“Hasta que venga el frío”: mujeres indígenas, criollas y colonas en el trabajo del algodón (Chaco argentino 1900-1980)

Abstract

The cotton empire is part of a “global” history in which this plant plays a leading role due to the antiquity of its presence in immense spaces and the numerous bibliography that has been dedicated to it. The aim of this paper is to restore “flesh and blood” to the historical and cultural skeletons by bringing to light the connections between ethnography, microhistory and regional and social history. Special attention is paid to the accounts of some indigenous Wichí women from the former Franciscan mission of Misión Nueva Pompeya (Chaco, Argentina), where, from the 1960s onwards, entire families were engaged in cotton picking. The aim is to highlight these female voices within a national and regional history that tells us little or nothing about their lives as pickers.