Presentation
Antonio
Fuentes-Barragán
María
Selina Gutiérrez Aguilera
Universidad de Sevilla
This issue of the journal Historia y MEMORIA is dedicated to a topic of intense interest to
the international historiographic community, that of the family. Focusing on
the Ibero-American world, through a rich and detailed
Special Section, an approximation to its diverse transoceanic forms and
variants, both past and present is sought.
An interest in the family has led many authors to approach
the study of this topic from disparate scientific positions, presenting
emerging theories and seeking to give correct answers to unanswered questions. Here
it is pertinent to quote some words from the prestigious historian Francisco Chacón Jiménez with regard to the family.
Every society and every period formulates its
priorities. And those of the Ibero-American region
are found to be conditioned by a strong and potent tradition of family and its
notable effects on the explanation of its contemporary social organization as
well as in the contradictions, conflicts, projection and the future prospects
of the people that make up its populations. Also, contemporary societies raise
questions, including a notable preoccupation and concern for their futures. The
complexity and contradictions of the social systems are responsible for this
kind of state of distress regarding origin and social meaning in respect to the
understanding of the world we live in[1].
Therefore, in this issue researchers are brought
together who are concerned with the analysis of the institution of the family
and who masterfully confront said task through ideas that set a wide geographic
and temporal framework, contributing to showing different prevailing family
models from many variables, thus following the great historian Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, “there never existed one family model nor a sole
way of organizing domestic groups[2].”
The need to undertake studies of this type is
justified by the longing of the individual to know their past, as well as
identify their life trajectory with a group in which they are accepted. The
family can be considered as the basic cell of social organization upon which
rests the bases of collectivity and based on which it is possible to
interrelate to other groups that make up the wider spectrum of the society,
thus focusing macro historical aspects from the exhaustive works of
microhistory.
In this way, from the view of social history, the
historical construction can be started from
below[3] contemplating it as from the basic unit of social
relation under which individuals are governed, that is, the family. This can be
achieved thanks to the methodology of microhistory, based “on the reduction of
the scale of observation, on a microscopic analysis and on an intensive study
of the documental materia[4],” beginning
from the need to understand complex social structures through the individual,
their circumstances and experiences.
It is impossible to detach an individual as a solitary
being. From infancy, their life is geared towards interrelating with the beings
around them, the family being their most immediate surroundings. For that
reason, all the articles of this issue are connected with this line of thought.
From the colonial period until our times, in territories as distant as
Argentina and Mexico, and with many stops in between, the exciting aspects that
make up the most diverse family realities of the Ibero-American
world are explored.
The first two collaborations, realized by José Luis
Cervantes Cortés and Antonio Fuentes Barragán
respectively, maintain a thematic and temporal affinity. Both articles reflect
on the basis of the Pragmatic Sanction on
Marriages that the monarch Carlos III allocated to his peninsular and
overseas territories with the aim of solving the grave moral and political
problems that, apparently, were being caused by the licentious and disorderly
private lives of his vassals.
In the text “Why I do not wish to marry: withdrawal from agreements to marry in lawsuits in Nueva Galicia in the late 18th century," José Luis Cervantes Cortés puts special emphasis on conflicts facing the decision to marry that took place between parents and children following the promulgation of the aforementioned Pragmatic. Fundamentally, and through the exhaustive analysis of eight different cases, Cervantes delves into the withdrawal by young marriageable couples from marriage, having been convinced by their parents, as well as the resources they used to achieve their intentions and the reinforcement of the patriarchal authority.
Antonio Fuentes Barragán is the author of the article “Between agreements
and disagreements: Use of the Pragmatic Sanction to avoid the indecency of
forming unequal marriages in the province of Buenos Aires.” Like in the
previous work, he intends to unveil the magnitude and importance of the
parent-child disputes when it came to taking part in an unequal marriage. This study
is carried out on a peripheral territory and where, a priori, a laxer control was applied by the authorities, as can be
seen in the province of Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de
la Plata. The author puts special attention on the contradictions of prejudice,
family interests, and individual feelings.
Slave
families in the different areas of the Colonial Rio de la Plata, San Juan de la
Frontera and Buenos Aires are the objects of study of the two following
contributions written by Ana Laura Donoso Ríos and María Selina Gutiérrez Aguilera. Despite the similarities
as regards the topic, realities that have few points in common are analyzed,
although there are points of connection that help to enrich the view on these
marginalized characters who, on many occasions, were forgotten by history.
“Longing
for freedom. Afro-Mestizo families from San Juan de la Frontera. (Argentina-
1750-1800)” is the title of the research work by Ana Laura Donoso
Ríos. The starting point of this rigorous work is the importance of being free
and, especially, the fight of those who were not lucky enough to be born with
that right to acquire such a legal condition. In these particular examples of
social mobility, the families gave the necessary support, which was, among
other factors, a trampoline to reach the so longed for freedom.
María Selina Gutiérrez Aguilera, whose work is called “Between
obedient and rebellious: slave women under female authority. (Buenos Aires,
18th century),” carries out a thorough analysis of the reality of women in the
Rio de la Plata region. Although the ultimate purpose of her investigation is
to shed some light on women slaves, which she accomplishes through a
qualitative and quantitative documental approximation, she ends up exposing a
detailed study of their mistresses, helping to unravel a complex reality, in
which broad socio-economic and gender inequality were registered.
With the article “Family, gold and power: The plots of
kinship. San Juan (1790-1815)”, its author, Eliana Beatriz Fracapani
Ríos, makes a comparison between society and economy from the perspective of the
History of the Family. After observing those clans that dedicated themselves to
mining in the region, she focuses on the relationships between the different
actors. Her objective is no other than
interpreting the present power structure, the accumulation of capital, and the
way in which the different relationships articulated with one another.
After this investigation the barrier of colonial times
is broken in order to reach, first of all, two works that approach the topic of
families located in different Argentine cities (Buenos Aires, La Plata and Mar
del Plata) in the 20th century and, finally, a study regarding the
present reality of Bogotá, capital of Colombia.
Under the title “Family life in late peri-urban
communities: Sociability and living conditions (Buenos Aires, Argentina:
1950-1970)”, the research work carried out by Celeste De Marco is presented. It
is an interesting approach, with a different view of agricultural colonization.
In this study the families that settled in the fertile lands of southern
Greater Buenos Aires or La Plata have more relevance than the economic
characteristics of the exploitation. De Marco intends to unravel the family
composition and its networks, its identity and trajectories. On the path of her
investigation, the author found the children and she realized the important
role they had in articulating the spaces that their families occupied.
The study of
Bettina Favero, “The voices of silent youth: memory and politics among
young people during the 60s (Mar del Plata –
Argentina)” reflects the attitude of the voiceless youth. They
were the ones who, firstly, could not take part in politics as they had to
enter the labor market, though without training, and, years later, they ended
up not getting involved due to the degree of disbelief in view of the great
events the country had gone through. This great reconstructive work of memory
is done through a conscientious comparative exercise between oral interviews
and hemerography.
In the section Accounts and Debates, we can find,
first of all, the comments that were made by Juan Fernando Báez
Monsalve about” Of love and other passions. Elites,
politics and family in Bogota, 1778 - 1870 (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de
Colombia, 2014)”, written by Doctor Guiomar Dueñas Vargas, who is a well-known scholar and a professor
at Memphis University (the United States) and which has a direct relation with
the theme of the present journal. The author observed the presence of romantic love
in many of the relationships that Dueñas analyzed in
detail, of how to intentionally abandon the traditional political sphere from a
historiographical perspective to embrace a more private and intimate
environment, as well as the challenge of examining the characteristics of each
gender in a more scientific context that, fortunately, considers marriage and
the family as elements that are worth studying and reflecting upon.
Finally, the conference of the reputable Colombian
professor Doctor Álvaro Tirado Mejía at the Universidad
Pedagógica y Tecnológica de
Colombia on 27th October 2015 and the posterior conversation held with those
who attended it closes the Section and this issue. Said dissertation is titled “Economic,
Social and Cultural Changes of the 1960s” and in it, topics such as the vindication
of the studies of Contemporary History, in which the researcher has an
implication and, especially, the relevance that the 60s has in the 20th
century for the international community and, above all, for Colombia, on all
levels.
All in all, this present issue of the journal Historia y MEMORIA intends to delve into
the Ibero-American family with the intention of
continuing the trajectory marked out by the great teachers of this
historiographical current and passing through, with each new study, the small
niches that had not been explored about our most intimate and hidden past,
starting from the point that “a history
that leaves the private, domestic, and family life aside, is condemned to ignore
the vital reality of almost all human beings during almost their whole lives[5].”
[1]
Francisco Chacón Jiménez, “Reflexiones sobre la familia a partir de la
explicación histórica de la organización social actual”, Palobra: palabra que obra, No. 9 (2009): 200-201.
[2] Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, “Las contradicciones de
la familia colonial”, in Familia y tradición. Herencias tangibles e
intangibles en escenarios cambiantes, Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán,
2010, 110.
[3] Jim Sharpe, “Historia desde abajo”, in Formas de hacer Historia, Madrid:
Alianza, 1996, 38-58.
[4]
Giovanni Levi, “Sobre Microhistoria”, in Formas
de hacer Historia…, 122.
[5] Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru (comp.), Historia de la Familia, México D. F.: Instituto Mora, Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana, 1993, 10.