In Paraná, Ruben Reina, of the University of Pennsylvania Anthropology Department, presents a very valuable descriptive analysis of society in a nonindustrialized Argentine urban community. He pioneers the application of ethnographic techniques, more commonly used in studying primitive societies, to a major provincial city. Because of his background of growing up in Argentina, as well as his university training abroad, he is able to bring to his task a fruitful combination of cultural insight and professional detachment. The writing, admirably free of jargon, is simple and lucid.
Reina’s method is one with which readers of this Review will be sympathetic. His search for meaning and explanation is not only through a conceptual framework of the social sciences in general but, more importantly, through concepts and value guidelines of the society in question. The “classes” he describes in Paraná are not sterile, abstract categories but vital groups that the Paranaenses themselves recognize as having different social standings. His data on the clases alta, media and baja are organized “in terms of the image from within” (p. 172). As a result, he has given us an imperishable document of group self-perception in one Argentine city in the third quarter of the twentieth century.
Those in the clase baja or humilde, living on the outskirts of town, often think of only two classes in the society, themselves and the ricos; they have few personal acquaintances, are at the mercy of a number of superstitions, especially relating to death, have a sense of racial inferiority, but also a strong sense of dignidad that they emphasize to distinguish themselves from the shiftless at the very bottom of their group. They perform menial tasks for the townspeople and, being preponderantly of dark skin, are called negros.
The clase media, living closer to the center of the city, has a perception of group cohesion that belies disparate ethnic, economic, occupational, and educational backgrounds. Reina sees three important subdivisions of the clase media. 1) the personas bien (entrepreneurs and professionals); 2) below them the small businessmen and white-collar workers; and 3) at the bottom of the class the laborers, the least educated of the group. Reina’s findings seem to negate the idea of a vast, unbridgeable social chasm between those who work with their hands and those who don’t. The level of one’s education (cultura) appears to be the major criterion of social position within the Paraná middle class; upward mobility, especially through continuation of education beyond the sixth grade, is largely an individual undertaking.
The clase alta, living fairly close to the center of the city, comprises the elite, the most distinguished of whom date their ancestry back to the próceres. Also in this class are others who are rich or politically powerful, with family distinction dating back only three or four generations. Included as well in this close are families of more recent background, often immigrants from Italy or Spain, but who have been very successful in business and become well-connected, often through marriage.
An especially interesting section of the volume deals with relations between linguistic and social differences. In Paraná, the upper social groups cultivate very consciously speech styles identified with their groups, class and dialect being mutually reinforcing. The cemetery of the city also functions to identify and reinforce a family’s class affiliation; the burial grounds are as socially stratified as the living society itself.
Reina’s excellent monograph raises many questions that will doubtless stimulate much further research. Is an overriding characteristic of the close baja darker skin color? What are the national political affiliations of the various social classes and their subdivisions in Paraná? Given the great identification of social group with area of residence, can social mobility be measured by movement of residence and are there significant noneconomic barriers to such movement? How has the class structure of an industrialized city like Córdoba, probably very similar to that of Paraná twenty years ago, been affected by the introduction of vast new industry? There come to mind, from a reading of this fertile study, these and many more questions, with implications far transcending Paraná, a city that is superficially an Argentine backwater, but which may well be a prototype of the nation, and, indeed, of many parts of Latin America in general.
