A credible history of the princess of Bourbon: labor, gender and sexuality in South America

SCHETTINI, CRISTIANA; GALEANO, DIEGO

Worlds of labor in Latin America

DeGruyter

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2022; p. 115 - 138

This essay explores elements of the career and migration of the person known as the Princess of Bourbon, Luis Fernández, Pedro Pérez, or Armando Ariatti. A range of possible intersections between labour, gender, and immigration can be seen in her journeys through Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Along with many migrants, the Princess of Bourbon looked for ways to survive that involved diverse strategies and job opportunities, criss-crossed by gender. These survival methods tend to be addressed separately by different areas of historiography (the history of crime, labour, and international migrations), but for the protagonists they were a range of survival tactics that could occur simultaneously. By addressing them together, this essay aims to reflect on the options for survival and work within the South American migration circuit in the years before the First World War, at the intersection of various frontiers: gender, sexual identity, paid and unpaid work, legality and illegality. The main documentation consulted is the commercial press from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, records of expulsions, and correspondence between police authorities. The gendered actions of the Princess of Bourbon and her inclusion in the category known as “men dressed as women” reveals a set of activities considered feminine at the beginning of the 20th century: domestic work, prostitution, and artistic work. The essay is organised into two parts: first there is an analysis of contemporary perceptions of gender identities in relation to geographic mobility of individuals in contexts of migration, then, the itineraries of the Princess of Bourbon are examined to shed light on the shifting meanings ascribed to the women recorded in historical documents as thieves, servants, prostitutes, and travellers.