https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A11521

Housewife and children cooking

This photo, called “Housewife and her children cooking”  by an unnamed photographer, shows a woman and her child holding her infant sibling sitting in their home. The mother is cooking and the two of them are both looking at the photographer. One of the main parts to note about the photo is the expressions on both of their faces. They both look a bit perplexed as to why they are being photographed, perhaps unfamiliar to the technology. This assumption would show, if correct, their lack of access to modern technology in the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century. Secondly, their faces appear to be dirtied and their clothes tattered and/or old.

Their home, a small dwelling appearing to be made with straw, stone, and clay, is a stark contrast to the kind of homes the wealthy and often Spanish-descent people in urbanized Peru lived in. The family in the photo appears to be from a rural area, where many natives in Latin America resided. Many of them were alienated, often ostracized, from the Euro-centric Latin American political and cultural society, often by choice and often forcefully. The lives of this family most likely were similar to the lives of other indigenous families in Peru,  and across Latin America in the sense that they had few resources and possibly kept their indigenous culture closer to them than European culture.

Refusal to adopt into European systems of social life and to denounce one’s native or African roots often led to mistreatment and to being ostracized across Latin America, often solely based on their ethnic or racial identity. As Argentine president Sarmiento stated, “His [a native’s] way of life is different, his necessities peculiar and limited. Argentina is therefore composed of two entirely different societies, two peoples unconnected with each other. What is more, the countryman, far from aspiring to resemble his urban counterpart, disdainfully rejects urban luxuries and cultivated manners” (Problems in Modern Latin American History, p. 139).