Gender and Well-Being COST ACTION A 34

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1 Gender and Well-Being Interactions between Work, Family and Public Policies COST ACTION A 34 Second Symposium: The Transmission of Well-Being: Marriage Strategies and Inheritance Systems in Europe (17 th -20 th Centuries) 25 th -28 th April 2007 University of Minho Guimarães-Portugal Please, do not quote without author s permission

2 2 Family structures among migrant peasants in the low lands around Buenos Aires in the 19th century Claudia Contente Cerma Mascipo UMR 8168 EHESS Abstract In this paper we will study the insertion possibilities that the Buenos Aires country side offered to the migrants arriving from the ex Río de la Plata viceroyalty inland at the beginning of the 19 th century. In that period the population underwent an important increase. We will pay particular attention to the role of the women in the achievement of an optimal insertion. We will base our work on the 1813 census of La Matanza, a mainly cereal producing area close to Buenos Aires. During the 18 th and 19 th centuries Buenos Aires suffers an exponential increment of its population. Due to this fact the rural areas undergoes a restructuring and development of the activities according to the growing needs of the city, both in terms of local consume and exports. This is the reason why the rural population grows even more than the urban and spreads progressively on further away lands pushing the frontier with the native population. 1. The immigrants will play a preponderant role in this process of expansion, particularly those coming from the within the territory. In this paper we will study the possibilities of insertion offered to this migrant workers by the rural areas of Buenos Aires, mainly taking using one of the censuses carried out in 1813 in 1 There is a good amount of bibliography on the subject, GARAVAGLIA, (1999, Cap. 1); MORENO, (1993), MORENO and MATEO (1997)

3 3 this area by the administration set up shortly before. Probably the census was carried out with military scopes in order to assess the ability of the area to provide man power for the independence wars taking place in other areas. In theses censuses we find many of those migrants, mainly men/males on their own, although in many cases there are also whole families. We are going to show some data from the1813 2, census of La Matanza. This is a high quality source which is different from other census carried out at the same time in other areas, because included the origins of the inhabitants La Matanza is an area.relative close to the city of Buenos Aires, of old settlement, already densely populated at the beginning of the 19 th century, possibly even saturated. The area produces mainly cereals. There are 1642 persons living there, distributed, according to the census, in 216 units. The inhabitants are mainly white (71.3%) and there is also a significant quantity of black and pardos (19,6 %. 13,4% of the population is constituted by slaves) the indios (Indians) constitute 9 % of the total. 2 Archivo General de la Nación (X )

4 4 Figure 1: Pyramid of population The predominant trait of this population is the strong imbalance of the distribution of the genders- there are 1023 males and 619 females, meaning 165 males per 100 females. In the most actives cohorts (20 to 49years of age) this imbalance becomes even higher males per 100 females whereas in the 0-9 years of age cohort it goes down to 108 males per 100 females 3. This demographic imbalance can be essentially attributed to the important migratory influx arriving in La Matanza 3 It is also apparent that there are no men in the cohort. This is possibly due to the fact that the census was a military character of the census and that the men in that age range may have been either hiding to avoid recruitment or may have been already recruited and fighting in the front of the independence wars. In any case, the same phenomenon takes place in other regions of the countryside of Buenos Aires, for instance Areco. (GARAVAGLIA, 1993, p.153) or Lobos (MATEO, 1993, p.24 )

5 5 Figure 2: Origin of the population Table 1. Origin of the migrants Males Females Black population (free and slave) Foreigners 27 Coming from the inland area Total It is apparent that in this area there is an important slave presence. The fact that at least 98 % of them had been born in Africa and were under 30 years old 4, indicates that they are recent acquisitions and are an indicator of the important expansion of the rural activities of the area. In this paper, however, we are more concerned with the people coming from other parts of the old viceroyalty, known as the interior (the inland area). Those people will become in this area either peones, even though some of them will become in the long run labradores or small producers. Unfortunately, the census seems to put under the denomination Buenos Aires all the individuals coming from other regions of the countryside of the Buenos Aires province. 4 The census does not give the age of 17 African slaves.

6 6 Due to this fact it is not possible to be more precise about the possible migrations within this region. As we said above, the gender imbalance is very important and it means that if only 29.6% of the females over 15 years of age are not married, this proportion soars to the 63.7% of the males over 18 years of age. Due to the fact that in our case the migration is essentially made of males on their own, it was very difficult for the unmarried single males to find a wife in the region. Unmarried females did not migrate to La Matanza. The only migrant female registered in the census are nine wives who are registered as accompanying the husband and a widow, registered as joining agregada another unit 5. The occupations The census systematically gives an occupation to the males over 8 years of age and to the females, only if they are widows and are heads of the exploitation. The most common occupations mentioned in the list of the heads of the households are labrador and estanciero. The first one is attributed to the peasant who works in agriculture whereas the second is, above all, for the people working with cattle. Obviously non of the would have excluded that the other took also place n the same unit or even some complementary activities. The census only indicates the predominance of one activity in relation with the other. (GARAVAGLIA, 1999 pp.86-96). 5 The other are young girls and the daughter of the former Vicere del Pino settled in La Matanza.

7 7 Table 2. Male occupations according to the origin natives migrants Labrador (Farmer/agriculture) Estancieros (Farmer/cattle breeding) 60 1 Peones Capataces (foremen) 6 4 Pulperos (grocer) 5 3 Mozos de pulpería (waiters or worker of a general store) 3 3 Other 18 4 Total It s clear that the migrant males are basically peones (manual workers). Those who managed access to the land (all of them are leaseholders) are registered as land working farmers and only one as cattle breeding farmer. In this context it is important to remember that the La Matanza census took place on 24 th August, 1813 (southern hemisphere winter), which means outside the moment of heaviest rural work (for instance the harvest) during which it is easier to find temporary manpower. We can safely assume thus that the levels of temporary migration would have been one of the lowest of the year. If we have a look at the data from the point of view of the units, instead of the individuals, we can see that there is a wide majority of units devoted to the agriculture. In La Matanza 121 units are agricultural whereas only 56 are cattle breeding. There are also 9 pulperos (owners of general store) and other activities such as woodcutters, slaughters and so on and only represented by one unit. 6 There are two children, 3 agregados (people added ) and one migrant without any occupation.

8 8 The comparison between the units where the Head of Family is a migrant and those where the Head of Family is local adds come interesting elements. If we consider the group of labradores whose head of family is a migrant from the inland area, we observe that while the locals use mainly family manpower (44% of the units) the migrants need more frequently to hire peones 7 (50% of the units). On the other hand, while the locals have 7,53 persons per unit, the migrants have 5,3 persons per unit. These are, to some extent, foreseeable data 8 but they deserve a couple of considerations. The heads of family who are at the same time migrants and devoted to agriculture are a little bit younger than the local ones (the media of the age of the migrants is 38,15 years old while the media of the age of the locals is 39,6), they may tend to have less surviving children than the locals at the time of the census probable due to the fact that they are younger. At the same time the migrants do not have the older generation which is present amongst the locals. The smaller number of members per unit may also be related to the dimension of the land about which the census does not offer any clues. In any case it is apparent that the more solid social network amongst the local heads of family plays a determinant role. The lack of those solidarity networks spread widely enough (which demand time and sociability to develop properly) implying the availability of mutual and reciprocal aid, leaving room for the circulation of goods, services and information, becomes apparent amongst migrants in the need to hire peones to fill that gap and mostly in the lack of migrant heads of family working as estanciero 9. 7 None of them can afford a slave. 8 According to Marisa DIAZ, (2001) in the city of Buenos Aires between 1744 and 1810, the migrant domestic groups have less members than the local ones. 9 Gerard BOUCHARD, (1996, pp ) made a detailed study of the insertion of the migrants in Saguenay and established that the social and family frame in the destination was the main support for the immigrants. He also observed that the descendents of the old migration lines had a better situation than the recent arrivals. On the role of the family relationships in the integration of migrants see: Yves BEAUREGARD and al. (1986).

9 9 This suggests that the condition to become estanciero (meaning that the breeding of cattle is the predominant occupation of the census unit) was once again to have a certain amount of integration in the area. The integration may have allowed the conversion into that type of activities 10. We showed in another papers that the occupational transfer from agricultural farmer to cattle breeding farmer was linked to the cycle of life (CONTENTE, 1999). This means that a peasant could start his working/active life as an arrendatario (leaseholder): devoting the years of his youth to the work of the land, which depending of the moments might have been more convenient from the point of view of the income but which would have a more important and sustained physical effort. In different periods, it might have demanded also the hiring of manpower outside the family, may be to compensate for the lack of children, the young age or the wider extension of the land. In some other moments, the domestic unit may have been enough for the task, but only when reaching the 50 or 60 years of age and probably after having accumulated a certain amount of properties along the working life it may have been possible to choose to transform the cultivated land into pastures and devote the time to the cattle, probably in small scale, so that the domestic group, reduced after the children s departure, may have been able to do it without too much effort. This kind of evolution in the productive orientation would have been particularly difficult for the immigrants. Judging from the sources, it seems that it might have been only possible through the marriage to a woman belonging to a well settled family in the region - the only migrant cattle farmer registered by the census is Juan Luis Peralta, married to Dominga Salomón. 10 Paul-André ROSENTAL shows in 19 th century France how the organization of the interpersonal relations had an influence on the ability of the family to access the resources

10 10 Through the legal paperwork concerning the inheritance that Dominga received from her father in , we know that she belongs to and old family of the area and that her father is even a land owner (in 1813 only 16.5% of the occupiers are registers as owners of the space they occupy. Dominga is the youngest of ten siblings and she is still minor when her father dies. Even though she does not inherit land from her father, she has her family and the relationships necessary to become an estanciero. We managed to trace another life story of an immigrant who manages to achieve an optimum insertion. It is the story of Juan Ascencio Ayala, originally from Paraguay who settled in San Vicente, a village in the south of the city of Buenos Aires, at about 50 km from La Matanza. In his case his wife had a determinant role in his trajectory. His presence in San Vicente appears for the first time in the 1815 census. There, he appears as manual worker (peon) who had joined the unit in charge of Mercedes Avila, cattle breeder, single, 60 years old, who has also an African female slave and another manual worker. In 1827 Ayala married Victoria Ferreyro 12, and they did not have any descendants. His wife was widow of Pedro Avila, nephew of Ayala s former employer with whom she had a son. Obviously Ayala, thanks to his marriage, becomes part of and old and well established family of the area and he managed to go up in the social ladder. From 1830 he is mayor of the fraternity and he keeps his position for at least 21 years. His name and the description of his activities are registered in the reports about his mayors that Rosas receives regularly 13. Five years after becoming mayor, in 1835, he bought land from a neighbour. En 1858 he makes his will where, as he did not have children of his own, names his wife as heir of all his properties and chattels (about one thousand hectares and different types of cattle) many legacies, particularly to his wife s son and to members of the Ayala family. To sum up, Ayala s life story is the story of an 11 Suc. Nº 8414, Antonio Salomon, Registros Parroquiales de San Vicente. 13 AGN X

11 11 individual who arrived from Paraguay to San Vicente as a manual worker and managed a formidable insertion in his adoptive country. Conclusion: As it is well known, the insertion possibilities for migrants can be located at two levels: either through the access to the land r through marriage to women of the area. With reference to the first possibility, five migrant couples (both members of the couple are migrants) have settled independently in the area. Two of those couples are capataces and three are labradores. While the settlement of migrants as arrendatarios (leaseholders) was difficult although not impossible, it becomes apparent that the ideal way and probably the only one to achieve a successful integration was the marriage to women belonging to well rooted families. It remains to explore whether also among the local people there was a social climbing through marriage. However, it is clear that not only the number of available females was low, but also that the families would have sought to marry their offspring to individuals who may have represented some sort of contribution to the relatives. Probably, in the case of the migrants who sought to settle definitively in the area, La Matanza was only a milestone in the road to areas further south where the permanent settlement would have been easier. Bibliography BEAUREGARD, Yves and al., 1986, Famille, parenté et colonisation en Nouvelle France in Revue d Histoire de l Amérique Française, 1986, pp BOUCHARD, Gerard, 1996, Quelques arpents d Amérique, Population, économie, famille au Saguenay ; Boréal ; Québec. CONTENTE, Claudia, 1999, «Actividades agrícolas y ciclo de vida : el caso de La Matanza a principios del siglo XIX.» in Raúl FRADKIN, Mariana CANEDO and José MATEO (eds.) Tierra, población y relaciones sociales en la campaña bonaerense (siglos XVIII y XIX), Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, pp

12 12 DIAZ, Marisa, 2001, Migrantes en familia. Buenos Aires, in Mario BOLEDA and María Cecilia MERCADO (eds), Seposal 2000, Seminario sobre población y sociedad en América Latina, Gredes, 2001, pp GARAVAGLIA, Juan Carlos, 1993, "Migraciones, estructuras familiares y vida campesina: Areco Arriba en 1815 in Juan Carlos Garavaglia, and José Luis Moreno, (eds.) Población sociedad familia y migraciones en el espacio rioplatense (siglos XVIII y XIX); Buenos Aires, Ed.Cantaro, pp GARAVAGLIA, Juan Carlos, 1999, Pastores y labradores de Buenos Aires. Una historia agraria de la campaña bonaerense , Ediciones de la Flor, Buenos Aires. MATEO, José, 1993, Migrar y volver a migrar. Los campesinos agricultores de la frontera bonaerense a principios del siglo XIX in Juan Carlos Garavaglia, and José Luis Moreno, (eds) Población, sociedad op.cit. pp MORENO, José Luis 1993, La estructura social y ocupacional de la campaña de Buenos Aires: un análisis comparativo a través de los padrones de 1744 y 1815 in Juan Carlos GARAVAGLIA and José Luis MORENO (eds.) Población, sociedad op.cit., pp MORENO, José Luis and MATEO, José, 1997, «El redescubrimiento de la demografía histórica en la historia económica y social» in Anuario del IEHS; 12; pp ROSENTAL, Paul André, 1999, Les sentiers invisibles. Espaces, familles et migrations dans la France du XIX e siècle.; Editions EHESS; Paris.