1. El Correo Liberal, February 13, 1920. I thank Alberto Mayor for generously sharing this and other articles on the Bello strike.

2. My starting point is Joan Scott's observation that as historians of women's work, “we start the story … too late, by uncritically accepting a gendered category (the ‘Woman Worker’) that itself needs investigation because its meaning is relative to its history.” Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 175.Google Scholar Excellent analyses of the discourse associated with “women workers” include Deutsch, Sandra McGee, “The Catholic Church, Work, and Womanhood in Argentina, 1890–1930,” Gender and History 3 (1991):304–22;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHilden, Patricia, “The Rhetoric and Iconography of Reform: Women Coal Miners in Belgium, 1840–1914,” Historical Journal 34 (1991):411–36;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLavrin, Asunción, “Women, Labor and the Left in Argentina and Chile, 1890–1925,” Journal of Women's History 1 (1989):249–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Scott's own “‘L'ouvrière! Mot impie, sordide …’: Women Workers in the Discourse of French Political Economy, 1840–1860,” in Gender and the Politics of History.

3. El Correo Liberal, February 13, 1920.

4. A fascinating example of how Antioquen¯o intellectuals begin to reimagine the region's small towns through a modernist lens is Fernando Gonzalez's novel Viaje a Pie (Bogotá, 1967; orig. pub. 1929). For a discussion of regional literary production in this period see Williams, Raymond L., “Novela y Cuento,” in Melo, Jorge Orlando, comp., Historia de Antioquia (Medellìn: Suramericana de Seguros, 1988).Google Scholar

5. To the figures on textile employment in the Anuario estadistico de Medellín, 1922, I have added the available figures for Fabricato, in Arango, Luz Gabriela, Mujer, religión e industria: Fabricato 1923–1982 (Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia, 1991), 301Google Scholar, and for Montoya Hermanos y Cia, in Inspector de F´bricas, Acta no. 1362, 10 April 1922), which were not listed. See also Botero, Fernando, La industrializaciòn en Antioquia: génesis y consolidación, 1900–1930 (Medellín: CIE, 1985), 174.Google Scholar

6. In Medellín in January and early February, tailors struck for ten days, shoemakers for nine, glass workers for seven, and railroad workers at the Cisneros station for two days. Archila, Mauricio, Cultura e Identidad: Colombia, 1910–45 (Bogotá, 1991), 222, 435–36.Google Scholar

7. For discussions of the political ramifications of the working-class movement, see Archila, Cultura e Identidad, as well as Bergquist, Charles, Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia (Stanford, 1986), 342–43.Google Scholar Also: Ivan Darío Osorio, “Historia del sindicalismo,” in Melo, comp., Historia de Antioquia.

8. The Liberal papers El Sol, El Correo Liberal, and El Espectador strongly supported the strikers, as did the Socialist papers El Luchador in Medellìn and El Socialista in Bogotà. Among politicians of national standing, both Alejandro López and Pedro Nel Ospina involved themselves in negotiations behind the scenes, as did the Archbishop of Medellín. Pedro Nel Ospina to Ricardo Restrepo C. AGPNO/C/26, Collection of the Fundación Antioquena de Estudios Sociales, folio 395; Emilio Restrepo to Illmo. Sr. Arzobispo de Medellín y Reverendo P., Gabriel Lizardi S. J., May 5, 1920, Copiador 16, 352, Archivo Fabricato (AF); and Alejandro Lòpez to Alfonso Mejia, March 12, 1920. I thank Professor Alberto Mayor for sharing a copy of Lòpez's letter with me. See also Secretario de Gobierno to Don Emilio Restrepo, February 18, 1920, Archivo HistOrico de Antioquia (AHA), S. 8570, 28.

9. El Espectador, February 14, 1920.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid. See also El Espectador, February 1, 1920, which published a long ballad dedicated to “vuese finosura/Besthabé” and El Luchador February 17, 1920.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.El Luchador, February 14, 1920. reported that González and Tamayo had been “ready to fight and capable of detaining the obreras and obreros who didn't care to accept the strike,” but that Betsabé Espinal had argued for “the freedom of the obreras that have stayed at work, [and that] the rest of the obreras applauded her.” The socialist paper thus tried to present her as a fair, morally upright defender of the obreras rather than as a “striker.”

14. This description was offered by a “group of gentlemen” who met in the offices of El Correo Liberal and published a manifesto in solidarity with the strikers; see El Espectador, March 2, 1920.

15. El Espectador, February 14, 1920.

16. Ibid. Ellipses in brackets are added; others appear in the text.

17. Ibid.

18. El Correo Liberal, February 13, 1920.

19. “Sultàn” appears in El Socialista, February 17, 1920 and El Espectador; “Nabab” in El Correo Liberal, February 13, 1920; and “harem” in El Luchador, February 25, 1920.

20. El Espectador, February 14, 1920, and El Correo Liberal, February 13, 1920. In the latter report Teódulo is described as being so surprised and frightened by the women's rebellion that he appeared “so pale he was almost white.”

21. El Luchador, February 17, 1920.

22. El Espectador, February 26, and March 10, 1920. Also El Luchador, February 17, 1920.

23. El Espectador, March 5, 1920. Men from the two Liberal papers joined in producing this “Manifesto” of solidarity with the strikers.

24. El Luchador, February 25, 1920.

25. El Espectador, February 23, 1920.

26. El Luchador, February 17, 1920. Readers in Medellín likely would have remembered that a local magazine of caricature had offered hilarious sketches of “el sexo feo” a few years earlier. Luz Posada de Greiff, “La Prensa,” in Melo, comp., Historia de Antioquia.

27. El Espectador, February 14 and 23 and March 5; El Luchador, February 14 and 20, 1920.

28. El Luchador, February 27, 1920; Emphasis and ellipses in original.

29. Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, “Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South,” Journal of American History 73 (1986):362;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKaplan, Temma, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1910–1918,” Signs 7 (Spring 1982):551–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am also drawing on Kaplan's more recent work comparing the public theater of the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo, the housewives who denounced the poisoning of Love Canal, and the the Nigerian women who challenged the British in the “women's war” of 1929, in “Making Spectacles of Themselves: Women's Rituals and Patterns of Resistance in Africa, Argentina, and the United States,” conference paper, “El Trabajo de las Mujeres: Pasado y Presente,” Universidad de Malaga, December 1–4, 1992.

30. Hewitt, Nancy A., “‘The Voice of Virile Labor’: Labor Militancy, Community Solidarity, and Gender Identity among Tampa's Latin Workers, 1880–1921,” in ed. Baron, Ava, Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor. (Ithaca, 1991), 158–59.Google Scholar

31. El Social, July 8, 1917. (Ellipses in original, my emphasis).

32. El Social, July 22, 1917.

33. El Social, July 8, 1917. For a good summary of the Catholic position, see Deutsch, “The Catholic Church.”

34. El Luchador, November 28, 1919.

35. El Luchador, November 28, 1919.

36. El Luchador, January 24, 1920.

37. Issacs, Jorge, María (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1983).Google Scholar See Sommer's, Doris analysis of the importance of this novel in her Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley, 1991).Google Scholar

38. “Cuadros de Miseria,” El Luchador, November 8, 1918. This same narrative of innocence lost to the factory appeared in a 1948 novel by the Conservative intellectual Jaime Sanin, which described the transformation of Helena, a farmer's daughter who loses her virginity while working at Coltejer and becomes a sophisticated woman of loose morals. Echeverri, Jaime Sanín, Una mujer de cuatro en conducta, 5th ed. (Medellín, 1980).Google Scholar I would like to thank the author for discussing the novel and for sharing so generously his memories of Medellìn with me, his foreign-born niece.

39. “Que la mirada policiva penetra a las fàbricas.” de Gobierno, Secretario. Memoria a la Asemblea de 1917 (Medellín, 1917), 7–13.Google Scholar

40. Medellin, Anuarios Estadisticas, 1916–1935. The inspector's manuscript, “Acts of Visitation,” held in bound volumes at the Archivo Historico de Antioquia, does provide piecemeal data on the number of men employed at each mixed-sex workplace. Data on men was thus “missing” only at the level of published and publically accessible data.

41. Administradors were given notice that they would be required to hire more vigilantas and that matrons must be present around the clock. Actas no. 1513, February 19, 1927, S. 8944; no. 121, June 12, 1920, S. 8930; and no. 428, April 26, 1922, S. 8932. Archivo Departmental de Antioquia (AHA). See also Daniel Vélez to Secretario de Gobierno, July 5, 1920, S. 8562, AHA, which informs him that the matrona at the shoe factory Rey Sol was so only in name, and a similar letter from Vélez's predecessor, Joaquín Emilio Jaramillo to Administrador de la Fhbrica de Tejidos Hernandez, July 19, 1919, S. 8562, 28, AHA.

42. Acta no. 1533, August 9, 1922, S. 8934, AHA.

43. Actas no. 427, August 18, 1927, S. 8949 and no. 1476, July 7, 1922, S. 8934, AHA, in which he editorializes that “chatting … is prejudicial to conserving morality.”

44. de Gobierno, Secretario, Memoria a la Asemblea de 1923 (Medellín, 1923), 74.Google Scholar

45. Inspector de Fàbricas, “Fàbrica de Tejidos Rosellò,” 21 July 1920, Signatura 8930, 56, AHA.

46. Acta no. 705, June, 1920, S. 8929, 220, AHA. My emphasis.

47. de Gobierno, Secretario, Memoria a la Asemblea de 1926, (Medellín: Imprenta Oficial, 1926), 254.Google Scholar My emphasis.

48. Archila, Cultura e Identidad, 385–92.

49. Farnsworth-Alvear, Ann, “Gender and the Limits of Industrial Discipline: Textile Work in Medellin, Colombia, 1905–1960.” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1994).Google Scholar See also Arango, Mujer, religión.

50. El Correo Liberal, February 13, 1920. Michel-Rolph Trouillot uses precisely this example, of “a strike,” to demonstrate to seminar students how workers' action in collectively not coming to work intervenes palpably in the world of discourse. Journalists and historians alike are unable to describe the action without reference to the idea of a collective work- stoppage. Personal communication.

51. El Luchador, February 17, 1920. This was not an article but a reproduction of the minutes.

52. El Espectador, February 14, 1920. My emphasis.

53. Emilio Restrepo to Sres. Leopold Cassella & Co. (Frankfurt), 2/16/1920. Copiador 16 (1919/20), 307, AF.

54. Entries for Julia Mora Alvarez and Carmen Morales Alzate in Libro de Personal, 1918–1934, Hemeroteca Coltejer, 151, 153. Subsequent references to “entries” are to this source.

55. It was very common for workers to claim they were sick and needed a few days off and then to turn up working in another factory. See entries for Marco Holguin Ortiz, 116, and Rosario Franco, 83. Or they claimed that a relative was sick, as with Carlos Jaramillo, who went to work elsewhere and, wrote the director, “I found out he bad-mouthed about the factory in the street;” 129. Often, people did not return to the mill after the Christmas holidays; see the entry for Ana Molina, whose sister said she'd gone to work in a shoe shop; 153. See also entries for Josefina Ocampo, 177; Ines Lopéz, 138; and Margarita Hincapié, 116.

56. Acta no. 715, June 22, 1920, S. 8929, AHA.

57. There are numerous entries containing the phrase “se aprovechò de la necesidad” or “se cree necesaria.” See, for example, the entry for Luis Vasco, who was dismissed for “grosero y altanero,” with the note that “este sambo mal educado se aprovechò por la necesidad que habia de trabajadores.” “Sambo” was of course a term of racial denigration.

58. From an hoja de vida stacked with others in the “Sala Histórica,” AF.

59. Entries for Ernestina Rios, 204; María de la Paz Florez Villa, 83; and María Villa, 253. Other references to “boca sucia” include Rosalina Ruíz, 205.

60. From an hoja de vida at Fabricato. This included as part of the data I collected for a statistical sample of personnel records at different Medellín firms. Sample data in my possession.

61. Entry for Angela Rios, 204. See also similar entries for Sofia Tabares, 232, and Alejandrina Mejía, 151.

62. See note 60.

63. Entry for Eduardo Arango Gutierrez, 2 (unnumbered), 173.

64. Acta 458, July 3, 1922, S. 8932, 103. In 1923, an administrator at the Fébrica de Bello was accused “of having wanted to corrupt two obreras,” but the inspector concluded that he was innocent and had observed “exemplary” conduct. Acta 597, April 19, 1923, S. 8932, AHA.

65. This appears on a loose note (8½″ by 4″) in S. 8935, AHA, and includes another woman's name, “Ester Bustamente,” but it is not clear if the information came from Bustamente or what other involvement she may have had in the case.

66. See Acta 1875, April 3, 1923, S. 8935, AHA.

67. The full text of the agreement which ended the strike appears in Emilio Restrepo's letterbook; 3 March 1920, Copiador 16, 347, AF.

68. El Espectador, February 26, 1920, and various pieces in El Luchador.

69. An exception is Inspector Vélez's relentless persistence on the issue of fines. In his monthly actas de visita and his annual reports he denounced—as backward and un-Christian—those employers who docked workers' pay as a disciplinary practice.

70. In addition to Kaplan's cited work, see Glickman, Rose, Russian Factory Women: Workplace and Society, 1880–1914 (Berkeley, 1984), 166;Google ScholarLambertz, Jan, “Sexual Harassment in the Nineteenth Century English Cotton Industry,” History Workshop Journal 19 (1985):29–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. See, for example, Jorge Bernal, “Caracteristicas de la primera generaciòn de obreras antioquenas: del infierno de la explotaciòn a la primera gran huelga.” Relecturas Ano II. no. 5, 19. This was a publication of the Escuela Nacional Sindical in Medellin.

72. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History.