Female-Headed Migrant Familes in Buenos Aires 1930–50

Abstract
     In the 1930s and well into the 1940s, Argentina experienced a significant flow of migrant working-class people to the capital city of Buenos Aires. Women, both single and married, children, and men left their home towns in search of a better life. Perhaps the most famous accounts of this were Eva Perón's move to the big city and the role of the "cabecitas negras" or male migrant workers in the rise of Peronism.  The least studied group of migrants, and perhaps the most invisible to the historical eye, is the mothers and their children.    The absence of national censuses between 1914 and 1946, as well as their inability to influence votes, meant that the stories of these people did not attract public scrutiny. Equally important, reasons for their migration, in addition to the impact of the world depression, included the abandonment of families by male heads of household, even those who did not migrate.  These family stories loom large in the histories of women who applied for state aid through the Society of Beneficence and other groups offering succor for families.  Their plight became a concern for Eva Peron  and led to one of her first creations:  the Hogar de Tránsito for provincial women and their families who found themselves in Buenos Aires.  This paper intends to provide a new approach to the study of the depression in Argentina and Peronism through the family case studies of women and children in need.