Generic sex repressive devices deployed during the Mendoza teachers strikes of 1919

Abstract

The article analyzes, from social history with a gender perspective, a nodal problem of the long teacher conflict of 1919 in Mendoza. The preventive and reactive devices exercised during the three direct actions declared by Maestros Unidos and the two general strikes pronounced by the Provincial Workers' Federation in solidarity with the teaching union are addressed. The early emergence of collective actions deployed by women, boys, girls and adult men, marked with singular depth the antagonistic positions assumed by the State. Problem that pushes us to establish a link with studies that focus on the responses and strategies developed from the state and parastatal level to process the social and worker issue. From the conjunction of both historiographical nodes, we look at the forms of repression and the practices of subjection effectively deployed during the extensive conflict. We address the formation of the Mendoza sectional Argentine Patriotic League, the links established with state officials and institutions and the offensive strategy in its search to restore the educational institutional order and the traditional senses of domesticity that weighed on women and children. Finally, we focus on the progressive implementation of specific devices of negative marking and harassment that were exercised in a gendered manner on the unionized teachers and their allies, and that culminated in open state repression – legal and illegal – during the most confrontational moments of the strike general.