Tales Told Out on the Borderlands: Doña María’s Story, Oral History, and Issues of Gender by Daniel James presented by Brittany Jablonsky

Background information Berisso, Argentina Multinational meatpacking industry Unionization and Peronism Decline –Changing markets –Changing consumer demands –New regulations –Aging plants

Doña María Roldán New wife and mother, 1931 Began working in meat plants in 1944 Elected shop steward for her section Helped establish the Sindicato Autónomo Peronist Worked with Cipriano Reyes

Oral history James interviews Doña María –30 hours over 9-month period Problems with oral history –Not “objective” or “factual” Limited by memory, knowledge –Rather, a reconstruction of a life Doña María has control over her own story Selects parts that “legitimize it to [James] and make sense of it to herself”

A progressive woman? Doña María explains the role of the “good wife” in terms of traditional gender ideology –Frames her activism in similar way: “Reyes came to see me in my section, the picada, ‘I come on behalf of your husband, he is already in agreement, and if you want to be the delegate for this section, because you have the qualities, your husband says it is fine....’ I said to him, ‘If you have spoken to my husband and he has said yes, then I’ll also say yes.’”

A progressive woman? Doña María cites traditional women’s interests as reason for activism –“To give a piece of bread to our children” –Uses role of the nurturing, self-sacrificing mother This conforms with representation of women in Peronist ideology

Gender contradictions Indications throughout that Doña María’s story is unconventional: “I gave my family a little bit of concern because I had the rebelliousness that my father had, for me to be shut up inside with a needle sewing and hemming and that sort of thing was a waste of time, I thought that you had to go beyond that, do other things.”

Making sense of contradiction James: 2 important points about contradictions –Establishing prior adolescent rebellion rationalizes decision to leave life of “marital bliss” and become labor organizer –Decision to enter workforce phrased in solidly material terms Not “to get out of the house,” etc. Pay son’s medical bills—allows her work to be gender-appropriate

Constructing a narrative Anecdotes about confronting authority –Fundamental to life story –Symbolic significance –Mythologized –Often include Doña María defying gender stereotypes “Why don’t you get involved in the schools, in something else, not in politics, not in unions, you should leave that sort of thing to the men.”

Constructing a narrative These anecdotes not historical data –Doña María moves them around, elides them Function in plot of her narrative: “their symbolic assertion of her self-definition as a rebel, as an uppity woman, la intrusa, la impulsiva, la delgada brava”

Fundamental question Taylor: “If the plot that Doña María constructs establishes her heretical status as a rare bird whose life history clearly breaks with the conventional script of women’s biography, how are we to read the far more conventional themes and more standard forms of self- representation mentioned at the beginning? Is one set of images true and the other false?”

Peronist contradictions, Traditional subordination of women to men denounced Traditional ideas of gender and domesticity reinforced –Women’s work outside the home was condemned –Women’s political activity was encouraged, but distinctly separate from that of men Derived from unique virtues as mothers and wives Too virtuous and moral to be in politics

Peronist realism Peronist rhetoric reinforced by literature Characteristics: –Women absent from narrative, or present as suffering mothers and housewives –Emphasis on heroic masculinity Physical labor Male camaraderie

“People live by stories” Doña María must frame her story in terms she is familiar with Peronist folklore excludes women entirely Richardson: “Women can overcome the ‘textual disenfranchisement’ embodied in cultural stories that are inadequate to their needs and experiences by creating new ‘collective stories’ with new roles, stereotypes, and resolutions”

A new story? James: too simplistic to simply think of Doña María’s story as a new discourse challenging the dominant set of images about working-class women’s lives Instead, her story is disruptive of the central one but not “available in ready-to- use form, waiting to be appropriated”

Conclusions Contradictions within Doña María’s story reflect unresolved tension between “official discourse concerning gender relations and one that is far less palatable and legitimate within the terms in which Doña María had to live out her life” –Do as I say, not as I do

Conclusions Must assume that direct historical experience will find expression in an individual’s testimony –We owe it to Doña María to believe her story fully reflects the way in which a working-class woman experienced gender and class relations in a particular historical era

Conclusions Self-representation through stereotypes of traditional female roles should not be taken at face value –Rather, these “reflect both the power of dominant ideologies and the capacity of the storyteller to imbue these forms with her own meanings, her own subjectivity”