En nombre del hogar proletario: Engendering the 1917 Great Railroad Strike in Argentina

SILVANA PALERMO

HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, THE

Duke University Press

Año: 2013 vol. 93 p. 585 - 620

0018-2168

This article explores working-class families? modes of collective action inArgentina?s first national railroad strike in 1917. While historical literature haslargely focused on the role of railroad unions in labor politics, insufficient attentionhas been paid to community mobilization and family support in this laborprotest. This study offers a fresh approach to this massive social conflict byreconstructing female public participation in its events. The study also takesgender as a category for analyzing the cultural meanings of sexual difference,which shaped both the political sociability of working-class families and their language of rights. Drawing on a variety of sources such as trade-union journals, the left-wing press, major national newspapers, company documents, official records, and memoirs of labor militants, the essay contends that the great railroad strike was in essence a family enterprise. It represented a landmark in the making of the railwayman as the male breadwinner at the same time thatit prompted an acknowledgment of working-class  women?s rights in the publicdomain.