Illustrations in the Socialist Press of Buenos Aires in the Late XIX Century

Abstract

In their research about socialism and the labour movement in late nineteenth century Europe, historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and Franco Andreucci have demonstrated the richness of pictures and images as a tool of investigation. The different forms of images in allegories, portraits, and graphic humour provide information about key issues like gender relations and their links with popular peasant culture. Visual sources can also be extremely useful for historians interested in Latin American socialism. The ‘grabados de actualidad’ (‘actuality illustrations’) published by La Vanguardia – the Socialist weekly paper – in Buenos Aires (Argentina) at the end of the 1890s may present a good example of such a type of analysis.