Lunfardos: Queerness, Social Prophylaxis, and the Futures of Reproduction in Fin-de-Siècle Argentine Dramaturgy

Abstract

Abstract:Early twentieth-century nativist dramaturgy explored Conservative Argentina’s dreams of racial purity and “peace and administration” in the context of transatlantic migratory flows and major changes in the urban design of Buenos Aires. Nativism aimed at identifying and preserving ways of being criollo by turning to the Pampas as an idyllic space of agglutination of national values, particularly in the figure of the gaucho. But nativist drama not only grounded its ethics on principles of moral conduct but also functioned as a space for the distribution and popularization of the latest expert knowledges imported from Europe, mainly degeneration theory. This article explores a series of dramatic texts that staged the lives of the extremely impoverished, criminalized, and destitute, whom a series of scientific and literary works, ranging from criminology to psychiatry and philology, called lunfardos. Trash pickers, sex workers, unwanted immigrants, petty criminals, beggars, and marginalized children composed a living tapestry that illustrated the conditions of homeless life and its successive displacements and migrations. Enrique de Vedia’s Transfusión (1914)—a novel written almost entirely in dialogue form—and the plays En el barrio de las ranas (1910) by Enrique García Velloso, ¡Al campo! (1902) by Nicolás Granada, and Yerba Mala (1908) by José Eneas Riú warned of the endangered biological futures of healthy sectors of the population. Before the emergence in the political field of figures of deviance, drama culture put on a show to suggest that Argentine society needed to be defended against the abnormal. Animated by dreams of social prophylaxis, these fictions suggested that deviant forms of life were disassociated from progress.