Gender Construction in the Missionary Education in Laishi (Formosa, Argentina, 1901-1950). Approach from the Analysis of a Photographic Corpus

Objective/Context: This article is based on the analysis of photographs taken at the Laishi Mission (Order of Franciscan Friars Minor, 1901-1950), in the National Territory of Formosa (Argentina). This Mission was intended for the Qom people, as an educational project, in which the regeneration of indigenous groups would be achieved through systematic education. The objective is to identify how these photographs were used to represent the success of the project, especially in the field of gendered production of bodies in a differentiated form, together with the foundation of a constructed subjectivity linked to the conversion to Catholicism. Methodology: The photographs will be studied from an intersectional perspective (that is, recognizing the relationships between multiple identities) informed by a gender perspective, to interpret the hierarchies and the roles that were being constructed between indigenous people in the context of missionary work. Originality: A corpus of little-studied images is read through a gender perspective and understood as the space where a -never neutral- network of interests and restraints converges. Conclusions: The photographs prove that the performativities established in the bodies of boys, girls, men and women, through work and education, as soft technologies, reinforced the alleged civilization of the indigenous people, along with conversion to gender norms, which led to reinforcing the representations of European modernity.