Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and Women in Colombia's Industrial Experiment, 1905–1960(Comparative and International Working-Class History)

Before it became the centre of Latin America's drug trafficking, the Colombian city of Medellin was famous as a success story of industrialisation. By the 1960s, the city's textile industrialists were presenting themselves as the architects of a social stability that rested on Catholic piety and strict sexual norms. This work constitutes an exploration of the boundaries of this paternalistic order by investigating workers' strategies of conformity and resistance and by tracing the disciplinary practices of managers during the period from the turn of the century to a massive reorganization of the mills in the late 1950s. Ann Farnsworth-Alvear's analyses of archived personnel records, internal factory correspondence, printed regulations, and company magazines are combined with interviews of retired workers to allow a detailed reconstruction of the world behind the mill gate. Disputing the idea that the shift in the mills' workforce over several decades from mainly women to almost exclusively men was based solely on economic factors, the author shows how gender and class, as social practices, converged to shape industrial development itself.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations viii Preface xi Acknowledgments xiv Introduction 1 Part I. The Place of Female Factory Labor in Medellin One. Medellin, 1900-1960 39 Two. The Making of La Mujer Obrera, 1910-20 73 Three. New Workers, New Workplaces, 1905-35 102 Part II. The Making and Unmaking of La Moral Four. Strikes, 1935-36 123 Five. Gender by the Rules: Anticommunism and La Moral, 1936-53 148 Six. La Moral in Practice, 1936-53 181 Seven. Masculinization and El Control, 1953-60 209 Conclusion 229 Appendix: Persons Interviewed 239 Notes 241 Bibliography 283 Index 297

About the Author :
Ann Farnsworth-Alvear is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Review :
"A major contribution to Colombian history, both substantive and methodological. Dulcinea in the Factory takes the reader inside the culturally specific and evolving conceptualisations of femininity, paternalism, morality, honor, and modernity in the industrialising city of Medellin."--Catherine LeGrand, McGill University "This book not only revises Latin American labour and gender history but sets a new standard for social history. Taking advantage of all contemporary debates about accommodation and resistance and bringing them to a new level of sophistication, Ann Farnsworth-Alvear combines deep theoretical insights with rich ethnographic material."--Temma Kaplan, State University of New York, Stony Brook "Dulcinea in the Factory is a magnificent achievement, a remarkably accomplished piece of historical writing."--William C. Roseberry, New York University "This compelling study represents a major advance, indeed the maturation of the 'new social history of national capitalism.' Farnsworth-Alvear provides a deft accounting of complex exchanges, dialogues, and social negotiations in a changing crucible of class and gender relations."--Michael F. Jimenez, University of Pittsburgh