In an effort to study the social basis of authoritarian values manifested in Buenos Aires between 1810 and 1860, Szuchman examines families, neighborhood identity, and their relationship to public education policies. Two important conclusions emerge. First, the relative peace imposed by Rosas brought benefits to lower-class families, who no longer had to worry about conscription for war. Therefore, Rosas’s reign of terror offered more than charisma to the masses. Second, public education, a key strategy of political socialization utilized by liberals as well as conservatives, was steeped in authoritarian values that emphasized the primacy of state rather than familial authority. Educational reform meant bringing more children under the influence of the state. This, in turn, meant conflict between families and political authorities that led to state-controlled authoritarian values curtailing traditional family and neighborhood self-rule.
Statistical documentation for these conclusions derives from the 1810, 1827, and 1855 censuses. Unhappily, no efforts were made to consult parish records. Szuchman argues that, given the high numbers of abandoned children and infant mortality, such records may well offer inaccurate indices; but the explanation will be troubling to some. Historians of the family and women will question Szuchman’s characterization of families and their behavior. His families are inhabited by fathers and sons, but mothers and daughters remain almost invisible. Family size was lowered only through the male-controlled practice of coitus interruptus.
Women are also ignored when Szuchman turns to education. Why did Sarmiento finally turn to the gentler policies of Pestalozzian pedagogy that were introduced into the mixed classroom by female teachers? Is it merely a coincidence that Juana Manso was female, or that later Sarmiento brought female educators to Argentina? Was the liberals’ eventual renunciation of corporal punishment reinforced by the presence of women? Was the liberal desire to replace military rewards for education reaffirmed by coeducational classes taught by females? In many ways, Szuchman neglects very important inferences about women’s roles and their relationship to the state in public education.
Still, historians of Argentina and the social and economic era of postindependence Latin America should ponder the implications of Szuchman’s compelling observations. This book is both a major effort to question the nature of caudillismo in Argentina and the first monograph on Buenos Aires families before national unification. Future studies will probably revise some of the data or utilize other approaches to question Szuchman’s hypotheses, but many will arrive at similar conclusions.
