-
5 Shifting Priorities & Entertaining Inequalities
- The University of North Carolina Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
151 chapter five shifting priorities & entertaining inequalities Empanadas de Carne con Hojaldre Rápida (Beef Empanadas with a Quick Dough) Dough: 800 grams flour, 500 grams butter, 1 teaspoon salt, 375 grams water, 4 tablespoons lemon juice Filling: 1 diced onion, ½ cup oil, 1 can minced beef, 1 hard-boiled egg, 1 tablespoon flour, broth (enough to thicken mixture), chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg1 In the mid-1960s, Doña Petrona presented a recipe for meat-filled empanadas on the television program Buenas Tardes, Mucho Gusto. Wearing a decorative apron and a confident expression, she demonstrated how to make empanadas with a “quick dough” and a canned-meat filling. In her characteristic sing-song cadence and northwestern Argentine provincial accent, she explained how to make the recipe “step-by-step.” In grainy black and white, the camera followed Petrona’s swollen knuckles and painted nails as she kneaded, rolled out, and folded the empanada dough six times. The camera panned back as she moved to the filling. It followed her as she picked up a can of clearly marked Swift-brand minced beef, emptied the contents into a bowl, and mixed it with the onion, egg, oil, and other seasonings. Adopting the tone of a schoolteacher, Doña Petrona explained to her viewers that she was repeating this recipe because many had not paid good enough attention the first time and had asked her to go over the instructions. She chided her alumnas about the importance of paying close attention and practicing the recipes at home. She reminded them that, as always, she would be happy to respond to their questions in writing. She further emphasized the usefulness of this particular recipe, explaining that it was both “quick” and “very appropriate for Mondays and Tuesdays, when there is no meat.”2 152 Shifting Priorities and Entertaining Inequalities Ever conscious of changing circumstances, Doña Petrona adapted the beef empanada—an emblematic staple of Argentine criollo cuisine—to the current economic climate. As during the previous decade, during the 1960s economic crises would continue to rack Argentina about every three years, first in 1963 and then in 1966 and 1969. Expanding a policy originally initiated by Juan Perón, subsequent governments banned the sale of fresh beef two days per week in order to ship more abroad for greater profit. Doña Petrona’s decision to use Swift-brand canned beef was therefore not just commercially motivated; it also represented a response to economic policy. Many Argentines continued to expect women to mitigate the effects of shortages and inflation on their families and, now, also to shop at the new supermarkets, whose shelves were stocked with international brand goods made by companies like Swift. At the same time, more educated, middleclass women in Argentina entered the workforce and fewer chose to be fulltime homemakers during the course of the 1960s.3 Although large numbers of poor women had long worked for wages, the entry of better-off women into the workforce had a major impact on the perception that women’s roles were changing dramatically. Social commentators fueled this notion by often conflating middle-class women with all women in this purportedly middle-class nation.4 Still, the “middle class” itself was not nearly as uni- fied as this term suggested, with people who considered themselves members divided in terms of their socioeconomic standing, as well as their views about the cultural transformations that were taking place.5 How would Doña Petrona, who had come to represent the ideal of middle-class domesticity so dominant in 1940s and 1950s Argentina, fare in the 1960s with the emergence of a new, less exclusively domestic model of womanhood? And how would Argentines respond to her treatment of her assistant Juanita on television during a decade when many were becoming more aware of class-based inequalities? As we shall see, Doña Petrona ’s approach and Argentines’ reactions to it reveal that many would make important adjustments to patterns of consumption and domesticity while preserving the idea that female homemakers (or their hired help) should continue to be responsible for cooking and other domestic tasks. Crafting a New Image Over the course of the 1960s, many people in the West began to challenge the 1950s cult of female domesticity. In Argentina, this sentiment was inspired by Argentine women’s growing access to higher education and better birth control, local experiences with sexism, and exposure to feminist [44.192...