Minor Omissions: Children in Latin American History and Society (review)

This excellent book is the first to be published specifically on the history of childhood in Latin America. Its 13 chapters amply demonstrate the important role played by children in the histories of institutions such as the family, social welfare, education, the church, and the army. The history of industrialization and crime control are likewise intimately associated with issues of childhood and education. Tobias Hecht argues that the study of children is indispensable to understanding Latin American society and history. Familiar aspects of Latin American history can be seen in a new light by examining the experiences of children and notions about childhood. He also notes silences on issues of child labor, child abuse, and child mortality for periods prior to the late nineteenth century. The book contains historical research articles on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru, and Mexico, plus a testimonial and a short story. The volume addresses issues such as the depiction of children in colonial Andean art, prescriptive literature on childhood in Mexico, the incidence and meaning of illegitimacy, child abandonment and foundling homes in Havana, children as criminals in Lima, the relationship of the state to children in the nineteenth century, and the vision of childhood in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Brazil.

Several chapters either focus on the colonial period or consider it within a longer time frame. Carolyn Dean addresses the characterization of indigenous populations as "unruly children," which informed debates about the appropriate relationship between colonizer and the colonized. Children were seen as unruly and in need of education, but also more malleable than adults were. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera notes that while children were seen as capable of reason from age seven (and at that point were expected to work), it was believed that they often resisted reason and had to be disciplined. Similar attitudes pervaded the administration of Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and such ideas continued to be important in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Donna Guy explores discussions on children's contribution to the state and the economy as future citizens and on state responsibility for education and social control. Bianca Premo analyzes legislation that focused on children who were seen as marginal: abandoned, orphaned, criminals, illegitimate, or simply vagrant. Children born into legitimate, two-parent families were subject to the rule of their fathers (patria potestad) and thus rarely appear in the records. Poor children were often seen as "dangerous" and in need of work and social control, even as they were also called the "key to the future." Irene Rizzini's article shows how these latter children were generally viewed as a pressing social problem.

The picture of childhood that emerges for the popular classes in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries is complex and revises a previous vision of family life that was focused on elite experience. Ondina Gonzalez argues that this new picture framed infant and child mortality as an aspect of daily life, while Nara Milanich shows that children frequently circulated among households and institutions. Premo argues that orphaned, illegitimate, and vagrant children were subjected to efforts at discipline and control after the age of 10.5 (before that age, children were seen as incapable of malice and a recognition of wrongdoing). The relationship of children to the state was complex and important, considering the high proportion of children in the population—most of them not members of legitimate families. This relationship included social welfare (which might actually take the form of forced child labor in a workhouse), labor (as the state distributed children through apprenticeships), crime, and education.

LeGrace Benson introduces us to the extraordinarily expressive depiction of contemporary children's lives in Haitian art, which focuses on race, poverty, motherhood, and play. Articles...