The others. Oriental, Afro-American and Indigenous presence in the representation of women in the Argentine illustrated periodical press of the early 20th century

Julia Ariza [1]

ARIZA, Julia. The others. Oriental, Afro-American and Indigenous presence in the representation of women in the Argentine illustrated periodical press of the early 20th century. 19&20, Rio de Janeiro, v. X, n. 1, jan./jun. 2015. https://www.doi.org/10.52913/19e20.X1.10b [Español]

 *     *     *

1.      Among the factors that transformed the face of the Argentine culture at the turn of the 20th century, in pace with modernization and a high influx of immigrants, the importance of the illustrated periodical press cannot be overstated. In the first decades of the century, this illustrated press not only diversified itself to cover different segments of the reading public, in expansion thanks to educational reforms and to the training in reading its very circulation was triggering, but it also rendered its social functions more complex. Furthermore, in connection with the expansion of the press, the arrival of new technologies for image reproduction stimulated the proliferation of visual contents that opened a new chapter in the history of Argentine visual culture.[2] Within the vast array of printed images which defined that visual culture, representations of women occupied a significant place because of its abundance, juxtaposition, and diversity; to such point that we have to address them not as documents about an essentialized and ahistorical feminine condition, but as symptoms of conflicts that brought about the transformation of socially accepted roles for women at the turn of century. But what specific functions did those images fulfil? What iconographic traditions permeated them and what operations of meaning favoured their massive accumulation? Moreover, what do they tell us about the society in which they circulated, and about the transformations it was going through?

2.      With all these questions in mind, in previous works I examined how classical tradition permeated portraits of upper-class women that appeared in regular sections in many magazines of Buenos Aires; I argued that certain resources diffusely associated to classicism, fulfilled the ideological function of positioning those women as civilized (and civilizatory) representatives not only of their social group, but also of the Argentine nation, which at the turn of the century was going through a process of redefining its national culture. Their white skin, their long and thin limbs, their looking downwards or their blank stare, their languid pose and their fair straight hair loosely tied, together with certain clothes and compositional strategies, recreated in each and every of these portraits an ideal of beauty inspired by a long Western tradition which, applied to the Argentine case, was also fictional if one considers the ethnic composition of a big part of the population.[3] Nevertheless, this ideal should be understood not only in terms of appearance but also of discipline; in the sense that, due to their affiliation to classical tradition, its components refer to virtue and decorum which, embodied in the depicted models, were proposed as desirable for all Argentine women.

3.      However, any construction of an ideal generates its remainders and opposites. This is what I want to focus on now, in order to investigate in what other traditions which were also present in the Argentine culture of the turn of the century that ideal of feminine beauty was constructed. This ideal, I insist, constituted an expression of desire in relation not only to the physical appearance of Argentine women, but also to their moral qualities. The focus will then be shifted to the depictions of women in which non-Western traditions play a central role, and the white, Greek ideal is put on hold or becomes problematic. For this, I will analyse three sets of feminine representations that are connected in different ways with the Oriental, Afro-American and Indigenous/Creole traditions and that circulated in a wide range of illustrated magazines between the late 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century. My goal is to identify the inflections that define the rise of these other traditions in the visual representations of women and examine how they overlapped with the politics of class and race in the process of constituting an Argentine national identity, based on the assumption that each one of those appearances crystallized different attitudes towards Otherness, adding nuances to that identity project. My basic question is in what sense the female representations, in their articulation with non-Western traditions, dealt with such identity problems.

4.      In methodological terms, it must be said that this work is not proposed as an iconographic analysis of specific images, but as a reflection on the social function of three sets of representations which, due to their repeating some elements and cultural references, and their heavy and cumulative circulation that permeated various publications aimed at different reading audiences, contributed to establishing a regime of truth as far as the “Argentine femininity” of the period is concerned, showing also the social transformations that would eventually change this idea. Similarly, I should clarify that my intention when addressing the analysis of the presence of these three non-Western traditions in women’s representations is neither to erase the differences that these have with each other, nor to unify them under a single kind of Otherness. Rather, my decision follows the evidence that all these traditions imposed a distance from the dominant Western model. I will also look into the fact, at first, paradoxical, that in some cases the visual codes used to consolidate a national identity through female representations were a common heritage of not only other Latin American but also European and even non-Western nations, in the strictest sense of the term. This definitively raises a question on the global-local dynamics of the processes of modernization and construction of the Argentine nation at the turn of the century.[4]

Far, Near Orient: feminine representations as colonization sites

5.      What did it mean to be a woman in Argentina at the turn of the century? If we refer to representations, instead of socio-historical subjects, we can attempt to answer  this questions based on the countless texts and images about women found in illustrated magazines that take the classical model as the dominant regime of truth surrounding the sign “woman”. However, even when referring to that regime of truth, it is necessary to point out its gaps, once the classic model, although dominant, was not the only mode of representation of the Argentine women. Moreover, these gaps have their own regularity, including the Oriental inspired fashion that could be seen in a vast array of female representations as from the Argentina Centennial, consisting on the adoption of headdresses and poses more or less linked to an European idea of what the Orient was like, that is, an European Orientalist imaginary.[5]

6.      It is necessary to distinguish at least two trends of this phenomenon. On the one hand, a fascination with the Orient which, rooted in the literary and pictorial tradition, saw it as pure Otherness and mystery. This could be verified in the recovery of elements which were not specifically Oriental, but, because of their intense circulation at least since the 18th century, took on the meaning of “Orientalism” as it was imagined by Europe, and by part of Argentina as well. On the other hand, the Arabian culture was reformulated in its Andalusian version as both an exotic element and a typical cultural trait of a certain Spanish identity. As much as this configures a truly problematic expression of Orientalism, we will have to bear it in mind when indicating the orientalizing references that pervade quite a few representations of women in the press.[6] It should be noted that none of these trends were articulated with the scarce visual records of the Syrian-Lebanese immigration that took place in the period,[7] which, as legitimately Oriental, could have influenced the orientalizing representations. This only confirms that such representations do not work as documental records, but as sites for the negotiation of conflictive social processes.

7.      Those two forms of Orientalism coexisted in female representations that circulated in the illustrated magazines: while odalisque headdresses with hanging pearls, turbans and bracelets became accessories with which upper-class women were portrayed, printed images celebrated Flamenco bailaoras (dancers) with their Manila shawls, proposing that they were sophisticated traces of a tradition of its own, in line with an Hispanism that restored with equal emphasis both the Moorish and the Castilian heritage.[8] But if Orientalism was a way of establishing a link with the Orient based on the European colonial experience, what was the meaning of the Orientalist fashion in a nation like Argentina, not just any colony, but one colonized precisely by Spain, which itself has a long and complex relationship with the Orient in its Andalusian formulation? What was the cultural operation underlying this phenomenon that occurred simultaneously in other countries?[9]

8.      We shall begin by analysing the shapes these two trends took. In the survey of more than a dozen magazines circulating in Buenos Aires during the period,[10] it became apparent that the largest number of representations of women adopting clothing, accessories or poses which were recurrent in the 19th-century orientalist painting - their nearest iconographic model - appeared in publications aimed at a cosmopolitan readership, in tune with Europe. In popular publications, however, such new fashion tended to be understood as a carnivalesque costume or censored as indecent. Other sources advance the hypothesis that this fashion was displayed as “aristocratic”, imported from Paris and associated with a modern lifestyle. Both in the memories of Victoria Ocampo and Carmen Peers-Perkins reference is made to the impact produced by the Ballets Russes on the elegant fashion, to new headdresses shaped as turbans (“maybe inspired by Scheherazade”),[11] and to a “touch of barbarism”[12] brought by the new fashion, as it is described, not without horror, in popular publications:

9.                                    My wife [...] - writes a father in a letter of complaint to the “Charla femenina” (Feminine conversation) section of Iris magazine - used to be a discreet woman in the way she dressed and spoke. [...] Now she has completely given in to modern times and has totally changed her personality. […]

10.                                  My daughters! [...] I despise their slutty outfits, exceedingly short and low cut. I always thought that this way of dressing belonged only to a certain type of woman. […]

11.                                  It seems that we still lack a taste of our own, intimately connected with our own customs and traditions.[13]

12.    The text is illustrated by a female figure wearing a low-cut dress made of overlapping fabrics and a headdress consisting of a feathered-turban, usually associated with an Orientalist fashion [Figure 1].[14] The quote suggests that this trend was perceived by some as undesirable and inappropriate, not only because it was foreign and exposed too much of the female body, but also because it was typical of show-business women, not quite decent or totally indecent: dancers such as Ida Rubinstein (who was invited by Diaghilev to act in the production of Scheherazade, performed by the Ballets Russes in 1910) and other demi-mondaines such as Mata Hari, who some years before, in Paris, had established a taste for exotic dances, elaborate headdresses with pearls and suggestive orientalizing dresses.[15]

13.    It could be argued that it was precisely this illicit quality embodied in a style that was associated to the Other that ensured its success and its effectiveness in pushing some of the limits imposed on women’s fashion around the end of the first decade of the 20th century.[16] Thus, the adoption of the new fashion by Buenos Aires’ upper class was a typically modern phenomenon, in the sense that it worked as a place of suspension of class and gender codes facilitated by its foreignness, its Otherness. However, we should not exaggerate its magnitude since, in practice, the Orientalist fashion, as adopted by Argentine women, had no visible local specificity, consisting mostly in orientalizing accents, and happened mainly in the field of representation (photography, first and foremost), not in everyday life, which I tend to understand as a gesture somewhat conscious, with a significance of its own.[17]

14.    In fact, the orientalizing elements that organize the exoticism[18] of some photographic portraits of upper-class women are few but effective; they reiterate the pearled-headdress, with pearls hanging from ear to ear beneath the chin and spread over the head in structures with geometric designs, sometimes topped with feathers, framing the face in a striking and vigorous way. Other times, a large metal medallion (which makes some reference to Salome’s tray) works as an exoticizing mark [Figure 2]. Some poses and gestures apply the European orientalist painting’s syntax, like a certain abandonment in the model’s arms and hands, their head pending backwards or sideways, in a meditative gesture, their other hand on their chest or holding their head; a lethargic air, an inviting, affirmative gaze, and gestures that are understood as being in tune with the representations of the Orient (like it was possible to do in the illustrated magazines), contribute to associate specific meanings to the sign “exotic woman”. What does it mean to pose for an illustrated magazine in an outfit that refers to an unorthodox sexual morality, in a languid pose, as if offering herself, looking suggestively towards the camera?[19] [Figure 3]

15.    Some hypotheses arise from the images themselves, and from the texts that accompany them. First, the idea that the imitation of that modern European fashion worked as a form of social distinction, except that it was an European fashion that simultaneously acknowledged the difference of the Other and allowed itself to enjoy that which was forbidden precisely because of that difference, subjecting the Other to a normalizing gaze that confirmed the its own superiority.[20] In this sense, if the European Orientalist fashion was a way of taking a stand before the Other (exotic and sensual, but barbaric), the Argentine Orientalist fashion, modelled after the European, could be understood as an aspiration - of a small, but influential social group - to transcendence from a subaltern cultural condition, inherited from colonial times, reaching a position of equal footing in relation to the Old World.[21] This operation of appropriation is straightforward: because performed by upper class women, these Orientalist gestures could be conceived as a device of affirmation of modernity and cultural superiority, as well as possession and subjection[22]; leaning on carpets, in an enclosed space reminiscent of representations of captives in harems, surrendering passively to the viewer’s eye, provocative through gestures generally encoded as indolent and sensual, these women worked both as subjects of that modernity and superiority and as objects for aesthetic enjoyment, a mystery as impenetrable as the Orient and territories yet to be conquered. Ultimately, they merely spiced up with a hint of exoticism that which was expected of a modern, desirable and available woman; precisely like the Argentine nation itself.

16.    On another level, the discomfort caused by this fashion in sectors outside this social group (partially and problematically represented in popular magazines) is understable precisely because it destabilized the rules of the social game that meant so much to those who aspired to ascend through the adoption of codes of conduct, classified according to class and gender. For them, Orientalism could be, before anything, a literary and pictorial reference, accepted in illustrations and accounts. Adhering to it, though, was indeed confusing, and therefore, its presence in the illustrations and sections of feminine beauty was condemned and vilified.

17.    However, the figures of Andalusian women that made up the aforementioned second trend cover a wider range of publications, from the cheapest and most ephemeral to those of larger format, higher prices and greater material resources. Considering that in journalistic texts these figures are usually associated with the Moorish culture,[23] I propose to think of this second group of representations as an “Orientalism of symbioses”[24], which instead of differentiating and demeaning the Andalusian element, exhibits it as a familiar and valuable legacy that should be understood as being in tune with the local revaluation not only of the Spanish culture in general, but also, specifically, of its Arab component, visible in magazines and architectural projects and contemporary decorative programs in Moorish style, including the Alhambra Hall of the Spanish Club in Buenos Aires, or some subway stations decorated with Islamic motifs.[25] In the context of Argentine immigration, these were understood, according to Gutierrez Viñuales, “as one of the ways to provide newcomers with references with which they would identify themselves”.[26]

18.    Moreover, both paintings of Andalusian motifs and neo-Arabic style architectural projects constitute a special chapter in the history of Spanish art (and also of American art), which has been studied in relation to European Orientalism as a differential expression of this cultural phenomenon.[27] These approaches legitimize an interpretation of Orientalist trend of many of the paintings and other visual material of Spanish origin that circulated not only in Argentina but also throughout Latin America thanks to the efforts of peninsular dealers who sought (and found) here an interesting new market for their artists.[28] The acquisition of such works by local collectors, their profuse reproduction in illustrated magazines and the emulation of their themes and procedures by vernacular artists undoubtedly contributed to revalue the Spanish culture at a local level. These works, although foreign, began to be displayed as part of the pulse of the city.[29] In a text published in 1912 in Caras y Caretas, illustrated by Spanish Alejandro Sirio with Flamenco dancers, one writer described a gathering of Spanish people as follows [Figure 4]:

19.                                  By “transplantation”, Buenos Aires can afford to enjoy all the shows in the world. And as much as they may seem exotic, they become so rooted that one sometimes does not recognize the city [...].

20.                                  Days ago, going down Rivadavia Street, the joyful ¡olés!, and the palms of an imported Flamenco spirit, made us stop before a shop called “Colmao Sevillano”. [...]

21.                                  What caused the admiration of all that transplanted Flamenco spirit was a gracious female who, on top of a table, and to the beat of the guitar of two pimps and the cheerful sound of castanets, danced a garrotín[30] strictly by the book.

22.                                  The girl was really beautiful, she had that Luciferian beauty that attracts men, her body swayed with grace and poise, her feet traced agile twists and rattled harmoniously on the table.[31]

23.    Beyond the references suggesting the scene is something exotic, imported, transplanted, that is, not recognized as local, it is interesting to point out in this quote, and in view of the innumerable representations of Andalusian women in illustrated magazines, that part of that revaluation of that which is Spanish was based on representations of exoticized women. This was achieved by means of both unusual accessories (combs, mantillas, fans, full skirt dress with ruffles and Manila shawls, whose very origin referred to the Orient) worn together with women’s everyday outfit and poses and gestures codified in Orientalist paintings on Spanish themes. These representations appeared not only in reproductions of paintings (Spanish and Argentine), but also in illustrations and photographs of bailaoras performing in local and foreign theatres,[32] in photographs of parties of the Spanish community and in Carnival costumes [Figure 5].[33] In this sense, the feminine representations reveal themselves once again as sites of interaction and negotiation of social processes, subjects and objects of a symbolic colonization rather than mere records of tastes, manners or fashions. The figure of the Andalusian woman worked not only as a synecdoche for that which is Spanish, but also as a dark lady in the sense Griselda Pollock has given the trope, as

24.                                  one of the faces of a cultural polarization of femininity that opposes a tamed femininity, either virginal or maternal (the white lady) to a dangerous figure, sexually dominant or seductive, always located elsewhere, connected with the spaces of otherness and exoticism, and therefore of sexuality out of control.[34]

25.    In other words, the Andalusian women condensed with effectiveness the ambiguities raised by immigration, as well as an intensely desired and simultaneously feared sexuality.

26.    But what if the multiplication of these figures was a Latin American phenomenon rather than an Argentine one?[35] Could it be associated with the construction of a national identity? If we follow the opinion of Gutierrez Viñuales, for whom Argentina became the “cornerstone of Hispanism supported by Spain”,[36] it can be so. But more than the undeniable presence of Spanish illustrators in the Argentine publishing industry of that period, which would explain the preference for motifs and themes of that origin, I would add to the former hypothesis the idea that these representations of Andalusian women were also so inviting and so often reiterated because they established bonds of continuity between the new Argentina of the Spanish immigrants and the old Argentina of the colonial past;[37] a continuity that sought expression in various discourses, of which the visual discourse was not the smallest.[38]

27.    On the other hand, the exotic component emphasized by the publications themselves contributed to render them attractive and through them the Spanish identity acquired a power of seduction. The figures of dark-eyed bailaoras, covered in suggestive colourful shawls that highlighted their sinuous forms, appealed to the viewer in a sensuous way so they could seal their commitment with those represented. At the same time, the Andalusian culture was portrayed as a sophisticated expression of the Spanish culture, valued in Europe and, therefore, very desirable as a shared tradition. This, unlike what happened with the Orientalist fashion with a Parisian and music-hall touch, configured a gesture of returning to the origins rather than one of affirmation and rupture. In any case, in these representations of Andalusian women, the past itself was proposed as an exotic territory, and its conquest, verified in its absorption through reiteration in the popular and mainstream press, was, after all, a form of reuniting.

The afroporteñas,[39] popular culture and the obliteration of blackness in the representation of modern femininity in Argentina

28.    In opposition to the visibility of the orientalizing references, the presence of Buenos Aires’ African traditions in representations of women in the illustrated press of general interest is tenuous. This draws attention in a country with a slavery past which, on top of that, has as one of its national rhythms the tango, a genre of African-American origin consolidated between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[40]

29.    “What happened to the black people in this country? Why have they disappeared? It is unusual to find one of them in the streets of Buenos Aires. However, in my childhood [...]”,[41] Victoria Ocampo says opening one of her volumes of testimonies, remembering the afroporteños who used to work in her father's house and who, in 1960, seemed to have been wiped off the Argentine ethnic composition. Although the narrative of their “disappearance” has long been debated, and there are records testifying the vitality of communities of African origin in that period,[42] the truth is that in the representations which circulated in the periodical press, the Afroporteños occupy a small space, and when they are identified as such,[43] they are represented according to schemes of a repertoire that reproduce on those subjects various fixed meanings with an homogenizing effect.[44]

30.    With no distinction between masculine and feminine representations, this repertoire includes illustrations of humoristic intention in which they are constructed as the epitome of a primitive otherness: dressed in loincloths, barefeet, carrying spears and body modifications on their nose or ears, they contrast with the civilized Western culture of “the whites”.[45] Another form of representation is the photographs that present them as vestiges of a vanishing culture, only noticeable as evidence of a long-gone past [Figure 6].[46] Such images are somehow related to the traditionalist albums in circulation during the 19th century,[47] and in order to measure how big a devaluation this implied for the African-American culture, we must frame them in the context of the modernizing and positivist thought of the turn of the century. By placing them in a bygone past, they were also represented as less evolved.[48]

31.    On the other hand, photographs and illustrations of the Carnival and Candombe were the privileged site for thematization of the popular status of the Afroporteños.[49] Even though other documents nuanced this uniform representation of class,[50] this was reinforced by some rare illustrations and artistic works which portray scenes of domestic servitude opposing black subjects to lighter-skinned employers, which constitute a specific example of construction of a subordinate subject in terms of race and class (and sometimes gender).

32.    For example, a painting by Ana Weiss that appeared in two different magazines,[51] entitled Mi amita (My mistress) [Figure 7], supposedly represents the voice of the character described by the title - the figure of a middle-aged dark-skinned woman looking downward, showing obedience, stands in the background, behind a white-skinned, blue-eyed young girl who is gazing at the viewer. In another case, an advertisement for the lingerie section of a fashion house [Figure 8] constructs the superiority of a white, slender woman wearing a light-coloured nightgown by placing her in opposition to a black servant of smaller proportions, her head covered by a turban and her body covered by a geometric-print shawl that mimics the checkerboard floor.[52] In both cases, the composition of the figures in terms of shape and colour, as well as their location within the pictorial space, organize a relationship based on difference which, at one time, highlights the white figure and configures the dependent condition of the coloured one.

33.    This sort of scene and opposition have a history of its own (they are frequent in the Orientalist painting as well as in key Modernist works, like Manet’s Olympia). However, in the Argentine press of the early 20th century there are few images which focus on these relationships, and usually servants are represented with the same physical characteristics as their employers,[53] a phenomenon that not only avoids the implicit conflict in the construction of a class difference based on racial difference but also exerts a symbolic deletion of the historical exploitation of subjects of African origin by the local bourgeoisie.[54]

34.    For this and other reasons, the representation of Afroporteña women in the media was even more limited than that of men. However, on top of the invisibility to which they were subjected as historical subjects, in discourses related to the body, “blackness” was seen negatively, as a problem to be solved. The head of the feminine section of a magazine noted,

35.                                  What do you want me to say to those who ask me “I am very dark, so my neck is dark, what should I do to lighten its tone? Don’t they understand that if they are “very dark” it is only natural that their neck is also dark? To whiten it, they should have it bleached, but it’s not advisable to resort to such reproachable procedures.[55]

36.    Her objections do not seem to have been effective, though, since a large amount of the advertisements for skin products, poems and images reinforced, in a joint effort, the ideal of whitening.[56] Indeed, in the representation of women in the illustrated press there was no space for racial mixtures. When women represented a bourgeois femininity, that is, a dominant idea of femininity, they were always fair-skinned; when they were not fair-skinned, they represented something else.[57] In this sense, the whitening of the feminine population as a condition of femininity was not only a more or less conscious desire of the social community that produced and consumed illustrated magazines, and that expressed themselves through visual and textual representations, but also its own effect on the practices and values of that community; that is, whitening was at once the cause and the effect of representation.

37.    Another key element in representing Afroporteñas was their ”location” (reinforced by their association with the past and their origin from popular social classes): on the opposite side of “the modern girl” that towards the end of the 1930’s became a solid concept able to condense some socially valued features for defining the Argentine modern femininity.[58] Paradoxically, the Afroporteñas were kept out of these representations at the very moment when the West discovered Africa as an inspiration of its modernity. Actually, when Josephine Baker ascended and became a leading figure of modern shows, the only role that illustrated magazines offered the Argentine black women was to represent vestiges of a disappearing past.

38.    Even though the “modern Porteñita”, as constructed by the press, could flirt with the Afro-American culture through the approach to musical styles originated there, like the tango or jazz,[59] this did not alter their ethnicity: in printed representations she was always constructed like a young middle or upper class girl, with light skin and an androgynous body.[60] This is because in the first decades of the century, these musical styles were perceived as manifestations of a popular culture that reached up conflictingly to the upper classes, partly because of its exotic and provocative status, but were not yet part of what the dominant culture would see as representative of a national identity. By locating them outside of the present and in the popular culture, the Afroporteña traditions were doubly displaced from the Argentine map of identity references. Therefore, the women who embodied those traditions, who had always been conceived as the site of reproduction of culture,[61] were covered by a persistent ”cultural cloak of invisibility” and their representations, unlike what happened to Oriental traditions, functioned as the devalued face of progress and modernization.

Chinas pampas, chinitas and Creole Venus: the native as a place of ambiguity for the representation of national femininity

39.    The operation concerning indigenous and Creole traditions was different. As the 20th century moved on, these traditions were revaluated as a reaction to the massive urban immigration, locating the “national” in the countryside, and were articulated with a process of inversion of the civilization-barbarism dichotomy that was in operation in the 19th century.[62] Feminine representations were not immune to this impulse and, in the beginning of the century, the desire to define a native feminine type, associated to rural areas, became manifest. This was sometimes expressed in the figure of the “china”, a term derived from the Quechua word used to refer to a woman servant[63] which later incorporated new meanings, such as indigenous or mestizo woman, partner of the gaucho, rural woman, countrywoman or Creole domestic servant.[64]

40.    Although illustrated publications echoed and contributed to the configuration of this social type, the meanings associated with the figure of the china were complex and sometimes contradictory in terms of ethnic and moral characterization. In fact, the term seems to be associated to the same social fate of the gaucho, sometimes celebrated for his courage and at other times, discredited by his laziness and bloodthirsty and barbaric nature.[65] Similarly, the representation of the china ranged from the construction of an idealized type associated with the bourgeois values ​​of domesticity (waiting for her man at the ranch, preparing his mate[66] and cooking for him) to the stigmatization, through her, of behaviours which undermined the bourgeois concept of femininity, such as an heterodox sexual morality and lack of grooming. Just like, on the one hand, the helpful nature of the chinitas or mestizo maids was valued; on the other hand, the undesirability of the “china pampa" (i.e. the indigenous one) was made explicit in the Creole proverb “bitter mate and china pampa, only out of necessity”.

41.    Concerning this oscillation, David Viñas mentions the novel Quilito, by Carlos María Ocantos (1892). One of its characters, an indigenous servant named Pampa whom the child of the house calls “ugly china”, has “bristly hair, untameable by discipline of the comb”. Here, Viñas finds a moment of recapitulation of General Roca’s project of eliminating the indian, precisely because Pampa is “the classic chinita who, due to controversial reasons, humanitarianism or paternal gesture, is seen as a ‘wild flower’ as opposed to a ‘corrupt European courtesan’, which means first the ‘inside’ and then the antagonistic ‘soul’ of the ‘corporeal externality’ which is deteriorating along this decisive reversal of Sarmiento’s dichotomy that is produced about the 1900s”.[67]

42.    But this ambiguity had an even longer history; if, on the one hand, some sources had recognized that native women had more kindness, gentleness and love for their work than the gauchos, travellers who roamed the pampas between the 18th and the early 19th centuries, on the other hand, spread negative views about these native women. Felix de Azara disapproved of their uncleanliness and their lack of engagement in tasks like weaving or sewing, and Francis Bond Head criticized them for being indolent and inactive, suggesting that they did not abide by conventional family ties.[68] The truth is that it was the forced nomadism caused by rural labour which contributed to the instability of family formations in the pampas. The economic origin of this social situation was symptomatically hidden, though, putting the blame on native women’s promiscuous and unfaithful “nature”.[69]

43.    Although the emphasis on this lax sexual morals of the pampa women seem to have permeated some of their visual representations throughout the 19th century - or at least that is what is suggested by works such as Jose Leon Pallière’s Idilio criollo, Interior de un rancho or Un nido en la pampa, in which the feminine figure’s blouse falling off revealing her bare shoulders function as a catalyst of meaning - it was especially in the textual representations that the physical characteristics of the chinas became more relevant. A Creole vocabulary of 1910 reported, for example, with evident pleasure,

44.                                  The chinas or indigenous servants of Buenos Aires wear a long, gauzy skirt that highlights the delicate contours of a body which unfortunately lacks big hips and breasts. These, which soon wither, have exquisite curves and look not like a raspberry, but like a very tasty blackberry.[70]

45.    Several years later, some verses published in the magazine Nativa dealt with the same parts of the body to define the woman “of race”,

46.                                  Su aliento tiene el aroma

47.                                  De las flores campesinas;

48.                                  Y bajo las telas finas,

49.                                  los senos, en floración,

50.                                  Destacan la tentación

51.                                  de sus turgencias divinas![71]

52.    However, the visual representations of these women allude only to some of the elements which are evoked in the written discourse, especially their black braids (which, depending on how neat they were arranged, suggest different moral qualities),[72] their clothes, and sometimes their dark eyes, though usually they do not emphasize neither their mestizo features nor the varying abundance of their hips and breasts, scarcely highlighted below their garments [Figure 9]. In fact, in visual terms, the less sexualized representations were more fortunate and, by the end of the 19th century, they constituted a type with slight variations, a recurring feature in the representation of indigenous women types, conceived as repositories of a tradition that does not transform itself and even depends on the invalidation of its historicity in order to function as such.[73] For, precisely in a time in which urban fashion gained momentum, the chinas, especially when associated with the rural ranch house, wore floor length skirts, an apron, a long-sleeved blouse and a scarf tied at the front, with no change in her hairstyle (long braids with colorful ribbons): this is how a china is depicted, for example, on the cover of the first issue of Nativa, a rural magazine [Figure 10].[74] The illustration of short fiction stories and poems with the china’s figure, and even photographs, fed on a repertoire of limited resources (if not the very same images), just like it happened to the gaucho, although in comparison, the chinas were even more restricted.[75] Unlike female figures such as the china poblana or the “pretty indian”, which in Mexico served as sites of condensation of national virtues, in Argentina, the figure of the china was marginal in the nationalist discourse, perhaps because the meanings associated to it were ambiguous and unsteady.

53.    The china representations that circulated in the cheapest and most popular publications are different from others that were used to define a type of native beauty based on indigenous physical features, such as indigenous paintings and sculptures.[76] These insisted on configuring the type through the exhibition of the naked body, in an operation that idealized and at the same time subjected the female body to inspection, emphasizing its difference from the classical model, but proposing it as comparable to it. Hence, the very frequent use of the term “Venus” in the titles of these works and even in poems like the one below, which thematized with enormous symbolical violence the indigenous beauty:

54.                                  Venus morena, en la que el sol ha impreso

55.                                  el ósculo voraz de una ansia loca,

56.                                  tu muslo, es muslo cincelado en roca,

57.                                  tu busto, es busto modelado en yeso.

58.                                  Juega en tus labios el amor travieso,

59.                                  y tu alto pecho, que a morder provoca,

60.                                  es un manjar con que la hambrienta boca

61.                                  se deleitara en el festín del beso.

62.                                  Los requiebros persiguen tu hermosura,

63.                                  como a una sierva voladores lazos,

64.                                  alguien te enlazará por la cintura.

65.                                  Y entre la flama tropical, entonces

66.                                  feliz mancebo en sus robustos brazos

67.                                  hará gemir tu doncellez de bronce.[77]

68.    Emilio Centurion’s Venus criolla (Creole Venus, 1934), whose every inch could be analysed side by side with this poem, is, in this sense, a paradigmatic work, as Marta Penhos noted. It was the first of a rich set of female nudes that reproduced and consolidated that telluric ideal of beauty.[78] The only thing that this china figure has in common with those appearing in popular fictions is the posture: standing firmly on the ground, not lying languidly, like many female nudes that populate the salons during the same period. But unlike the china, this figure is rounded and solid, and her proportions, though harmonic, are not those of the classic model. The dark-coloured skin is emphasized by its contrast with the white cloth against which it is displayed; slanted eyes and indigenous-like features are one of the central points of the characterization. This work and others associated with it [Figure 11] decontextualize the bodies and propose them as allegories of the Creole, not as the characterizations of a social and human type, historical and real, carrying the weight of class stigmas, that the china, even in the most idealized representations, undeniably was.

69.    Hypothetically, in my opinion, that operation of depriving the indigenous / creole of any political or social conflict was precisely what secured the preference for that model among artists and its acceptance in the well-educated circles. In contrast, the figure of the china seems to have been less successful in condensing a native beauty, possibly because she was surrounded more by socioeconomic definitions than by ethnic ones, which is problematic when it comes to characterizing a national identity. Since the first decades of the 20th century, the chinas encompassed both rural women (in service of a farm owner, as it was structured by the agricultural exploitation of the period) and urban servants, many of them internal migrants. In this sense, the term referred more to their place in a class structure than to their indigenous or mestizo origins. However, although marginal and limited to certain elementary characteristics, their presence was particularly persistent in the most popular visual discourses (weekly illustrated fictions, postcards, tango scores), possibly because it was easier for the immigrant audience to identify with them than with the pure indigenous beauty praised by intellectuals; this shows that depending on the social class of their potential audience, these representations had different degrees of efficiency and convening power.

Conclusions

70.    Representations of women have worked throughout the centuries not as documents about real historical women but as places where social processes interact. The countless images and texts about womanhood, femininity and women that circulated - and are still in circulation even today - through illustrated magazines are not only witnesses of aspirations or fashions, but also real matrices of practices that have a specific impact on our social dynamics, our values ​​and our fears.

71.    Articulated together with other discourses, in the beginning of the 20th century, the periodical publications that proliferated in the streets of Buenos Aires contributed with installing certain meanings around the sign “woman”. Some of these meanings were normalized, and many others were adversely negotiated in struggles between representations in which longstanding traditions that provided frameworks to the notions in conflict took part. In this paper I have tried to analyse the way in which Oriental, African and Indigenous traditions were brought together in a very diverse set of female representations with different objectives: to demonstrate a certain degree of modernity and cultural superiority; to establish continuity and attraction bonds between cultures; to construct the idea of ​​a white, modern and prosperous nation as something desirable; to identify in the Creole culture positive values ​​that could serve as shelter to the confusion generated by the profound social changes brought about by immigration. In all cases, though with different degrees of success, these other traditions challenged the hegemonic representation of Argentine women crystallized in the “distinguished young women” of European descent, assimilated by the bourgeois and western values of femininity. To think about its specific way of operating not only enriches the understanding of the process of construction of a national identity, but also speaks of the complexity and historicity of the social dynamics through which we identify ourselves as subjects of a particular culture.

References

AA.VV., Pintura española en Chile, Santiago de Chile: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1999.

AA.VV. La noche española. Flamenco, vanguardia y cultura popular 1865-1936. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2008.

ALTAMIRANO, Carlos; SARLO, Beatriz. La Argentina del Centenario: campo intelectual, vida literaria y temas ideológicos. In: Ensayos argentinos. De Sarmiento a la vanguardia. Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1997 (1983).

ANDREWS, George Reid. Los afroargentinos de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: De la Flor, 1989.

ARIAS ANGLÉS, Enrique. Pintura orientalista española 1890-1930. Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1988.

_____. La visión de Marruecos a través de la pintura orientalista española. In: Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 2007, Available at: <http://mcv.revues.org/2821>. Accesed on October 20th, 2013.

AZNAR, Yayo; WECHSLER, Diana (comp.). La memoria compartida. España y la Argentina en la construcción de un imaginario cultural 1898-1950. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2005.

BABINO, María Elena. Rasgos de identidad en la plástica argentina. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1994, pp. 79-107.

BALDASARRE, María Isabel. Los dueños del arte. Coleccionismo y consumo cultural en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006.

BAYO, Ciro. Vocabulario criollo español sud-americano. Madrid: Librería de los sucesores de Hernando, 1910.

BENAHUM, Ninotchka Devorah. Antonia Mercé, “La Argentina”: Flamenco and the Spanish Avant Garde. Hannover and London: Oxford University Press, 2000.

BEAULIEU, Jill; ROBERTS, Mary. Orientalism’s Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography. Londres/Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

CIRIO, Norberto. Tinta negra en el gris del ayer. Los afroporteños a través de sus periódicos entre 1873 y 1882. Buenos Aires: Teseo / Biblioteca Nacional, 2009.

CÓRDOVA, Carlos A. Tríptico de sombras. México DF: Conaculta / Cenart / Centro de la Imagen, 2012.

DOROTINSKY, Deborah. Nuevas mujeres: cultura visual, utopías sociales y género en la primera mitad del siglo XX. In: ARCINIEGA, Hugo; NOELLE, Louise; RAMÍREZ, Fausto (coord). El arte en tiempos de cambio. 1810/1910/2010. México DF: IIE, 2012, pp. 416-453.

ESPINAR CASTANER, Esther. Gregorio López Naguil y la crítica artística orientalista en Buenos Aires. In: Cuadernos del CILHA. Vol. 13, nº 16, 2012, pp. 80-104.

EUJANIAN, Alejandro. Historia de revistas argentinas 1900-1950. La conquista del público. Buenos Aires: AAER, 1999.

FERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA, Ana María. Arte y emigración. Catálogo de pintura española en Buenos Aires. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1997.

_____. La pintura española en Buenos Aires, 1880-1930. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1997.

GELER, Lea. Andares negros, caminos blancos. Afroporteños, Estado y nación argentina a fines del siglo XIX. Rosario: Prohistoria Ediciones / TEIAA, 2010.

GELER, Lea. Afrolatinoamericanas. Una experiencia de subversión estereotípica en el Museo de la Mujer de Buenos Aires. In: Horizontes Antropológicos, Porto Alegre, a. 18, nº 38, pp. 343-372, July-December 2012.

GHIDOLI María de Lourdes. Biguá y otros dionisíacos: intento de identificación de una pathosformel. In: Eadem Utraque Europa, a. 5, nº 8, June 2009, pp. 73-89.

_____. Potencia de los estereotipos. Retrato intervenido de Ernesto Mendizábal, periodista afroporteño. Boletín Americanista, nº 63, Barcelona, 2011, pp. 57-76.

_____. Falucho vale poco en comparación a su raza. Variaciones en torno a un monumento. In: GHIDOLI, María de Lourdes; MARTÍNEZ, Juan Francisco (comp.). Estudios Afrolatinoamericanos. Nuevos enfoques multidisciplinarios. Actas de las Terceras Jornadas del GEALA. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del CCC, 2013a.

_____. Del retrato al estereotipo. Afrodescendientes en la Buenos Aires de fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. Presentation in the XIV Jornadas Interescuelas/Departamentos de Historia, October 2013b.

GOLDBERG, Marta. Mujer negra rioplatense (1750-1840). In: KNECHER, Lidia; PANAIA, Marta (comp.). La mitad del país. La mujer en la sociedad argentina. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1994, pp. 67-81.

GOLDBERG, Marta. Las afroargentinas (1750-1880). In: GIL LOZANO, Fernanda Gil; PITA, Valeria Silvina;; INI, María Gabriela (dir.). Historia de las mujeres en la Argentina. Colonia y siglo XIX. Tomo 1. Buenos Aires: Taurus, 2000, pp. 66-85.

GRANADA, Daniel. Reseña histórico-descriptiva de antiguas y modernas supersticiones del Río de la Plata. Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1896.

GUTIÉRREZ VIÑUALES, Rodrigo. El orientalismo en el imaginario urbano de Iberoamérica. Exotismo, fascinación e identidad. In: GONZÁLEZ ALCANTUD, J. A. (ed.). El orientalismo desde el sur. Barcelona: Anthropos, pp. 231-259.

_____. La pintura argentina. Identidad nacional e hispanismo (1900-1930). Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2003.

_____. El hispanismo como factor de mestizaje estético en el arte americano (1900-1930). In: Iberoamérica mestiza. Encuentro de pueblos y culturas. Madrid: SEACEX, 2003.

JOZAMI, Gladys. Islam in Argentina. The Americas, vol. 53, nº 1, July 1996.

KACZAN, Gisela. Alegorías de distinción y presagios de exclusión social en imágenes de mujeres (circa 1920). Estudos Feministas. vol. 21, nº 3. Florianópolis, September-December 2013.

KODA, Harold; BOLTON, Andrew. Paul Poiret (1879-1944). In: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Nueva York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poir/hd_poir.htm>. Accessed on October 22nd, 2013.

MAJLUF, Natalia. Pattern-Book of Nations: types and costumes in Asia and Latin America, 1800-1860. In: AA.VV. Reproducing Nations. Types and Costumes in Asia and Latin America, 1800-1860. Nueva York: Americas Society, 2006, pp. 15-56.

MARRE, Diana. Mujeres argentinas: las chinas. Representación, territorio, género y nación. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2003.

MASON, Peter. Infelicities, or the exotic is never at home. In: Infelicities. Representations of the exotic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, pp. 1-15.

McCLINTOCK, Anne. No Longer in Future Heaven. In: ELEY, Geoff; GRIGOR SUNY, Ronald (orgs.). Becoming National: A Reader. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

MEARS, Patricia. Orientalism. In STEELE, Valerie (ed.). Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. Vol. 3. Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, pp. 4-7.

NOCHLIN, Linda. The imaginary Orient. In: The Politics of Vision. Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1989, pp. 33-59.

OCAMPO, Victoria. Testimonios: sexta serie. Buenos Aires: Sur, 1963.

PEERS DE PERKINS, Carmen. Éramos jóvenes. Seguimos andando. El siglo y yo. Buenos Aires: Letras de Buenos Aires, 1983.

PENHOS, Marta. Nativos en el Salón. Artes plásticas e identidad en la primera mitad del siglo XX. In: PENHOS, Marta; WECHSLER, Diana (coord.). Tras los pasos de la norma. Salones nacionales de bellas artes (1911-1989). Buenos Aires: CAIA / Del Jilguero, 1999, pp. 111-152.

PLATERO, Tomás A. Piedra libre para nuestros negros. La Broma y otros periódicos de la comunidad afroargentina (1873-1882). Buenos Aires: Instituto Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2004.

POLLOCK, Griselda. Differencing the Canon. Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories. Londres y Nueva York: 1999.

Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, 22ª edición, 2001.

RIVERA, Jorge B.  El escritor y la industria cultural. Buenos Aires: Atuel, 1998 (1981).

RODRÍGUEZ MOLAS, Ricardo. Los afroargentinos y el origen del tango. Buenos Aires: Desmemoria, s. f.

_____. Actitudes y opiniones de los poseedores de la tierra. In: Historia social del gaucho. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1982, pp. 237-260.

ROMERO, Luis Alberto. Una empresa cultural: los libros baratos. In: GUTIÉRREZ, Leandro; ROMERO, L. A. Sectores populares, cultura y política. Buenos Aires en la entreguerra. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2007 (1995).

ROSENBLAT, Ángel. La población indígena y el mestizaje en América. Buenos Aires: Nova, 1954.

RUBENSTEIN, Anne. La guerra contra ‘las pelonas’. Las mujeres modernas y sus enemigos, Ciudad de México, 1924. In: CANO, Gabriela; KAY VAUGHAN, Mary; OLCOTT, Jocelyn. Género, poder y política en el México posrevolucionario. México DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.

El flamenco, un arte musical y de la danza. Granada: Universidad de Granada <http://www.ugr.es/~berlanga/captulo_1_lo_andaluz_popular_y_los_gitanos.html> Accessed on October 23rd 2013.

SAID, Edward. Orientalismo, Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2008 (1978).

SAZATORNIL RUIZ, Luis. Andalucismo y arquitectura en las Exposiciones Universales 1867-1900. In: Andalucía: una imagen en Europa (1830-1929). Sevilla: Fundación Centro de Estudios Andaluces, 2008

SCANLON, Jennifer. Inarticulate Longings. The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 34-37.

SLATTA, Richard. Las mujeres y la vida familiar. In: Los gauchos y el ocaso de la frontera. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1985.

SZIR, Sandra. El semanario popular ilustrado Caras y Caretas y las transformaciones del paisaje cultural de la modernidad. Buenos Aires 1898-1908. PhD Dissertation, Universidad de Buenos Aires, mimeo, 2011.

TELL, Verónica. Los gauchos de Francisco Ayerza: migraciones por las páginas de las revistas ilustradas de fines la década de 1890. Presentation in the 54 International Congress of Americanists, July 2012.

The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group. The Modern Girl Around the World. Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham/Londres: Duke University Press, 2008.

TOSSOUNIAN, Cecilia. The Body Beautiful and the Beauty of Nation: Representing Gender and Modernity (Buenos Aires 1918-1939). PhD Dissertation. European University Institute, 2010, mimeo.

ZAVALA, Adriana. Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010

Almanaque de la Mujer, nº 2, 1930, p. 137.

Almanaque Peuser, 1913.

En la pampa. In: Almanaque Sudamericano, 1900.

El candombe callejero. Caras y Caretas, February 11th, 1899.

El último recurso. Caras y Caretas, June 24th, 1899.

La morena Florentina. Caras y Caretas, January 6th , 1900.

Idilios silvestres. Caras y Caretas, October 13th , 1900.

Muerte de la tía Rosa a los 133 años de edad. Caras y Caretas, October 4th, 1902.

Homo sapiens de Linneo. Caras y Caretas, June 20th, 1903.

Gente de color. Caras y Caretas, November 25th, 1905.

Caras y Caretas, May 4th, 1907.

Filosofando. Caras y Caretas, January 4th, 1908.

En los pabellones de España. Fiestas regionales, Caras y Caretas, November 19th, 1910.

Ante el espejo. Caras y Caretas, June 29th, 1912.

La danza de la sangre. Caras y Caretas, November 24th, 1917.

Las industrias del pasado. Caras y Caretas, December 22nd, 1917.

La noche de San Baltazar. El candombe. Caras y Caretas, March 2nd, 1918.

Caras y Caretas, April 16th, 1921.

Crónica de la moda. El Hogar, a. XII, nº 288, April 9th, 1915.

Buenos Aires Pintoresco. El Hogar, a. XII, nº 289, April 16th, 1915.

Sra. M. Ortiz Basualdo de Becú. El Hogar, nº 432, January 11th, 1918.

Florista andaluza. El Hogar, nº 434, January 25th, 1918.

Lo que se escribe en pizarras. El Hogar, nº 434, Jnauary 25th, 1918

El Hogar, nº 436, February 8th,  1918.

Femenil, nº 31, April 12th, 1926.

La salida de la fábrica. Fray Mocho, nº 143, January 22nd, 1915.

Iris, nº 49, February 4th, 1921.

Iris, nº 52, January 25th, 1925.

Iris, nº 54, March 11th, 1921.

Música de cámara de ayer (la sonata) y de hoy (el tango americano).  Iris, nº 57, April 1st, 1921.

El día social de la porteñita último grito. Iris, nº 73, July 29th, 1921.

Pelando la pava. La Ilustración Sud-Americana, nº 16, August 16th, 1898.

La macarena, danzarina española que con gran suceso se presenta en el teatro Avenida. Mundo Argentino, nº 53, January 10th, 1912.

Mundo Argentino, nº 62, March 13th, 1912.

María Teresa Pearson Quintana. Myriam, nº 6, December-January 1915-1916.

Señorita Mercedes de Alvear. Myriam, nº 8, June 1916.

Publicidad de Maison Adhémar. Myriam, nº 11, December 1916.

Señoritas Hortensia Figueroa y Marga Peña. Myriam, nº 1, February 1917.

Myriam, nº 4, May 1917.

Myriam, nº 7, November 1917.

Nativa, nº 2, February 1924.

Nativa, nº 5, May 1924.

Mano a mano. Nativa, nº 11, November 1924.

Olympia, a. III, nº 33, February 6th, 1929, p. 49.

Otra vez Momo ríe. Olympia, nº 33, February 6th, 1929.

Para Ti, nº 28, November 21st, 1922.

PBT, nº 267, January 1st, 1910.

La bañadera. PBT, nº 269, January 15th, 1910.

Srta. Elvira Bosch Alvear. Plus Ultra, nº 9, January 1917.

La danza. Plus Ultra, nº 14, June 1917.

Las tres gracias. Plus Ultra, nº 15, July 1917.

Gitana. Plus Ultra, nº 23, March 1918.

Isabel Pearson Quintana. Plus Ultra, nº 24, April 1918.

Plus Ultra, nº 28, August 1918.

La mujer del mantón amarillo. Plus Ultra, nº 43, November 1919.

Bailes gitanos. Bulerías. Plus Ultra, nº 53, September 1920.

Señorita Josefina Díaz Vélez Escalada. Plus Ultra, nº 75, July 1922.

Señorita Marina Pilar Mauriño. Plus Ultra, nº 95, March 1924.

Elvira Láinez. Deslumbradora visión del misterioso Oriente. Plus Ultra, nº 125, September 1926.

Plus Ultra, nº 149, September 1928.

ARIETTI, Domingo F. De raza. Nativa, nº 2, february, 1924.

MARTHUR, Eduardo. La perla del Colmao. Caras y Caretas, September 28th , 1912, s. p.

RIU, Francisco Aníbal. Andaluza. Caras y Caretas, September 2nd, 1911.

SANTOS CHOCANO, José. Venus india. In: Caras y Caretas, June 9th, 1917.

English translation by Elena O´Neill

__________________________

[1] UBA/IDAES, UNSAM.

[2] On these changes see, among others, RIVERA, Jorge B. El escritor y la industria cultural (1981). Buenos Aires: Atuel, 1998; EUJANIAN, Alejandro. Historia de revistas argentinas 1900-1950. La conquista del público. Buenos Aires: AAER, 1999; ROMERO, Luis Alberto. Una empresa cultural: los libros baratos. In: GUTIÉRREZ, Leandro; ROMERO, L. A. Sectores populares, cultura y política. Buenos Aires en la entreguerra (1995). Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2007; SZIR, Sandra. El semanario popular ilustrado Caras y Caretas y las transformaciones del paisaje cultural de la modernidad. Buenos Aires 1898-1908. PhD dissertation, Universidad de Buenos Aires: mimeo, 2011.

[3] “Around 1860, when the high influx of immigrants began, most of the population of the capital city and almost all of the countryside had become a mixed population of different types according to their region (coastal, northern and Andean), and depending on their indigenous background". ROSENBLAT, Ángel. La población indígena y el mestizaje en América. Buenos Aires: Nova, 1954, p. 131. George Reid Andrews also collects similar statements concerning this in Los afroargentinos de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: De la Flor, 1989, pp. 92-111.

[4] Concerning this, see THE MODERN GIRL AROUND THE WORLD RESEARCH GROUP. The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2008.

[5] I use the term “Orientalist” as proposed by Edward Said, who defines it as the way Europe established a link with the Orient not as an actual physical space, but rather by constructing it as its radical Other, as a concept that brought together everything that was exotic and different. SAID, Edward. Orientalismo (1978). Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2008.

[6] My interest in including the Andalusian aspect in these orientalizing manifestations proved controversial in the three instances in which I presented this work in progress in the seminars devoted to non-Western traditions in American art organized as part of the Unfolding Art History project in Mexico in 2013. I'm not sure I was able to explain fully why I believe that such manifestations should be included, but I refuse to exclude them, since many times, when working with primary sources, the representations of Andalusian women, which insist on their exoticism, their wiggly movements, their dark skin, and their tight dresses that sexualize them, are shown in contrast to a  “Western” femininity whose norm is based on decorous and controlled gestures, physical traits in which white skin and fair hair are predominant, and more functional clothing. As I see it, this is the main evidence that these women represent an “Other”, that the Spanish culture itself recognizes as a mixture between Arabs and Gypsies, which is the reason why I would include them as “orientalizing” manifestations. I thank the observations of the professors who participated in the seminar, which I have tried to incorporate in the final version of this text.

[7] Gladys Jozami collected some statistics on the number of immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries and points out that, according to the immigration records, between 1882 and 1925 nearly 80,000 people of that origin entered the country. JOZAMI, Gladys. Islam in Argentina. In: The Americas, vol. 53, No. 1, July 1996, p. 74. In the same dossier, Ignacio Klich and Jeffrey Lesser refer to the conflict generated by this type of immigration: “Introduction: ‘Turco’ Immigrants in Latin America”, pp. 1-14. Few articles about this subject were found in the illustrated press of the period. One of them, entitled Buenos Aires pintoresco (Picturesque Buenos Aires), described with some paternalism the “neighbourhood of the Turks”. Among the images reproduced in it, there are two depicting women: an elderly lady in black wearing a headscarf, described as “a run down odalisque”, and two young women in modest clothes, referred to as “two future houris of Muhammad’s paradise”. However, the images themselves do not refer at all to the oriental origin of those depicted; and certainly they do not carry any attributes that could justify calling them odalisques or houris. El Hogar, a. XII, No. 289, April 16th, 1915.

[8] At the end of the 19th century, in a debate whose echoes were still heard in the early 20th century, Spain itself started questioning its cultural identity. In this debate, the opposition between a “black Spain”, Catholic and dark, and a “white Spain", festive and bright, which found in painting its clearest condensation, was transfered also to Ibero-America. There, however, Hispanism was understood as a recovery and revaluation of both its Andalusian and its Castilian components. Some elements that help locate this intellectual trend in the Argentine context of the Centennial are found in ALTAMIRANO, Carlos; SARLO, Beatriz. La Argentina del Centenario: campo intelectual, vida literaria y temas ideológicos. In: Ensayos argentinos. De Sarmiento a la vanguardia (1983). Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1997. On Hispanism in art in Argentina, amongst others, see GUTIÉRREZ VIÑUALES, Rodrigo. La pintura argentina. Identidad nacional e hispanismo (1900-1930). Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2003; GUTIÉRREZ VIÑUALES, Rodrigo. El hispanismo como factor de mestizaje estético en el arte americano (1900-1930). In: Iberoamérica mestiza. Encuentro de pueblos y culturas. Madrid: SEACEX, 2003, pp. 167-185.

[9] Beyond the paintings on the Orient produced throughout modern times, in the early 20th century, when orientalist pictorial themes had lost momentum, Orientalism found a definitive place in European women's fashion, and from there it spread to the rest of the world, reproducing the exoticizing gaze even when looking at local folk traditions. In this sense, this fenomenon is in no way exclusively Argentine; if we just look at any illustrated publication of the time, we will be able to identify numerous examples of how far-reaching this fashion had become in the global visual culture. See MEARS, Patricia. Orientalism. In: STEELE, Valerie (org.). Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. Vol. 3. Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, pp. 4-7. Specifically on the dissemination of publications, pictorial motifs, literature and Orientalist clothing in Argentina, and its reception by critics, see ESPINAR CASTANER, Esther. Gregorio López Naguil y la crítica artística orientalista en Buenos Aires. Cuadernos del CILHA. Vol. 13, nº 16, 2012, pp. 80-104.

[10] The studied corpus comprises monthly large-format costly publications such as La Ilustración Sud-Americana, Plus Ultra, Almanaque de la Mujer (smaller), Myriam and Olympia; and cheaper and more popular weekly and monthly publications such as Aconcagua, El Hogar, Caras y Caretas, Fray Mocho, PBT, Atlántida, Mundo Argentino, Iris.

[11] OCAMPO, Victoria. Testimonios: sexta serie. Buenos Aires: Sur, 1963, p. 33.

[12] PEERS DE PERKINS, Carmen. Éramos jóvenes. Seguimos andando. El siglo y yo. Buenos Aires: Letras de Buenos Aires, 1983, p. 56.

[13] Iris, nº 54, March 11th, 1921, n. p. Another comment, referring to the importance of class differences in outfit practices, was found in Crónica de la moda (Chronicle of fashion), El Hogar, year XII, No. 288, April 9th, 1915: “Do not believe, dear readers, that in order to be elegant and have a personal style, one needs to take the risk of imitating the boldness of fashion magazines, which, due to their own nature get exposed to ridicule. [...] I’ll repeat what I have said a thousand times; since we are not all the same, fashion has to be different for different people”.

[14] Overlapping fabrics, as opposed to Western tailoring, are themselves references to non-Western dressing styles, consciously exploited by modern designers. See KODA, Harold; BOLTON, Andrew. Paul Poiret (1879-1944). In: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Nueva York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poir/hd_poir.htm. Accessed on October 22nd, 2013; HARRISON MARTIN, Richard; KODA, Harold. Orientalism. Visions of the East in Western Dress. Nueva York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.

[15] Photographs of show-business women can be seen, among other publications, in Mundo Argentino, nº 62, March 13th, 1912; Myriam, nº 4, May 1917; Iris, nº 52, February 25th, 1925.

[16] As well as being seen as “barbaric”, oriental fashion was also associated with the idea of ​​freedom and modernity in an especially appealing way to contemporary Western mentality, which unanimously assigned the oriental peoples a despotic and antiquated behaviour. In the magazine Olympia, for example, an article opposed Western rigidity to the modernity of the oriental leaders in the women's fashion arena: “While the League of Nations, the Supreme Court in charge of defending human rights, tramples women’s rights, placing restrictions on the dress code of their female employees [...] in the Orient it is quite the opposite. Their dictators do the inverse of what is done in the West: Kemal Pasha used his absolute power to banish the veil with which the Turkish woman covered her face for religious reasons; Queen Sourya of Afghanistan is a modern fashion role model; in Syria, a demonstration was held in which all women marched with their faces uncovered. [...] Let us look eastwards and avoid the risk of tripping and falling blindly”. In: Freedom in elegance maintains its empire, Olympia, year III, nº. 33, February 6th, 1929, p. 49.

[17] The fact that this trend was mostly used for portraits and figurations in the press suspended its incompatibility with the imperative of domestic decorum under which great part of the distinguished ladies of Argentina lived. It is an act of conscious affirmation that works at the level of fantasy, without compromising their respectability.  

[18] Peter Mason suggests that exoticism is, above all, a “representational effect”; a decontextualized reference to something taken from another place, which acquires a new meaning in a new context. I think this definition is appropriate to characterize the exoticism of Orientalist portraits of distinguished ladies. MASON, Peter. Infelicities, or the exotic is never at home. In: Infelicities. Representations of the exotic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, pp. 1-15.

[19] Most of these portraits appeared in luxurious magazines such as Plus Ultra and Myriam. Of those that I have found, the one that recreates the scene of the harem most completely is Señoritas Hortensia Figueroa y Marga Peña (Miss Hortensia Figueroa and Miss Marga Peña), Myriam, No. 1, February 1917. Some other half-length portraits in which the accessories predominate, are María Teresa Pearson Quintana, Myriam, No. 6, December-January 1915-1916; Señorita Mercedes de Alvear (Miss Mercedes de Alvear), Myriam, No. 8, June 1916; Srta. Elvira Bosch Alvear, Plus Ultra, No. 9, January 1917; Isabel Pearson Quintana, Plus Ultra, No. 24, April 1918; Señorita Josefina Díaz Vélez Escalada, Plus Ultra, No. 75, July 1922; Señorita Marina Pilar Mauriño, Plus Ultra, No. 95, March 1924; Elvira Láinez. Deslumbradora visión del misterioso Oriente (Elvira Lainez. A dazzling vision of the mysterious East), Plus Ultra, No. 125, September 1926; but also occasionally in El Hogar, like in Sra. M. Ortiz Basualdo de Becú (Mrs. M. Ortiz Basualdo-Becú), No. 432, January 11th, 1918.

[20] For an analysis of the ideological operations implied in the Orientalist paintings of the 19th century, see NOCHLIN, Linda. The imaginary Orient. In: The Politics of Vision. Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. Nueva York: Harper & Row, 1989, pp. 33-59.

[21] Some considerations concerning this are found in BEAULIEU, Jill; ROBERTS, Mary. Orientalism's interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography. London / Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. If the relationship with the European Orientalist pictorial model is as close as I suggest herein, an element is missing in these recreations: the black servants (often present in this type of painting) whose presence emphasized the differences in status within the structure of the harem: black servants in service of white captives. I wonder, with the popularity of this type of painting in literate environments, if the “superior” character of the women in the harem was not taken for granted, contributing even further to understanding this fashion as a device for asserting cultural superiority, even without the presence of such servants.

[22] A distinguished young lady, for example, was described together with her portrait (which showed her profile with a turban) as “a genuinely Argentine type of beauty, because of her expression of discreet, aristocratic, intuitive intelligence. She is so in every feature of her face [...] even in reminding the oriental passivity brought forth by her involuntary deep attitude [...]”. In: Almanaque de la Mujer, nº 2, 1930, p. 137.

[23] “Trasunto del colorido / del sentimiento español, / como un ámbito de sol / en tus mejillas fundido… / Tiene tu carne el latido / de los morunos regazos / y cuando ciñes los lazos / de tus amores espacias… / buenaventuras de gracias / en el arco de tus brazos”, goes a poem entitled “Andaluza” by Francisco Aníbal Riu, published in Caras y Caretas, September 2th, 1911.

[24] “Above all, it seems that the symbiosis between Spain and Islam provides a wonderful alternative model to the crude reductionism of what has been called ‘clash of civilizations’”. SAID, op. cit., p. 10.

[25] The Alhambra Hall, by the architect Enrique Folkers, with mural decoration by Francisco Villar and Léonie Matthis, was inaugurated in 1912. Since the beginning of the 1930’s, many of the subway stations of line C in Buenos Aires that were inaugurated had wall decorations with Spanish motifs designed by Martin Noel and Manuel Escasany. Independencia station, especially, is decorated with views over Granada and other cities in southern Spain, and with majolicas reproducing the Arabic motto “And there is no victor but God”.

[26] GUTIÉRREZ VIÑUALES, El hispanismo... op. cit., p. 170.

[27] GUTIÉRREZ VIÑUALES, Rodrigo. El orientalismo en el imaginario urbano de Iberoamérica. Exotismo, fascinación e identidad. In: GONZÁLEZ ALCANTUD, J. A. (ed.). El orientalismo desde el sur. Barcelona: Anthropos, pp. 231-259; SAZATORNIL RUIZ, Luis. Andalucismo y arquitectura en las Exposiciones Universales 1867-1900. In: Andalucía: una imagen en Europa (1830-1929). Sevilla: Fundación Centro de Estudios Andaluces, 2008. The Spanish folklore was the object of an exoticizing gaze both from Spain itself and from abroad (by many modern artists), in a similar operation as the one led by, for example, the Russian artists on their own national traditions, recovered as exotic elements. See AA.VV. La noche española. Flamenco, vanguardia y cultura popular 1865-1936. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2008. There were also Spanish painters who produced Orientalist painting on themes situated beyond their national borders. See ARIAS ANGLÉS, Enrique. Pintura orientalista española 1890-1930. Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1988; by the same author, La visión de Marruecos a través de la pintura orientalista española, In: Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 2007. Available at http://mcv.revues.org/2821. Accessed on October 20th, 2013. See also the production of artists such as Jenaro Pérez de Villaamil, Mariano Bertuchi, Antonio Fabrés, etc.

[28] Concerning this, see BALDASARRE, María Isabel. Los dueños del arte. Coleccionismo y consumo cultural en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006; FERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA, Ana María. Arte y emigración. Catálogo de pintura española en Buenos Aires. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1997; by the same author, La pintura española en Buenos Aires, 1880-1930. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1997. On the interchanges between Spain and Argentina, see also AZNAR, Yayo; WECHSLER, Diana (comp.). La memoria compartida. España y la Argentina en la construcción de un imaginario cultural 1898-1950. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2005.

[29] Maria Elena Babino refers to the dissemination of Spanish works and some interchanges between Spanish and Argentine artists through illustrated magazines, exhibitions and salons. Los modelos españoles en la construcción de la identidad artística argentina 1910-1930. In: BABINO, María Elena. Rasgos de identidad en la plástica argentina. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1994, pp. 79-107.

[30] Garrotín, style of Flamenco singing, dancing, and guitar playing, which developed near the end of the XIXth century in Asturias, in northern Spain. (T. N.)

[31] MARTHUR, Eduardo. La perla del Colmao. In: Caras y Caretas, September 28th, 1912, s/p.

[32] The paradigmatic case is undoubtedly that of “La Argentina”, a famous bailaora (dancer) and choreographer of Spanish descent who made a remarkable career in Europe, especially in Paris, reinforcing the idea that the Spanish dance was perceived almost as exotic as the Ballets Russes. BENAHUM, Ninotchka Devorah. Antonia Mercé, La Argentina: Flamenco and the Spanish Avant Garde. Hanover and London: Oxford University Press, 2000. La Argentina also appeared in Plus Ultra, nº 149, September 1928; Femenil, nº 31, April 12th, 1926.

[33] For example, among others, in En los pabellones de España. Fiestas regionales, Caras y Caretas, November 19th, 1910; The photograph of The Macarena, a Spanish dancer with great success performs at the Avenida Theater, Mundo Argentino, No. 53, January 10th, 1912; La salida de la fábrica (The factory’s exit), Fray Mocho, No. 143, January 22nd , 1915; Las tres gracias (The Three Graces), Plus Ultra, No. 15, July 1917; La danza (The Dance), Plus Ultra, No. 14, June 1917; Gitana (Gypsy), Plus Ultra, No. 23, March 1918; La mujer del mantón amarillo (The woman in the yellow shawl), Plus Ultra, No. 43, November 1919; Bailes gitanos. Bulerías (Gypsy dances), Plus Ultra, No. 53, September 1920; cover of Iris, No. 49, February 4th , 1921; cover of Para Ti, No. 28, November 21st , 1922; Florista andaluza (Andalusian Florist), El Hogar, No. 434, January 25th, 1918; Otra vez Momo ríe (Momo laughs again), Olympia, No. 33, February 6th , 1929.

[34] A tale of three women. Seeing in the dark, seeing double, at least, with Manet. In: Differencing the Canon. Feminis Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories. London andNew York: 1999, p. 249.

[35] Consider, for example, Saturnino Herran’s La dama del mantón (1914) and La criolla del mantón (1915), or the photograph with the same title by Smarth Librado García (1922), reproduced in CORDOVA, Carlos A. Tríptico de sombras. Mexico DF: Conaculta / Cenart / Centro de Imagen, 2012, p. 81. Spanish painting circulated throughout Spanish America. See the catalogue Pintura española en Chile. Santiago de Chile: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1999.

[36] GUTIÉRREZ VIÑUALES, 2003, op. cit., p. 177.

[37] A relevant fact in this regard is pointed out by Miguel Angel Berlanga, for whom, according to statistics, in the 16th century, 40% of America’s emigrants were Andalusians. “As from the second half of the 17th century, the Andalusian emigration began to decline, while the Galician, Cantabrian and Basque increased, to the point that the Andalusian even became a minority presence in contemporary America. But the fact that Andalusia starred what Dominguez Ortiz called the ‘founding years’ leads him to conclude that ‘Andalusians, supported by the populations from Extremadura and Canarias, shaped the colonial society for a long century, giving them their art, their language, their traditions, and not only to the Creoles, but to the coloured population as well. Later, this melting-pot continued to act as an instrument of assimilation’”. Lo andaluz popular y los gitanos. In: El flamenco, un arte musical y de la danza. Granada: Universidad de Granada. Available at <http://www.ugr.es/~berlanga/captulo_1_lo_andaluz_popular_y_los_gitanos.html>. Accessed on October 23rd, 2013.

[38] Although the Andalusian woman has some specificities, and is represented as a rather dark skinned, wearing close-fitting dresses marking her curves sharply, a long shawl and an open fan, she ultimately shares some similar features with the Madrid manola and her frilled dress, comb, shawl, etc., with which some distinguished young ladies with Spanish surnames were portrayed. These ladies, in turn, have undeniably a visual identity that corresponds to the “old lady” outfit, referring to a costume worn by colonial ladies, used even today in Argentine school events. Exhibitions like that of the Spanish artist Juan Alonso, in 1924, on the “Colonial Buenos Aires” (BABINO, op. cit., p. 88), may also be analysed through this perspective.

[39] Afroporteño refers to a ​​black social matrix in Buenos Aires, including elements that are culturally related to it, not necessarily being black or Afro. The term Afroporteña here refers to women or to traditions belonging to this group (T. N.).

[40] RODRÍGUEZ MOLAS, Ricardo. Los afroargentinos y el origen del tango. Buenos Aires: Desmemoria, s. d.

[41] OCAMPO, op. cit., p. 11.

[42] ANDREWS, op. cit., passim; GELER, Lea. Andares negros, caminos blancos. Afroporteños, Estado y nación argentina a fines del siglo XIX. Rosario: Prohistoria Ediciones/TEIAA, 2010. On women, GOLDBERG, Marta. Mujer negra rioplatense (1750-1840). In: KNECHER, Lidia; PANAIA, Marta (org.). La mitad del país. La mujer en la sociedad argentina. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1994, pp. 67-81; by the same author, Las afroargentinas (1750-1880). In: GIL LOZANO, Fernanda Gil; PITA, Valeria Silvina; INI, María Gabriela (dir.). Historia de las mujeres en la Argentina. Colonia y siglo XIX. Tomo 1, Buenos Aires: Taurus, 2000, pp. 66-85; GELER, Lea. Afrolatinoamericanas. Una experiencia de subversión estereotípica en el Museo de la Mujer de Buenos Aires. In: Horizontes Antropológicos, Porto Alegre, a. 18, nº 38, pp. 343-372, July-December 2012. On the Afro-Argentines, see also PLATERO, Tomás A. Piedra libre para nuestros negros. La Broma y otros periódicos de la comunidad afroargentina (1873-1882). Buenos Aires: Instituto Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2004; CIRIO, Norberto. Tinta negra en el gris del ayer. Los afroporteños a través de sus periódicos entre 1873 y 1882. Buenos Aires: Teseo/Biblioteca Nacional, 2009. On visual representations of the Afroporteños, GHIDOLI, María de Lourdes. Potencia de los estereotipos. Retrato intervenido de Ernesto Mendizábal, periodista afroporteño. In: Boletín Americanista, nº 63, Barcelona, 2011, pp. 57-76; by the same author, Falucho vale poco en comparación a su raza. Variaciones en torno a un monumento. In: GHIDOLI, María de Lourdes; MARTÍNEZ, Juan Francisco (org.). Estudios Afrolatinoamericanos. Nuevos enfoques multidisciplinarios. Actas de las Terceras Jornadas del GEALA. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del CCC, 2013.

[43] In press photographs, it is relatively common to identify afroporteño subjects integrated in Argentine institutions and social events, but unlike what happens in some newspaper articles dedicated especially to them, they are not noted as such. This finding reinforces precisely the idea that representations (or the lack thereof) played a specific role in shaping the narrative of their disappearance. See ANDREWS, op. cit., pp. 92-93.

[44] On the other hand, the bad material fortune of the afroporteñas own publications prevents its survival in the historical discourse because they are found in very few collections, and generally not available for consultation due to their poor conditions of conservation. It is known, for example, that by 1880 there were about ten afroporteña publications in circulation, but at the National Library of Buenos Aires, all existing copies are unavailable for consultation, and I could not find them listed in other archives.

[45] For example, Homo sapiens de Linneo (Linnaeus Homo sapiens), Caras y Caretas, June 20th, 1903; Almanaque Peuser, 1913; La bañadera (The school bus), PBT, nº 269, January 15th, 1910.

[46] For example, Industries of the past, Caras y Caretas, December 22nd, 1917; Aunt Rosa’s death at 133 years old, Caras y Caretas, October 4th, 1902; The dark-skinned Florentina, Caras y Caretas, January 6th, 1900.

[47] See MAJLUF, Natalia. Pattern-Book of Nations: types and costumes in Asia and Latin America, 1800-1860. In: AA.VV. Reproducing Nations. Types and Costumes in Asia and Latin America, 1800-1860. New York: Americas Society, 2006, pp. 15-56.

[48] The association of the afroporteños with the past was also reinforced by its characterization as of an extreme longevity, reiterated in the newspaper articles that were dedicated to them. See GHIDOLI, Maria de Lourdes. From portrait to stereotype. Afrodescendants in Buenos Aires in the late XIXth century and early XXth century. Paper presented at the XIV Jornadas Interescuelas/Departamentos de Historia, October 2013.

[49] Examples may be seen in The street Candombe, Caras y Caretas, February 11th, 1899; The night of Saint Baltazar. Candombe, Caras y Caretas, March 2nd, 1918; The dance of blood, Caras y Caretas, November 24th, 1917. Another case in point is portraying them as “fools” or objects of popular entertainment. See GHIDOLI, Biguá y otros dionisíacos: intento de identificación de una pathosformel. In: Eadem Utraque Europa, year 5, No. 8, June 2009, pp. 73-89.

[50] See the article Gente de color. In: Caras y Caretas, November 25th, 1905, where four young women referred to as the Afroporteña “aristocracy”, or the photographs of public figures such as payador (minstrel) Gabino Ezeiza (reproduced in ANDREWS, op. cit., p. 202), which shows him as a bourgeois gentleman.

[51] Myriam, nº 7, November 1917, and Plus Ultra, nº 28, August 1918.

[52] Advertising Maison Adhémar, Myriam, nº 11, December 1916.

[53] Gisela Kaczan has already noticed this phenomenon of representing patrons and servants equally in terms of physical appearance. See Alegorías de distinción y presagios de exclusión social en imágenes de mujeres (circa 1920). In: Estudos Feministas, vol. 21, No. 3, Florianopolis, September-December 2013. This is a typical phenomenon of the international illustrated periodical press of the beginning of the century, in which the representation of a single physical type will be prioritized as a standard of femininity. On this phenomenon in the American press, see for example, SCANLON, Jennifer. Inarticulate Longings. The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 34-37.

[54] See the testimonies collected by GOLDBERG, 2000, op. cit., pp. 66-85.

[55] Mlle. Jeannette, Ante el espejo (Miss Jeannette Before the Mirror). Caras y Caretas, June 29th, 1912.

[56] The effectiveness with which these discourses on skin colour reinforced each other cannot be overstated. The same advertisements echoed the lyric celebration of skin whiteness appealing to the iadeas of marble skin, alabaster complexion or being ”snow white”. See the advertisement written in verse of the face powder Mi reina published by Caras y Caretas around 1916 which, under the title La princesa de marfil (Ivory Princess) praised the ‘ideal beauty’ of a woman wearing these face make-up products. Another example is the advertisement of the product “Lait de Beauté”, which states that There is no beautiful face without a soft white skin, PBT, No. 267, January 1st, 1910, or the advertising of the milk-based skin-care product Albina, El Hogar, nº 436, February 8th, 1918.

[57] The body of black women, for example, in the 19th century was used to characterize a type of free sexuality, as opposed to the controlled sexuality of bourgeois women. Although this association is no longer prevalent in the illustrated press of the early 20th century as far as the Afroporteñas are concerned, in the representation of dances like the Candombe, the contortions of female bodies evoke the same idea, especially when compared, for example, with the rigid composure women had to have to be called a “lady”. On the mystification of black women’s sexuality, see GOLDBERG, 2000, op. cit.

[58] Cecilia Tossounian has worked precisely on how the young modern girl exemplifies the complex relationships between modernity, tradition and national identity. The Body Beautiful and the Beauty of Nation: Representing Gender and Modernity (Buenos Aires 1918-1939). PhD dissertation. European University Institute: mimeo, 2010.

[59] For example, Música de cámara de ayer (la sonata) y de hoy (el tango americano) (Yesterday’s chamber music (Sonata) and today’s (American tango). Iris, No. 57, April 1st, 1921; El día social de la porteñita último grito (A day in the life of a trendy Porteñita), Iris, No. 73, July 29th  1921.

[60] See also the Mexican case, DOROTINSKY, Deborah. Nuevas mujeres: cultura visual, utopías sociales y género en la primera mitad del siglo XX. In: ARCINIEGA, Hugo; NOELLE, Louise; RAMÍREZ, Fausto (org). El arte en tiempos de cambio. 1810/1910/2010. México DF: IIE, 2012, pp. 416-453; also in RUBENSTEIN, Anne. La guerra contra ‘las pelonas’. Las mujeres modernas y sus enemigos, Ciudad de México, 1924. In: CANO, Gabriela; KAY VAUGHAN, Mary; OLCOTT, Jocelyn. Género, poder y política en el México posrevolucionario. México DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.

[61] “Women are represented as the atavistic and authentic ‘body’ of national tradition (inert, backward-looking, and natural), embodying nationalism’s conservative principle of continuity. Men, by contrast, represent the progressive agent of national modernity (forward-thrusting, potent and historic), embodying nationalism’s progressive, or revolutionary principle of discontinuity”. McCLINTOCK, Anne. No Longer in Future Heaven. In: ELEY, Geoff; GRIGOR SUNY, Ronald (eds.). Becoming National: A Reader. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 263. Quoted in TOSSOUNIAN, op. cit.

[62] ALTAMIRANO, op. cit., pp. 183-185; RODRÍGUEZ MOLAS. Actitudes y opiniones de los poseedores de la tierra. In: Historia social del gaucho. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1982, pp. 237-260.

[63] According to the third meaning of “chino/a” of the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, 22ª edición, 2001.

[64] The only critical text I found on the textual construction of the figure of the china in Creole lexicons and in the works of travelers is that of MARRE, Diana. Mujeres argentinas: las chinas. Representación, territorio, género y nación. Barcelona, Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2003.

[65] This representation has its origin in texts such as Domingo F. Sarmiento’s  Facundo (1845): “Life in the countryside, therefore, has developed the gaucho's physical capacities, but not his intelligence. His moral character resents the power of nature and his habit of triumphing over obstacles: he is strong, proud, energetic. He has no formal education, but doesn’t need it either, he has no means of subsistence, but has no needs; he is happy amidst poverty and its hardships [...]. So, if this dissolution of the society deeply supports barbarism because of the impossibility and the uselessness of moral and intellectual education, it offers, on the other hand, a positive side. The gaucho does not work; he has food and clothes prepared at home; both are provided by his cattle, if he owns any or by his employer or a relative, if he owns nothing”. On the transition to a more positive representation, see RODRIGUEZ MOLAS, 1982, op. cit., especially pp. 237-247.

[66] Mate, a traditional South American herbal infusion, particularly in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, the Bolivian Chaco, Southern Brazil and in Southern Chile. It is also consumed in Syria and in Lebanon. (T. N.).

[67] VIÑAS, David. Ocantos y Quilito (1892): chinas, niños, militarotes y mercado. In: Indios, ejército y frontera, Buenos Aires, Santiago Arcos, 2003 (1982), p. 287.

[68] SLATTA, Richard. Las mujeres y la vida familiar. In: Los gauchos y el ocaso de la frontera. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1985, pp. 104-124.

[69] MARRE, op. cit., pp. 160-162.

[70] BAYO, Ciro. Vocabulario criollo español sud-americano. Madrid: Librería de los sucesores de Hernando, 1910.

[71] ”Her breath has the aroma / Of rural flowers / And beneath the thin fabric / The breasts, in bloom / Emphasize the temptation / of their divine turgidity!” Other fragments of the text alluded to more physical characteristics, “The wind of the plains / And the hot sun, in turn, / tanned her skin / with its most pure caresses. / Two braids, long and dark / fall down her virginal back / in a triumphal recklessness; / Showing her rugged grace / displaying a blue bow / at each end”. ARIETTI, Domingo F. De raza. In: Nativa, No. 2, February 1924..

[72] In this sense, the moral metaphor articulates not only with the iconographic tradition that assigns women with loose and dishevelled hair a greater sexual freedom, but also to one of the punishments that the gauchos applied to unfaithful women: they cut off their braids and tied them to a horse's tail in order to humiliate them. The punishment is referred to in SLATTA, op. cit., p. 107, who quotes GRANADA, Daniel. Reseña histórico-descriptiva de antiguas y modernas supersticiones del Río de la Plata. Montevideo: Barreiro y Ramos, 1896, p. 80. Concerning this, see the illustration of Idilios silvestres (Country Idylls), Caras y Caretas, October 13th, 1900, in which a gaucho is about to cut off his china’s braids, represented with a fierce gesture. Another representation of a dishevelled china can be seen in Filosofando (Philosophizing). Caras y Caretas, January 4th, 1908.

[73] Associating women with tradition is one of the characteristic extremes of their representation. Concerning this, see the analysis by ZAVALA, Adriana. Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010, passim; note 50.

[74] Other examples in Pelando la pava. La Ilustración Sud-Americana, No. 16, August 16th, 1898; El último recurso. Caras y Caretas, June 24th , 1899; Caras y Caretas, April 16, 1921; the illustration of the quoted poem De raza. Nativa, No. 2, February 1924; Mano a mano. Nativa, No. 11, November 1924; En la pampa. Almanaque Sudamericano, 1900; Lo que se escribe en pizarras. El Hogar, No. 434, January 25th, 1918.

[75] I found at least one case in which two different publications used the same illustration by Hohmann to accompany a short fiction set in rural areas, with a difference of 17 years between them (Caras y Caretas, May 4th , 1907, Nativa, No. 5, May 1924). Many depictions of gauchos also repeated the same types of scenes, including on the compositional level. Veronica Tell studied the case of Ayerza’s photographs of gauchos, which were reproduced in several magazines in Buenos Aires at the turn of the century, and argues that the careful staging of these images indicates precisely the time the gaucho became a symbolic figure rather than real one. TELL, Veronica. Los gauchos de Francisco Ayerza: migraciones por las páginas de las revistas ilustradas de fines la década de 1890. Presented at the 54th  International Congress of Americanists, July 2012.

[76] PENHOS, Marta. Nativos en el Salón. Artes plásticas e identidad en la primera mitad del siglo XX. In: PENHOS, Marta; WECHSLER, Diana (coord.). Tras los pasos de la norma. Salones nacionales de bellas artes (1911-1989). Buenos Aires, CAIA/Del Jilguero, 1999, pp. 111-152.

[77] José Santos Chocano, Venus india, Caras y Caretas, 9 de junio de 1917.

[78] For example, H. Ainscouth’s Criolla (1937), and J. De Luca’s Flor de cardón/= (1937).