The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers, From Household and Factory to the Union Hall and Ballot Box (review)

296 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers, From Household and Factory to the Union Hall and Ballot Box Duke University Press, 1997 Edited by John D. French and Daniel James For Latin American historians of labor, the search for new ideological paradigms has led to a renaissance in Latin American labor history. In 1994, Florencia Mallon argued that subaltern studies would be the ideal analytical tool to replace Marxism. While this approach has resulted in many fine studies of peasant societies, it is somewhat unrealistic for the study of organized labor, because it includes many skilled and politically powerful unions. In this recent publication, Daniel James and John D. French recommend that the appropriate lens would be gender. Although the cover to this book identifies women as the principal group under scrutiny, the fine essays in this volume deal with issues of masculinity as well as femininity. Furthermore, the workers under discussion are treated as people, not just as laborers, and domestic and community interactions are given as much importance as those that take place on the picket lines and in the factory. Rural laborers are also studied, but only in the context of their relationship to the export fruit industry in Chile. Important topics not often found in labor histories command center stage: the impact of changing relations of production to family violence ; how community attitudes toward gender relations enter the factory ; the ways that women and men can circumvent imposed standards of male and female behavior by flirting and fighting at work; how women adjust their work schedules to meet the demands of child raising and economic needs; and how concepts of masculinity among miners conflicted with plans to turn them into compliant husbands and workers. Most of these articles rely heavily on oral history—a new technique for labor historians. (See Florencia Mallon, "The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives on Latin American History." American HistoricalReview 99.5 (December 1994): 1491-1526.) The results, as with all edited collections, vary in quality and approaches , but there is much to recommend this volume, particularly the contributions of junior scholars. Theresa Veccia's study of working-class women's lives is perhaps the richest from the perspective of oral histories. It is crammed with wonderful interviews of textile factory workers in Sao Paulo, Brazil from 1900-1950. Thomas Klubock's essay on how U.S. copper companies tried to impose bourgeois family values on Chilean Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 297 copper miners during the same time period provides a linkage between changing gender relations and the ability of workers to organize. Heidi Tinsman's treatment of family violence among rural fruit farm employees links male-focused land reform, family violence and women's work. Also of interest are Deborah Estrada-Levinson's oral interviews with working women which challenge Guatemalan leftist insistence that class strategy should not include gender considerations. While it is too bad that no studies of Mexico or Central America appear in this volume, clearly the book should serve as a catalyst for similar studies throughout Latin America. In the long run, no one approach to working class history will be completely satisfying to its practitioners. The history of work in Latin America is enormously complex and suggestive, and the nature of the documentation will lead researchers to apply the most appropriate analytical tools. What we learn from this volume, however, is the rich potential of gender studies. Donna J. Guy The University of Arizona ...