de Literatura chilena 31 (2019): 55–73.
14. José C. Moya, Primos y extranjeros. La inmigración española en Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Buenos Aires, 2004), 163.
15. A reworking of my doctoral thesis has been published under the title Sirvientes, criados y nodrizas. Una historia del servicio doméstico en la ciudad de Buenos Aires (fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX) (Buenos Aires, 2017).
16. E.P Thompson, La formación de la clase obrera en Inglaterra (Madrid, 2012 [1963]); Eric Hobsbawm. Trabajadores. Estudios de historia de la clase obrera (Barcelona, 1979); Eric Hobsbawm. El mundo del trabajo. Estudios históricos sobre la formación de la clase obrera (Barcelona, 1987); Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832-1982 (Cambridge, 1983).
17. Carolyn Steedman, Labors Lost: Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England (Cambridge, 2009); Carolyn Steedman, “El trabajo de servir: las tareas de la vida cotidiana Inglaterra, 1760–1820,” Mora 19 (2013): 101–26; Joan W. Scott, “Las mujeres en la formación de la clase obrera en Inglaterra,” Género e Historia (Mexico City, 2008); Joan W. Scott, “Sobre el lenguaje, el género y la historia de la clase obrera,” Género e Historia (Mexico City, 2008); Dorothy Thompson, “Las mujeres y la radicalidad política en el siglo XIX: una dimensión ignorada,” Mora 19 (2013): 65–82; Catherine Hall, “La historia de Samuel y Jemima: género y cultura de la clase trabajadora en la Inglaterra del siglo XIX,” Mora 19 (2013): 83–100.
18. Between 1881 and 1914, a little over 4,200,000 people arrived in Argentina. Italians, around 2,000,000; Spanish, 1,400,000; French, 170,000; Russians, 160,000, among others. In that period, the country received a lower immigration influx than the United States, but higher than Canada and Brazil. Fernando Devoto, Historia de la inmigración en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2009), 247.
19. In 1869, it had just under 200,000 inhabitants, and by 1895 it reached over 500,000; this number tripled in twenty years, with over 1,500,000 by 1914. During the following two decades, the population of Buenos Aires would be multiplied again and would continue to grow, though more slowly and disproportionately to the rest of the country. Zulma Recchini de Lattes, “Crecimiento explosivo y desaceleración,” Buenos Aires. Historia de cuatro siglos, Vol. II, dir. José Luis Romero and Luis Alberto Romero (Buenos Aires, 1983).
20. To a large extent, it was working-aged young men (between twenty-one and forty years old), since women constituted one-third of the foreigners coming from Europe. Only at the beginning of World War I was there a decrease in the number of immigrants and women reached 40 percent of European immigration. Ema Cibotti, “Del habitante al ciudadano: la condición del inmigrante,” Nueva Historia Argentina. El progreso, la modernización y sus límites (1880-1916), Vol 5, dir. Mirta Zaida Lobato, (Buenos Aires, 2000), 247–48.
21. An analysis of male employment alternatives is found in Mirta Zaida Lobato, “Los trabajadores en la era del progreso,” Nueva Historia Argentina. El progreso, la modernización y sus límites (1880-1916), Vol. 5, dir. Mirta Zaida Lobato (Buenos Aires, 2000).
22. Ernesto H. Kritz, “La formación de la fuerza de trabajo en la Argentina: 1869–1914,” Cuadernos del CENEP (Buenos Aires, 1979).
23. Home-based work was defined in 1921 by the National Labor Department as “any kind of industrial transformation carried out habitually or professionally by workers on the premises that constitute their legal residence, provided that it is carried out, in whole or in part, on behalf of and at the direction of an employer” (art. 155). This classification did not include those who were engaged in domestic service or those who were self-employed in their homes. See Mirta Zaida Lobato, Historia de las trabajadoras en la Argentina: 1869-1960 (Buenos Aires, 2007), 31–33, 60–62, 96–98.
24. On women employed in commerce, see Fernando Rocchi, “Concentración de capital, concentración de mujeres. Industria y trabajo femenino en Buenos Aires, 1890–1930,” Historia de las mujeres en la Argentina, Vol. 2, ed. Fernanda Gil Lozano, Valeria Pita and Gabriela Ini, (Buenos Aires, 2000); Graciela Queirolo, “Vendedoras: género y trabajo en el sector comercial (Buenos Aires, 1910–1050),” Revista Estudios Feministas 22 (2014): 29–50. About female office workers: Graciela Queirolo, Mujeres en las oficinas Trabajo, género y clase en el sector administrativo (Buenos Aires, 1910-1950) (Buenos Aires, 2018).
25. An approach to telephone employees can be found in Dora Barrancos, “¿Mujeres comunicadas? Las trabajadoras telefónicas en las décadas de 1930–1940,” Temas de Mujeres. Perspectivas de Género. IV Jornadas de Historia de las Mujeres y Estudios del Género, coord. Hilda Beatriz Garrido and María Celia Bravo (Tucumán, 1998). For an analysis of female teachers, see Graciela Morgade (comp.), Mujeres en la educación. Género y docencia en Argentina (1870-1930) (Buenos Aires, 1997). For studies of nurses: Georgina Binstock and Catalina H. Wainerman, “El nacimiento de una ocupación femenina: la enfermería en Buenos Aires,” Desarrollo económico 32 (1992): 271–84; Georgina Binstock and Catalina H. Wainerman, Ocupación y género. Mujeres y varones en enfermería (Buenos Aires, 1993); Ana Laura Martín, “Mujeres y enfermería: una asociación temprana y estable (1886–1940),” La salud pública y la enfermería en la Argentina, Carolina Biernat (et al.) (Bernal, 2015). An analysis of studies on the forms of women's work in this period can be found in Graciela Queirolo, “Mujeres que trabajan: una revisión historiográfica del trabajo femenino en la ciudad de Buenos Aires,” Nuevo Topo 3 (2006): 29–50.
26. Job advertisements in the newspaper La Prensa not only offered and requested servants for private homes, but also for alternative settings such as the street, shops or other types of establishments. “A young servant offered to be an orderly for errand office (…)”, La Prensa (LP), February 20, 1875; “professional cook offered […] for private home or restaurant […]”, LP, February 17, 1880; “servant offered for shipping company or currency exchange bureau (…)”, LP, October 9, 1890.
27. To illustrate: “Servant needed, one who knows duties for all work […] foreign preferred,” LP, August 6, 1875; “girl 10 or 12 years of age needed for all service,” LP, February 22, 1880; “criada for all service that knows how to cook,” LP, April 3, 1905.
28. To illustrate: “Needed in small family household: a professional cook, preferably French. Salary up to 70$, also a native maid who can sew, salary up to 30$, and a foreign maid, wage up to 45$, trained for their duties (…),” LP, January 12, 1910. On the hierarchies inside the sector, also see Solène Bergot, “Caracterización y mapeo del servicio doméstico en Santiago de Chile. Una radiografía de 1895 a través del diario El Chileno,” Historia 396 1 (2017): 23–26. On domestic service in affluent neighborhoods of the city of Buenos Aires: Isabel Cárdenas, Ramona y el Robot . . .
29. See Pierre Guiral and Guy Thuillier, La vie quotidienne des domestiques en France au XIX siècle (París, 1985).
30. The quantitative and qualitative study of the sector was carried out through a joint analysis of population censuses, census returns, job advertisements, illustrated magazines, and testimonies from observers of the time. The censuses provide information on the employed population by “profession, art, or trade” according to sex and origin (natives or foreigners), and for the time-period in question we have three national censuses (1869, 1895, and 1914) and three municipal censuses (1887, 1904, and 1909). These surveys present some difficulties due to their differences in conceptualization and registration, as well as the ambiguous meaning of the recorded categories (occupations belonging to different sectors were condensed under the same name, and different working modalities were also hidden). They also had difficulty recording female and child labor (which was predominant in the sector), and domestic and hourly work. To overcome possible distortions, census information was complemented with census returns. Two samples of one thousand cases each compiled (for 1869 and 1895, respectively), providing data on servants (age, sex, marital status, nationality, profession or trade, education, number of children) and on the configuration of housing units and the ties that connected their members (family, work). The job advertisements in the newspaper La Prensa (at that time one of the most important newspapers because of its modernity and popularity) served as samples of the evolution and transformations of the sector in the period between 1870 and 1915.
31. For a methodological approach to censuses and the difficulties of quantifying the sector, see Cecilia Allemandi, Sirvientes, criados y nodrizas . . ., 54–61.
32. The participation of men in service jobs is confirmed in different urban settings in Latin America. In Mexico City, just over 21 percent of the servants were male by 1910. Mary Goldsmith, “De sirvientas a trabajadoras. La cara cambiante del servicio doméstico en la ciudad de México,” Miradas feministas sobre las mexicanas del siglo XX, comp. Marta Lamas (Mexico City, 2007), 90. In Rio de Janeiro, between 1870 and 1900, about 20 percent or 30 percent of domestic service was male. Fernandes de Souza, “Entre a convivência e a retribuição. . . .,” 122.
33. For instance: “a Spanish man offered to be a cook, manservant or doorman (…),” LP, March 9, 1875; “manservant needed who knows his job well (…)”, LP, February 17, 1880; “Italian man offered (…) who understands cooking and domestic service (…)”, LP, January 3, 1900.
34. See Inés Pérez, Romina Cutuli, and Débora Garazi, Senderos que se bifurcan. Servicio doméstico y derechos laborales en la Argentina del siglo XX (Mar del Plata, 2018).
35. See José C. Moya, “Domestic Service in a Global Perspective: Gender, Migration, and Ethnic Niches,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33 (2007): 559–79.
36. See: Cárdenas, Ramona y el robot . . ., 110. See also: Inés Pérez, “Género y desigualdades en el mercado de trabajo: la desmarcación de los choferes particulares del servicio doméstico en la Argentina,” Trabajo y Sociedad, 2017; Déborah Garazi. “Maîtres, mozos, comises y sommeliers: el trabajo en el salón comedor de hoteles de alta categoría (Mar del Plata, 1950–1990),” Travesía. Revista de Historia económica y social 22 (2020).
37. The censuses set a minimum age for requesting occupational information (“persons aged 14 and over”). The age limit coincided with the end of compulsory schooling and the minimum age for marriage. This decision undoubtedly led to the invisibility of thousands of children who actually participated in the urban job market. However, despite the established criteria, the census returns available for 1869 and 1914 recorded the occupation or means of living of children under fourteen years old. Methodological considerations for the study of the sector are found in Cecilia Allemandi, Sirvientes, criados y nodrizas...
38. Estela Pagani and María Victoria Alcaraz, Mercado laboral del menor (1900-1940) (Buenos Aires, 1991), 35.
39. To illustrate: “girl 10 to 12 years old is needed for all service for a marriage (…),” LP, August 14, 1875; “boy 13 to 16 years old is needed for servant (…),” LP, April 24, 1880; “nanny is needed between 12 and 14 years of age (…),” LP, April 12, 1890; “boy from 12 to 14 years of age needed to wash courtyards and run errands (…),” LP, January 4, 1910.
40. For example: “Girl servant needed, twelve to fifteen years old, will also be taught to sew and make hats, 920 Bolivar, upstairs,” LP, April 12, 1890; “good young boy or girl, eleven years old, needed for the service of a small family, will be given instruction, housing, food, and a small salary, go to 346 Corrientes, second floor, good treatment,” LP, September 5, 1900; “big young man needed for errands, 15$ housing and food, 2533 B. Mitre,” LP, August 20, 1910.
41. In the course of the twentieth century, the conditions of migrants and women will become permanent features of the population employed in the sector as a result of the increase in internal migration beginning in the 1930s and immigration from neighboring countries, especially from the 1950s onward. Isabel Cárdenas, Ramona y el Robot . . ., 100–111.
42. José C. Moya, “Domestic Service in a Global Perspective: Gender, Migration, and Ethnic Niches.”
43. Presentation by Councillor of the Regulations on Domestic Service, Deliberative Council of the City of Buenos Aires, May 17, 1912, 259–60.
44. “A young Spanish man who has just arrived is offered to be a doorman, a manservant or any other job (…),” LP, August 19, 1875; “a lady who has just arrived from Italy wishes to be placed in the family home as a housekeeper, seamstress; she also has a 17-year-old niece who would work (…),” LP, January 8, 1885; “a French marriage just arrived from Europe wishes to place themselves in a family home; the woman as an ironer (…) or cook; the husband as a servant (…),” LP, January 8, 1885; “formal Italian man offered, just arrived, understands cooking and domestic service; little pretense (…),” LP, January 3, 1900.
45. José C. Moya, “Domestic Service in a Global Perspective: Gender, Migration, and Ethnic Niches.”
46. Caras y Caretas (CC), May 26, 1900, 14.
47. CC was the most important illustrated magazine in Argentina during these years. It was known for its political satire, humor, and approach to current affairs, generally combined with cartoons and photographs. That was not the only time the magazine devoted a place to the coverage of the sector. In 1912, it published another article entitled “Poliglotismo doméstico” (“Domestic Polyglotism”), in which, with a comical tone, it alluded to the frequent foreignness of domestic service and the instability of the links between employers and servants, recounting the misfortunes of a man who, despite his efforts, was unable to find an honest and loyal servant. CC, September 14, 1912, 117.
48. See Moya, Primos y extranjeros . . ., 236 ff. On the formation of ethnic niches in the sector, José C. Moya, “Domestic Service in a Global Perspective: Gender, Migration, and Ethnic Niches.”
49. The analysis of the census returns shows that in 1869, among the foreigners under fifteen years of age who participated in the sector, there were Italians (42 percent), Spanish (14 percent), Uruguayans, Paraguayans, French (9 percent), English, and Brazilians, among others. In 1895, the participation of Spanish (33 percent) and French (18 percent) children increased, and that of Italians (33 percent) decreased. Among the younger servants, many of the ethnic groups present in 1869 were no longer represented in the sector in 1895.
50. For example: “wet nurse offered a fresh Italian (…),” LP, November 2, 1870; “a Spanish butler is offered with good recommendations and intelligent for service (…),” LP, February 17, 1880; “a 24-year-old German man, speaks English and Spanish, with good recommendations is offered as a servant or for another position in a family home (…),” LP, February 1, 1890.
51. For example: “A French or English maid is needed at 206 San Martín (…),” LP, February 17, 1875; “a nanny is needed at 550 Moreno, preferably French-speaking,” LP, February 13, 1880; “nanny maid who knows French or English to go to Europe, needed, 156 Guido (…) useless to present herself without excellent recommendations,” LP, May 5, 1910; “Man needed for cleaning and errands, Italian preferred. 637 Entre Ríos,” LP, January 4, 1910.
52. The diversity of family situations is evident in job advertisements: “a formal lady is offered as a maid, and a young girl of 15 as a nanny (for the same house) (…),” LP, February 17, 1880; “married couple needed, the wife for a cook and the husband for a coachman in Caballito, foreign is preferred (…),” LP, April 12, 1890; “cook of Genoese profession, offered, alone, well recommended, salary from 50 to 60 $ (…),” LP, April 19, 1905; “Spanish couple just arrived with a child of 3 years old, desires to be placed, or lady with the child (…),” LP, April 3, 1905; “maid needed who understands cooking, will be admitted with child over 7 years (…),” LP, January 4, 1910.
53. Ordinance Project for the Regulation of Domestic Service submitted by Councilman Aguilar. Stenographic versions of the Honorable City Council of Buenos Aires, 2nd period of 1912, Dirección General Centro Documental de Información y Centro Legislativo (CEDOM) (Buenos Aires, 1912), 866 ff.
54. Social networks were key to understanding the dynamics of the sector. As Moya has pointed out, the occupational concentration of immigrant groups in domestic service was originally generated from primary contacts between relatives, friends, and fellow nationals that later became more extensive. Information on employment opportunities—in sectors about which they had the most knowledge—circulated through channels that were the same ones that sustained the migratory networks. Through these, newcomers could find out about working conditions, wages, or inconvenient employers. José C. Moya, “Domestic Service in a Global Perspective,” 571–72.
55. Advertising was a basic source of financing, especially considering that, unlike the other newspapers that circulated in Buenos Aires, LP sought to insert itself in the market without depending on the financial support of subsidies from the government or political parties. Staying in business depended on the increase in paper sales and advertisements.
56. Boletín del Departamento Nacional del Trabajo, No. 27, Buenos Aires: August 1, 1913, 497 ff.
57. See Allemandi, Cecilia L., “Entre tentativas reglamentarias y sirvientes organizados: la regulación municipal del servicio doméstico en la ciudad de Buenos Aires a fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX,” Revista Historia y Justicia 6 (2016): 103–36Google Scholar.
58. Regulations for Domestic Service sanctioned May 7, 1875. Digest of Ordinances, Regulations, Agreements and Provisions of the Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires, 1884.
59. In 1880, the arrest rate in Buenos Aires revealed shocking numbers (in 1885, it reached one arrest for every nine residents). There was great concern about urban disorder. Not only was the number of arrests growing, but also the number of reports, especially of crimes against property. What was probably more alarming was that the rate of arrests for crimes committed was falling sharply during this same period. The police lagged far behind the social demand for control. Lila Caimari, Apenas un delincuente. Crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880-1955 (Buenos Aires, 2004), 75–85.
60. These were generally children under the age of eighteen who were in a state of poverty, orphanhood, or abandonment. We will return to this point in the next section.
61. The records of the ombudsmen's offices do not give an account of the total number of institutional placements because the authorities of the children's homes could also make placements, and this was not always reported to officials. In fact, there was constant tension between the defenders and the benefactors due to irregularities in the reporting of their placements. María Marta Aversa, “Un mundo de gente menuda,” 330.
62. An exhaustive analysis of the working conditions for minors living within the institutional placement circuit of the ombudsmen's offices and the Sociedad de la Beneficencia, of the legal specificities of guardianship, and of the characteristics of the agreements and commitments can be found in María Marta Aversa, “Un mundo de gente menuda,” 226–86. See also Kluger, Viviana, “El Defensor General de Menores y la Sociedad de Beneficencia. La discusión de 1887 en torno a sus atribuciones,” Revista de Historia del Derecho 17 (1989): 411–30Google Scholar.
63. Important disputes arose with the directors of the Sociedad de Beneficencia establishments because they placed minors without a peculium. Legally, they based these placements on the Civil Code of 1869, which established that persons who “raised” minors were not obliged to pay salaries for services rendered until the age of fourteen. Nor could tutors who “kept” minors in their company “because they could not accommodate them” be obliged to pay salaries. Art. 1625 of the Civil Code of Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1874).
64. Minutes of September 30, 1887, Sociedad de Beneficencia de la Capital, Casa de Huérfanas, file 46, vol. 2, 110–11.
65. The circulation of children is a category that refers to a series of practices by which the working classes dealt with the upbringing of children, which generally involved homes and institutions other than their birth families. Through various arrangements, they were given away and lived and worked in the homes of relatives, neighbors, employers, strangers. The institutional dimension of this phenomenon is reflected in their transit through asylums and orphanages and in the practices of delivery and placement of minors, which, in the case of the city of Buenos Aires, can be traced in the files of the Fondo de la Sociedad de Beneficencia e Instituciones de Asistencia Social (Charitable Society and Social Assistance Institutions Fund) of the National General Archive (AGN). See Ricardo Cicerchia, “Las vueltas del torno: claves de un maltusianismo popular,” in Mujeres y cultura en la Argentina del siglo XIX, comp. Lea Fletcher (Buenos Aires, 1994); Carla Villalta, Entregas y secuestros: el rol del estado en la apropiación de niños (Buenos Aires, 2012),19–90; María Marta Aversa, “Un mundo de gente menuda.”
66. Ann S. Blum, Domestic Economies: Family, Work, and Welfare in Mexico City, 1884-1943 (Lincoln NE, 2009), 72–74.
67. Milanich, Nara, “The ‘Casa de Huérfanos’ and Child Circulation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Chile,” Journal of Social History 38 (2004): 311–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Women, Children, and the Social Organization of Domestic Labor in Chile,” Hispanic American Historical Review 91 (2011): 29–62.
68. At that time, the scope and meaning of guardianship was gradually taking shape in the heat of the daily situations faced by benefactors and public officials: the moral and material abandonment of minors, epidemics and wars, indigenous captives displaced by the elimination of internal borders and the occupation of territory, among other phenomena. María Marta Aversa, “Un mundo de gente menuda,” 54–74.
69. At least five thousand indigenous people moved through the city of Buenos Aires to be distributed between 1878 and 1885. See Enrique H. Masés, Estado y cuestión indígena. El destino final de los indios sometidos en el sur del territorio (1878-1930) (Buenos Aires, 2009).
70. Some data from these lists show that the social fate of these populations was conditioned by ethnicity, gender, and age. In the two waves of placements, women were the majority (seven out of every ten indigenous people who were placed were women). Of these, a significant number were mothers at the time of distribution and were placed with their children (40 percent in 1878 and 35 percent in 1885). The presence of children is undeniable: 63 percent of the indigenous people placed were under fourteen years of age in 1878 and 42 percent in 1885. In turn, it was in the younger segments that males were concentrated, as they represented 56 percent of the total number of children under fourteen in 1878 and 41 percent in 1885. This suggests the adult indigenous men had other types of labor placements. See Cecilia Allemandi, “‘Servicios extraordinarios’: La Sociedad de Beneficencia y la colocación forzada de indígenas en el marco de las campañas militares de Pampa, Patagonia y Chaco (Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1875–1885),” Revista Electrónica de Fuentes y Archivos 10 (2019): 135–50.
71. At a national level, paternal orphans added up to nearly 50,000, maternal orphans to 37,500, and illegitimate children were slightly under 154,000. “Introducción,” First Census of Argentina of 1869, Vol. 1, (Buenos Aires, 1872), XL–XLII.
72. As mentioned above, there were a number of practices involving the transfer of minors, many of which contributed to the previously mentioned phenomenon of the circulation of children. An analysis of the practices, subsumed under the category of “child abandonment,” can be found in Carla Villalta, “La conformación de una matriz interpretativa. La definición jurídica del abandono y la pérdida de la patria potestad,” Las infancias en la historia argentina. Intersecciones entre prácticas, discursos e instituciones (1890–1960) comp. Lucía Lionetti and Daniel Míguez (Rosario, 2010).
73. First Census of Argentina, XL–XLII.
74. See Ricardo Cicerchia, “Familia: la historia de una idea. Los desórdenes domésticos de la plebe urbana porteña, Buenos Aires, 1776–1850,” Vivir en Familia, comp. Catalina Wainerman (Buenos Aires, 1994), 60; by the same author, “Las vueltas del torno: claves de un maltusianismo popular,” Mujeres y cultura en la Argentina del siglo XIX, comp. Lea Fletcher (Buenos Aires, 1994), 204.
75. In order to reverse this situation, they established age-specific peculia with very unequal criteria that were set from the age of two, four, six, or twelve (depending on the ombudsman) until the age of majority. SBC, Defensoría de Menores, file 57, Vol. 1, 334. SBC, Defensoría de Menores, file, Vol. 6, 212–16, 229.
76. See Julio César Ríos and Ana María Talak, “La niñez en los espacios urbanos (1890–1920),” Historia de la vida privada en la Argentina, Tomo II, La Argentina plural: 1870-1930, coord. Fernando Devoto and Marta Madero (Buenos Aires, 1999); María Carolina Zapiola, “Niños en las calles: imágenes literarias y representaciones oficiales en la Argentina del Centenario,” Formas de Historia cultural, ed. Sandra Gayol and Marta Madero (Buenos Aires, 2007).
77. See Matilde Mercado, La primera ley de trabajo femenino. La mujer obrera (1890-1910) (Buenos Aires, 1988), 38–39; Eduardo Zimmermann, Los liberales reformistas. La cuestión social en la Argentina 1890-1916 (Buenos Aires, 1995), 55–59; Mirta Zaida Lobato, “Entre la protección y la exclusión: discurso maternal y protección de la mujer obrera, argentina 1890-1934,” La cuestión social en Argentina: 1870-1943, comp. Juan Suriano (Buenos Aires, 2000).
78. Congreso Nacional (CN), Diario de sesiones de la Cámara de Diputados (DSCD), year 1906, Vol. I, Ordinary Sessions (OS), session of September 7, 1906 (Buenos Aires, 1907): 788 ff.
79. The law prohibited the labor of children under ten years of age and of those between ten and fourteen years of age who had not completed compulsory education. It allowed the minors’ ombudsmen to authorize the work of children protected by the law “when it is indispensable for the subsistence of the child, his or her parents, or siblings.” It prohibited night work for children under the age of sixteen, as well as their employment for tasks that were considered unsanitary, dangerous, or immoral. The city of Buenos Aires set the minimum age for entry into a factory or workshop at twelve, an eight-hour working day and a forty-eight-hour week (maximum), and a two-hour midday break for minors under sixteen. CN, DSCD, year 1907, Vol. 1, OS, session of July 26, 1907 (Buenos Aires, 1924): 1,082–83.
80. Conceived as a law for the protection of childhood, the “Ley Agote” established in its article 21 that those under eighteen years of age who sold “newspapers, publications, or objects of any nature” in the streets or public places, or who in these same places carried out jobs “away from the supervision of their parents,” were included in the figure of “materially or morally abandoned minors.” By virtue of this condition, the state could take over the right of parental authority and become the guardian of these children or find a private individual to fulfill this role. María Carolina Zapiola, Excluidos De La Niñez. Menores, tutela estatal e instituciones de reforma. Buenos Aires, 1890-1930 (Buenos Aires, 2019).
81. CN, DSCD, year 1922, Vol. 1, OS, 26 April–14 July 1922, Buenos Aires, Imprenta y Encuadernación de la Cámara de Diputados, 1922, session of 12 July 1922, 653 ff.
82. It set a higher age limit to work than the law of 1907, and had a very important social reach because it prohibited all forms of work for all children who had not met the minimum of school instruction, or who, having reached this minimum, had not reached the age of twelve. It prohibited night work for those under eighteen and for women, except for nursing, “domestic” services, and night-time public entertainment companies (which, in fact, could only hire women over eighteen). Ibid., 653 ff.
83. An analysis of the parliamentary debates and the legislators’ different positions can be found in Cecilia L. Allemandi, Sirvientes, criados y nodrizas, 223–38.
84. The project received preliminary approval in 1922, was tabled for more than two years, and did not undergo modifications when it was finally debated in the Senate.
85. Law 11,317, Work of Women and Minors and Regulatory Decrees, Ministry of Interior, Official Publication, 1928.
86. Hora, Roy and Losada, Leandro, “Clases altas y medias en la Argentina, 1880–1930. Notas para una investigación,” Desarrollo Económico 50 (2011): 611–30Google Scholar.
