Abstract

CRESPO, Edda Lía. Family Matters: Images of women in centennial celebrations. Gulf San Jorge Basin. Aljaba [online]. 2009, vol.13. ISSN 1669-5704.

During last years as much in the frame of the celebration of the 100 years public festivities of both most important cities located in the Gulf San Jorge basin (Comodoro Rivadavia and Caleta Olivia) as in the most recent commemoration of the centenary of the discovery of the oil in the zone, women appropriated diverse uses of the past to ask for the right to have a past. Beyond the public festivities which were arranged from the official sphere, the petroleum companies or the mass media, an important group of women organized different commemoration practices; the publication of books and photographic samples stood out among them. It has allowed a fruitful exchange among people who are in the academy and out of it. In the paper I try to show that this memoralist outbreak in terms of gender, having revalued topics such as the child-rearing, the family care, the informal sociability puts the emphasis on the domesticity and the exaltation of the kinship networks to emphasize the rol of women in that past. As the cult of motherhood represented social inclusion for these women, in this work I suggest that it is again the articulation of women - maternity - family - history - nation what returns to center stage, but those who promote such social commemoration practices have created places of memory in the center of the sphere of production: places where the men had dominated historically.

Keywords : Women; Maternity; Family; History - nation.