Historias de sangre, locura y amor: Neuquen 1900-1950 (review)

This collection of essays was written by members of the Grupo de Estudios de Historia Social (GEHiSo) at the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, where the Archivo de la Justicia Letrada del Territorio del Neuquén has come to be housed. The complete judicial records date from the end of the nineteenth century to the point at which Neuquén became a province of Argentina. The editors of Historias de sangre, locura y amor sign their preface "from the south of the known world," and the passion and skill with which they have used this archive to re-create the early-twentieth-century territory will solidify Neuquén's place in the known world for all of its readers.

The GEHiSo historians have undertaken to share their rich resources with the broadest possible audience and make it clear that academics are not the readership they most covet. In seeking to widen the responsibilities and social function of historians, they attempt to "ablandar la pluma" and escape the rigid structures that scholars employ when they write for each other. While it is clear that these writers are familiar with the burgeoning literature that uses the study of crime to elucidate the political and cultural logic behind the extension of state authority, their text contains little theoretical discussion and virtually no scholarly apparatus beyond references to the expedientes in the archives which form the heart of this study. The editors refer to their work as an "adventure," and it is this spirit of adventure that will appeal to other young historians, as well as the intended popular audience.

During the 50 years covered in the book, Neuquén was transformed from a "territorio bravo" with high levels of violence and property crime to a more settled region with closer ties to national networks of political leadership. Ernesto Bohoslavsky's first chapter usefully seeks to establish an overview of the types and frequency of local crime, reconciling a quantitative accounting with the rich archival materials. He introduces several factors that help in interpreting the numbers: the convenience of the nearby Chilean border for cattle thieves and fugitives, the difficulty of constructing a police force, unclear relations with larger landowning/ranching families, and the growing resistance of local people to inevitable state attempts to discipline and "Argentinize" the territory—particularly through the servicio militar obligatorio.

The defining characteristic of this collection, however, is the ability of the various authors to reconstruct the world of early-twentieth-century Neuquén by allowing the voices of marginal people to tell their own stories, just as they told them to the legal and judicial authorities. The second section of the book deals with violent death—Carlos Gabriel Rafart writes on bands of rural outlaws, Marcela Debener on urban violence and the role of alcohol, and Daniel Caminotti on suicides. And yet, in this section the reader also learns about the personal decisions that brought men and women to this frontier territory, the precarious nature of their lives there, the imperatives of masculinity, and the search for companionship and love.

Most of the authors are able to establish context unobtrusively and interpret their sources without overpowering them. In the section dealing with "crimes" involving bodies and shifting moralities, Diego Fernando Suárez traces just one case to its end, but is able to effectively communicate the potential for tragedy when governments import family law unfamiliar to local society. The other essays in this section—Carla Bertello on prostitutes in Chos Malal, Carolina Destéffaniz on the prosecution of curanderos, and María Beatriz Gentile on the flight, kidnapping, and rape of underage women—also highlight the pragmatism of familial relations and the permeability of class...