Laundry Workers: Gender and Race in Montevideo. The Emergence of an Informal Labor Market. Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

This article focuses on urban laundresses in Montevideo from the end of the Guerra Grande (1843–1852) to the early twentieth century. It proposes an analysis structured around three dimensions. First, a quantitative approach aims to understand how the urban labor market linked to clothes washing was formed. Second, it examines the social characteristics of the laundresses, who were generally associated with the Afro-descendant community. It also considers their working conditions, as washing was a physically demanding occupation that yielded very low pay. Finally, the article analyzes some of the claims and demands made by this group to improve their labor conditions. The most significant moment of this process was the so-called “laundresses’ conflict” of July 1902, which arose from a proposal by the municipal health inspectorate. Based on hygienist arguments, the authorities prohibited the dumping of soap into the Río de la Plata near Pocitos and called for the relocation of laundresses to a “Municipal Model Laundry.” Women’s work as laundresses has been frequently mentioned in various historiographical studies, especially those addressing slavery and the Afro-descendant presence in Río de la Plata society since the colonial period. However, there are no specific studies that address this occupation in a systematic and in-depth way. This article seeks to engage with works that have touched on the topic, even if superficially, as well as with a series of international studies that have explored the question in other contexts. The study of the three dimensions mentioned above draws on population and industrial surveys, servant registries, chronicles, literary sources, press articles, photographs, and reports from the municipal health inspectors.