Raising Argentina : family, childhood and civil justice in Buenos Aires, 1871-1930

This dissertation, examines how ordinary men, women and children brought about a dramatic shift in legal notions of family and childhood in turn-of-the-century Argentina. In 1871, Argentina was an oligarchic republic characterized by underdevelopment and profound social and economic inequality. My analysis of civil statutes and three hundred custody disputes reveals that legal definitions of family were critical in perpetuating such inequity. The 1871 Civil Code limited legal recognition of family to propertied men and their legitimate wives and offspring, and, as a result, judges regularly denied poor and female-headed households legal access to inheritance, marriage or child custody; they also dismissed many impoverished children’s pleas for legal recourse against abusive guardians. From 1871-1930, however, six million immigrants poured into Buenos Aires. Industrialization brought the country’s GNP on par with Western Europe and political upheaval impelled democratic openings. These processes dramatically altered household dynamics. Thousands of immigrant minors who had arrived in Argentina without court approved guardians joined millions of native born women and children, whose entrance into the workforce had weakened men’s control over household finances, in challenging the court’s limited definition of family. By 1919, judicial overload led the National Senate to draft new legislation that extended legal protection to all minors regardless of class or natal status and brought working class kin under the protection of the state. This work argues for the centrality of legal definitions of family in perpetuating inequality and illuminates how popular participation in judicial processes generates legislative changes. In doing so, it makes important contributions to studies of family, childhood and justice in Latin America. The project historicizes contemporary debates surrounding the meaning of family and the state’s role in mediating its boundaries. Moreover, while the literature on youth in Latin America concentrates on adult debates over the meaning of childhood, this study foregrounds the importance of children as historical agents with the capacity to engender larger social, and judicial change. Finally, the study shows that judicial change is often the culmination of many small acts and pushes scholars to investigate popular participation in legal processes.