The Variety Artists in Buenos Aires in the Early 20th Century

Abstract

This work supports the hypothesis that the characteristics of variety performances –the lack of legal protection that fostered the exploitation of women and children, the transhumance that resulted in the impossibility of establishing stable links with the receiving society and elementary schooling in the case of the minors, the ignorance of the language in foreigners, among many other conditions– placed variety artists of the early 20th century in a situation of extreme vulnerability, distancing them from the possibility of accomplishing even a basic level of organization and connecting them to a circuit of social and legal marginality that very often involved labor exploitation, prostitution, women trafficking, abuse and other criminal offenses, before the at least indifferent and often openly hostile view of the society of their time that, paradoxically, conformed its public.