Abstract
This chapter analyzes representation of liberal modernity in Nemesio Trejo’s plays La fiesta de don Marcos, Los óleos del chico, Los inquilinos, and Las mujeres lindas. His complex engagement with different facets of this transitional moment in Argentina vividly illustrates the clash among inclusive imaginaries, a culture of vigilance, and the daily lives of the popular sectors. I argue that the characters’ quotidian experiences reveal that rather than progress and prosperity, liberalism signified the substitution of criollo values with a market-based system that equated wealth with worth. In response, the characters combat draconian structural violence by creating horizontal bonds of solidarity, and they reverse dominant rhetoric by locating the source of harm not in the popular classes but rather in the realm of politics, the formal economy, and the affluent classes. The characters symbolically rectify their marginality by shaping positive identities for themselves, which sparks new ethical and moral discourses.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Trejo (1862–1916) was a playwright closely connected to the criollo popular classes. He lived in the still-marginal, popular-class neighborhood of Palermo and circulated in popular-class spaces, such as seedy dance halls and political committee meetings. He was also a well-known payador who later also wrote many of the earliest género chico plays , participated in actors’ and directors’ societies, and contributed to the popular magazines Caras y Caretas and P.B.T. (Puccia 1993).
- 2.
As Rock notes, shipping in Argentine ports climbed from 2.1 million tons to 7.7 million, and export earnings increased from 58 million gold pesos to 123 million. Railroad track increased from 1570 miles to 5850, and foreign investment grew by almost 800 million gold pesos (1987, p. 157).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
The problematic nature of the criollo notion of honor, linked to a traditional moral code and gender roles, is addressed later in this book.
- 6.
Salessi notes that the least specific regulations were the most often used: bearing and using weapons, drunkenness, disorderly conduct and scandal, and those that controlled public dances, traffic on sidewalks, and the activity of musicians (1995, p. 206). This facilitated their arbitrary interpretation and their use as a pretext for criminalizing the poor.
- 7.
After the failed 1890 revolution, the way politics was conceptualized and carried out in Argentina changed permanently. As Botana asserts, politics became oriented around contesting the legitimacy of the Conservative Order and its right to monopolize political power to serve the interests of the elites (1994, p. 165). From that point on, the middle class became very politically active through neighborhood-based political committees —headed by caudillos de barrio or political bosses—that struggled for democratic franchise. These caudillos rounded up voters and told them for whom to vote.
- 8.
The May Pyramid was erected in 1811 at the Plaza de Mayo to commemorate Argentina’s independence. It was destroyed in 1883 under Mayor Torcuato de Alvear’s plan to create the modern Plaza de Mayo.
- 9.
This percentage marks the peak: by 1919 only 8.9% lived in conventillos (Gutiérrez 1983, p. 69).
- 10.
- 11.
The Law of Residence, which was passed in 1902 as anarchist and labor activities increased, legalized the immediate deportation without trial of any immigrant suspected of “contaminating” Argentina with political subversion. This severely xenophobic law, which was created by hygienists as a public health measure (Salessi 1995, p. 118), aimed to protect society from anarchist threats and included any crime, threat to national security, or disruption of the social order committed by foreigners. The vague expansiveness of the law conflated foreignness, criminality, and social protest (Zimmermann 1995, p. 126). Moreover, Suriano notes that the State perceived an overlap between anarchist activists and all workers, which increased fears and made such a law seem absolutely necessary to control the purportedly unruly working classes (Suriano 1988, p. 12). See Chaps. 6 and 7 for more details about his law.
- 12.
Suriano’s study also includes evidence from newspapers that suggests that although the police chief Colonel Falcón prohibited the police from joining the strike, many did. El Tiempo sheds light on this direct defiance of the chief’s orders, noting that the more than 6000 police officers all lived in conventillos (El Tiempo, 9/25/1907, p. 1; quoted in Suriano 1983, p. 65).
Works Cited
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso.
Armus, Diego. 1990. Conventillos, ranchos y casa propia en el mundo urbano del novecientos. In Mundo urbano y cultura popular: Estudios de historia social argentina, ed. Diego Armus and Dora Barrancos, 153–194. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.
Bergero, Adriana J. 2008. Intersecting Tango: Cultural Geographies of Buenos Aires, 1900–1930. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Berman, Marshall. 1988. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Viking Penguin.
Botana, Natalio R. 1994. El orden conservador: La política argentina entre 1880 y 1916. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.
Cara-Walker, Ana. 1987. Cocoliche: The Art of Assimilation and Dissimulation Among Italians and Argentines. Latin American Research Review 22: 37–67.
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. Ed. Michel Senellart and Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Garrett, Victoria L. 2010. Dispelling Purity Myths and Debunking Hygienic Discourse in Roberto Arlt’s ‘El jorobadito. Hispania 93 (2): 187–197.
Gutiérrez, Leandro H. 1983. Los trabajadores y sus luchas. In Buenos Aires, historia de cuatro siglos, ed. José Luis Romero and Luis Alberto Romero, vol. 2, 65–82. Buenos Aires: Altamira.
Moya, Jose C. 1998. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nouzeilles, Gabriela. 2000. Ficciones somáticas: Naturalismo, nacionalismo y políticas médicas del cuerpo (Argentina 1880–1910). Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo.
Pellarolo, Silvia. 1997. Sainete criollo: Democracia, representación: El caso de Nemesio Trejo. Buenos Aires: Corregidor.
Puccia, Enrique Horacio. 1993. Nemesio Trejo: Pionero del sainete criollo. Buenos Aires: Academia Porteña del Lunfardo.
Rawson, Guillermo. 1928 [1885]. Estudio sobre las casas de inquilinato en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: La Vanguardia.
Rock, David. 1987. Argentina, 1516–1987: From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Salessi, Jorge. 1995. Médicos maleantes y maricas: Higiene, criminología y homosexualidad en la construcción de la nación argentina (Buenos Aires, 1871–1914). Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo.
Sargent, Charles S. 1974. The Spatial Evolution of Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1870–1930. Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University.
Scobie, James R. 1974. Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910. New York: Oxford University Press.
Suriano, Juan. 1983. La huelga de inquilinos de 1907. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina.
———. 1988. Trabajadores, anarquismo y Estado represor: De la Ley de Residencia a la Ley de Defensa Social (1902–1910). Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina.
Taylor, Diana. 1997. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War”. Durham: Duke University Press.
Trejo, Nemesio. 1890. La fiesta de don Marcos. Buenos Aires: Mariano Moreno.
———. 1964 [1907]. Los inquilinos. In Breve historia del teatro argentino, ed. Luis Ordaz, vol. 4, 55–82. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires.
———. 1976a. Las mujeres lindas. In Antología del género chico criollo, ed. Susana Marcó, Abel Posadas, Marta Speroni, and Griselda Vignolo, 141–158. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires.
———. 1976b. Los óleos del chico. In Antología del género chico criollo, ed. Susana Marcó, Abel Posadas, Marta Speroni, and Griselda Vignolo, 15–24. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires.
Zimmermann, Eduardo A. 1995. Los liberales reformistas: La cuestión social en la Argentina, 1890–1916. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garrett, V.L. (2018). Performing Inclusion and Disillusion. In: Performing Everyday Life in Argentine Popular Theater, 1890–1934. New Directions in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92697-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92697-1_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92696-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92697-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)