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To Serve the Nation

Juvenile Mothers, Paternalism, and State Formation in Uruguay, 1910–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Christine Ehrick
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Abstract

This article looks at the construction and evolution of Latin America’s first “welfare state” through the lens of social assistance. What one sees in Uruguay during these years is a modernization of paternalism, whereby the state assumed some of the roles previously played by the elite and, to a lesser extent, the Catholic Church, protecting and assisting society’s “weak” without fundamentally challenging or altering class or gender inequalities or hierarchies. The article focuses on the Asociación La Bonne Garde, a state-subsidized, ostensibly private organization that housed pregnant juveniles and placed them as domestic servants in the homes of the more well-to-do. Exploring the relationships between the elite women who ran this organization, their poor juvenile wards, and state bureaucrats and other reformers illustrates the establishment and evolution of this state-sponsored paternalism as well as the ways in which the young female wards attempted to manipulate this system to their own ends.

Type
Special Section: Social Policy and State Formation in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts
Information
Social Science History , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , Fall 2005 , pp. 489 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2005 

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Footnotes

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Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the Social Science History Association annual conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in October 2002 and at the American Historical Association annual conference in Chicago in January 2003. Many thanks to Manali Desai, Karen Christopher, Dolores Trevizo, Eileen Boris, and the anonymous reviewers and editors of Social Science History for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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