“Because That’s What His Consul Had Ordered”: The Chilean Consulate as a Labor Institution in Mendoza, Argentina (1859-1869)

Abstract

Objective/Context: This article examines the place of the Chilean consulate in conflicts related to control over labor in western Argentina during the 1860s, a decade of national consolidation and economic expansion. It explores how changes in the laboring classes’ experiences and interests in the mid-nineteenth century expressed themselves through the Chilean consulate and the meaning of being Chilean. Methodology: Using consular records, foreign relations records, and criminal records, it analyzes how Chilean laborers—and Argentines claiming to be Chilean—petitioned the consulate to protect them from military conscription and labor abuses. Originality: While transnational labor migrations feature more prominently in histories of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than in those on the post-independence period, this article adds to understandings of the end of the post-independence period through such migrations and the institutions that supported them. Conclusions: By focusing on the interaction of laborers and the Chilean consulate, this article makes the case for a correlation between non-European transnational labor migrations and the development of a sense of political belonging distinct from republicanism, patriotism, or civic participation, and one that sought exclusion from the obligations of society and one decidedly more oriented towards notions of class and nationality.