Performing Evita: Brokerage and Problem-Solving Among Urban Poor in Argentina

Javier Auyero

Center for Studies of Social Change
New School for Social Research

October, 1996

Introduction _*

"...[E]verything I did, I did out of love for this people. I am not anything because I did something, I am not anything because I renounced anything; I am not anything because I am somebody or have something. All that I have, I have in my heart, it hurts my soul, it hurts my flesh and it burns my nerves, and that is my love for this people and for Perón. And I thank you, my General, for having taught me to know that love and value it. Were the people to ask me for my life, I would give it to them singing, for the happiness of one descamisado is worth more than my own life..." Eva Perón's Discourse, October 17, 1951 ₁

"I gave birth to 47 kids and I want to raise them." The "kind" to whom she is referring are the "Soup Kitchens for Children" (Comedores) that have been feeding the children and adolescents of poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the city of Cospito for the last four years. Susana Gutierrez was appointed by the mayor as his advisor in the "Social Welfare Area" of the Municipality of Cospito, located in the Conurbano Bonaerense (the 19 districts in Argentina's industrial heartland surrounding the Federal Capital of Buenos Aires). _* She has been in charge of the soup kitchens and other social policy tasks for the last five years. In March 1996, she will also assume the Presidency of the Women's Branch of the Peronist Party of Cospito.

"I was born with Peronism" --on February 24, 1946, born the same day Perón won his first general elections-- she told me; and she has been active in politics since 1983 always within the faction of the mayor of Cospito, Rodolfo Fontana, or "Rolo," the nickname by which every inhabitant of Cospito knows him. Rolo was mayor from 1973 to 1976, and after the military dictatorship, he took office again. He has been the mayor since 1983; on December 1995 the citizens of Cospito --at least some of them-- were celebrating Rolo's fifth consecutive term in office. "Come and Celebrate with Rolo, Master of mayors!!," the airplane flying over Cospito and nearby cities announced.

"My passion is the people," Matide told me on a hot afternoon in Villa Rene, as we were walking towards her "Unidad Básica" (or UB, the name the Peronist headquarters are known by at grassroots level). "I take care of them as if they were my children," she went on. "They" are the youngsters who spend the afternoon at her UB. They are part of "Matilde's Band," the band that accompanies every public political act she attends. With their drums, the 60 musicians of her band announce the presence of Matilde at each public meeting. Together with the "other 300 that I usually mobilize," "Matilde's band" will allow Matilde to make numbers visible in each acto Peronista, one of the most pure, the most elementary forms of political objectification.

Matilde was the press secretary of the Peronist Party of Cospito in the 1980s and is now the Women's secretary of the Peronist Party of the same city. She was also director of the "Social Action" division in the Municipality of Cospito and is now an elected councilwoman.

Her father was an active member of the Peronist Party, her husband is the Undersecretary of Public Services of the Municipality, her daughter-in-law is the head of the "Programa Vida" in Villa Rene and Villa Edace, her son is President of the Cultural Center "Arturo Jauretche" and a public employee in the Municipality. She was also born in 1946, "Peronist from the crib...born in the house of a [Peronist] activist."

Insignificant as it might appear at this point, both have dyed blond hair and have been involved in social work since they were young. Both Matilde and Susana were precocious children: early in their lives, they were extirpating "lice from the hair of the poor." Both have been Peronist since "they were born." Both know the mayor since "their birth," Susana is "Rolo's relative" and Matilde has been with him, she told me, "since I was born." Both wear a wristwatch with the image of Eva Perón.

Matilde and Susana are what the literature on political clientelism labels brokers, mediators between the political patron --the mayor-- and some of his supporters, known as "clients." Capituleros, in the Perú of the 1930s and 1940s (Stein 1980), cabo eleitoral in the Brazil from the 1930s on (Connif 1981; Mouzelis 1985; Roniger 1990; see also Gay 1994), gestor, padrino politico or cacique in Mexico at various points in its history (Carlos and Anderson 1981; Ugalde 1973; Cornelius 1973; Roniger 1990), precinct captains in the political machines of Chicago and elsewhere in the US (Kornblum 1974; Guterbock 1980; Katznelson 1981; see also Knoke 1990), caudillo barrial in the Radical and the Conservative parties of Argentina in the 1920s (Rock 1975, 1972; Walter 1985; Bitran and Schneider 1991), referente or puntero Peronista in the Argentina of the 1990s: although there are significant differences between them, their function is essentially the same, they operate as go-betweens. ₂ They mediate between their caudillos, chefes politicos, ward bosses and clients. They "act as go-betweens who put interested actors in touch with one another so that they can strike a deal. A brokerage relation involves at least three actors, in which the intermediary smooths the transactions between other actors who lack access to or trust in one another." (Knoke 1990: 144).

This paper contains three clusters of arguments. First, I will explore the notion of brokerage placed in the context of the Peronist "clientelist problem-solving network." I will argue that an awareness of the structural location of the brokers within the network is a necessary starting point for examining their role. Nevertheless their structural position does not tell us much about the way in which they carry out their practices. Hence, I will stress the need to explore the brokers' public presentation in order to examine the way in which the place of the "giver" and the "act of giving" interanimate each other in concrete practices.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the second part of the paper will closely examine two female Peronist brokers' performances. Drawing upon Goffman and Bourdieu, I will explore the way in which brokers foster impressions in their audiences and construct a particular sociodicy of their social place.

In the third part I will propose an hypothesis about the meaning of these performances. Drawing upon Schechner's idea of performance as "restored behavior," I will examine the brokers' presentations of themselves as a restoration of the speeches and acts of one of the founding figures of Peronism: Eva Perón.

Brokers and the Network

In "Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico, "Eric Wolf introduces the idea of `cultural broker'. Brokers are actors or group of actors, "who mediate between community oriented groups in communities and nation oriented groups which operate through national institutions." (Wolf 1956: 1075) Brokers,

stand guard over the critical junctures and synapses of relationships which connect the local system to the larger whole. Their basic function is to relate community-oriented individuals who want to stabilize or improve their life chances, but who lack economic security and political connections, with nation-oriented individuals who operate primarily in terms of complex cultural forms standardized as national institutions, but whose success in these operations depends on the size and strength of their personal following. (Wolf 1956: 1075)

Although designed and conceived of in relation to peasant societies, and very strongly influenced by the idea of `separate systems,' the notion of broker may still be used to highlight the role brokers fulfill within political parties in urban settings namely, channeling resources, goods, services from the party or a particular state structure to the space of the neighborhood through a particular party organization. Truly, although their position might be similar, in urban settings "brokerage" itself tends to be less stable than in rural settings. ₃

In Peasant Society and Culture (1965), Redfield observes the existence of "hinge" groups that are similar to Wolf's brokers. A "hinge group" is a cluster of administrative or cultural intermediaries who constitute a link between the local life of a peasant community and the state of which it is part. For Silverman (1965), the concept of mediator is also central to understanding the relationship of a Central Italian community with the larger society during a particular period. The concept, he asserts, "refers to a status which functions as a link between a local system and a national system. In interactional terms, the mediator may be seen as oen to whom action is originated from the national system and who in turn originates action to the local system. "(Silverman 1965:294). According to Silverman, the two basic features of mediators are: a) "the functions which those who are defined as mediators are concerned with must be `critical', of direct importance to the basic structures of either or both systems" (294); and b) "the mediators `guard' these functions, i.e., they have near-exclusivity in performing them."(294)

`Brokers', `hinge groups', `mediators', `buffers'. These are the terms that derive from the attention paid by anthropology and sociology to the contact and interpenetration of peasant cultures and national cultures. (Powel 1970)

Although the distinction between inside and outside, local and national now seems problematic, these descriptions of the role of the mediators have the merit of leading us to a central issue concerning the position of the `brokers': "being here" and "being there" --as Geertz says of anthropologists--, and sometimes not very different from their beneficiaries in terms of class background, what is distinctive about them is the amount of social capital they have. As Wacquant points out: "Among the resources that individuals can draw upon to implement strategies of social mobility are those potentially provided by their lovers, kin, and friends and by the contacts they develop within the formal associations to which they belong -in sum, the resources they have access to by virtue of being socially integrated into solidary groups, networks, or organizations, what Bourdieu calls `social capital'." (Wacquant 1993:39; Bourdieu 1987) Social capital (i.e. the amount of resources made of connections and groups membership) is a central aspect in distinguishing the brokers from their "clients."

The "broker-client" relationship corresponds closely to what James Coleman (1990) calls "complex social relationships" and what Goffman (1971, 1983) terms "anchored relations." Complex social relationships are relationships which depend on a third party (here referring to the political patron, represented by politicians or by state structures) for their continuation. The material incentives for the `broker-client' relationship to develop come from the outside and are the product of the particular balance of power between the broker and an outsider political patron. This in turn depends on the capacity of the broker to form his or her own constituency. "Anchored relations" are particularly distinctive in that: a) they involve reciprocal acknowledgments between agents, b) they entail the establishment of a framework of mutual knowledge, and c) this framework organizes agents' experiences of one another. "Client-broker" relations, like anchored relations, involve a bond whereby agents identify one another on a personal basis.

Matilde and Susana are mediators between the mayor and his "clients", i.e. people who --so part of the literature on political clientelism asserts-- give him support and votes presumably in exchange for favors, services and other non-material goods (Roniger 1987) provided by patrons through their brokers. ₄ I emphasize the word "presumbly," because it is just that: a presumption that votes and loyalty come because of goods and services. ₅ In the case of this paper, Peronism --a social and political movement that has been in and out of state power for the last 50 years and that has been one of the major political actors in Argentina--, the question is more problematic still. What guarantees that voters will support and vote for a given `patron', i.e. a politician, because of the favors performed by him or his inner circle of brokers and not because their general support to Peronism or to the Peronist mayor?

Half a century of voting studies shows us that this question is one that requires multiple responses. ₆ In order to come up to a multidimensional approach to the question and to problematize the presumption of clientelist studies, I will focus on the type of relationships established between the brokers and `voters-supporters-clients'. I will do so from the standpoint of the broker.

These client-broker relationships are not constructed in a social vacuum; rather they are embedded in what I will label a problem-solving `Peronist' network. It is through this network that people living in extremely poor neighborhoods solve some of their everyday life problems (i.e. food, health, and shelter). This network acts as a sort of buffer against some of the risks of extreme material deprivation.

In contexts of extreme poverty, material deprivation and exorbitant levels of unemployment, poor people craft diverse strategies of material survival throughout Latin America. ₇ Many households "confront the challenge of survival through a complex system of `informal' activities, many of which occur in popular collective organizations." (Friedman and Salguero 1988: 3). Many others of these informal activities of survival take place within clientelist problem-solving networks.

In the Conurbano Bonaerense, one of the available means of satisfying the poor's basic needs for food, health and shelter is through the Party that has direct access to[national, provincial and, sometimes, local] state resources: the Peronist Party. In poverty-stricken neighborhoods, squatter settlements and slums, the "Unidades Básicas" constitute one of the most important places in which basic needs can be satisfied, basic problems can be solved. These "Unidades Básicas" give an incredible organizational strength to the Peronist party and are the sites in which Peronist brokers are located. They usually own a UB ₈ , are employed at the municipal or provincial public sector and construct a network ("una red") of followers that often dovetails with their UB's geographical area. "Peronist referentes", like ward bosses in Chicago, and street gangs in major American cities (Sanchez Jankowski: 1991), "construct" and "defend" a territory over which they claim to be "the rulers". "Their people" is in "their territory". Yet, in contrast with gangs and ward bosses, `illegality' and criminal behavior are not the major features --as far as I know-- of the referentes' "territorialization" of their rule. ₉

Brokers usually do favors (distribute food, medicine, etc.) to their potential voters and to others, and they almost always have an "inner circle" of followers. The broker is related to the members of his or her "inner circle" through strong ties of long-lasting friendship, parentage, and/or fictive kinship. This "inner circle" helps the brokers to solve problems in everyday life: they are the ones who run the soup-kitchens that function in the broker's "Unidad Básica", they are normally in charge of opening, cleaning and maintaining the locale, they usually announce to the "outer circle" when the broker is available in the "UB", and spread the news when food is being distributed in the "UB" or in the Municipal building. The `inner circle' meets with the broker twice a week at least, and frequently, every day, either in the Municipality, in the "UB" or at their homes. On the contrary, the "outer circle" --i.e. the potential beneficiaries of the broker's distributive capacities-- is related to him or her through weak ties. ₁₀ They contact the broker when problems arise or when a special favor is needed (a food package, some medicine, a driver's license, the water truck, a friend in jail, etc.).

Within the Peronist problem-solving network, Peronist brokers --known as "referentes" or "punteros" -- function as gatekeepers, acting as go-betweens between the flow of goods and services coming from the executive branch of the Municipal power (the mayor) and the flow of support and votes coming from the "clients". Brokers `decide' whether, and to what extent the `gate' has to be opened or not, `and they act as mediators between patrons and clients.

This function of "gatekeeping" is shared by many of the different types of brokers in diverse historical and geographical settings. Precinct captains, capituleros, cabos eleitorales, caudillos and "punteros" partake of the smae structural location: they are encountered between patrons and clients, channeling resources from the former to the latter, and votes from the latter to the former. As Carlos and Anderson put it, "The broker is a person within [the] network who has the ear of those in control of state resources as well as contact or access to those resources, with linkage to community- and class-based groups with economic and political demands....A political broker can either obstruct or facilitate the flow of demands, favors, goods and services to or from some constituency." (Carlos and Anderson 1981: 172-73).

If the structural location of political brokers is similar in various settings, what accounts for the striking differences between, say a "caudillo radical" and a "puntero peronista", or a "cabo eleitoral" and a "precinct captain"? Although a comparative study is out of the scope of this paper, this question serves as my starting point. For, if the location of the brokers within the network (and, I should admit, the form of the "clientelist" network itself) is similar in different times and places, the source of the differences in the brokers' practices lies elsewhere. The working assumption of this paper is that the source of the difference lies in the broker's "way of giving", i.e. the broker's public performance.

As much of the literature on political clientelism suggests, though inadequately explores, the distribution of goods and services is a necessary but insufficient condition for the operation of the clientelist world. Because exchanges are --to use E.P. Thompson's phrase-- lived human experiences, the cluster of beliefs, assumptions, styles, skills, repertoires, and habits encompassing the exchanges --explaining and clarifying them, justifying and legitimizing them-- is as important as the actual exchanges. Because things have to be distributed in a certain way --with a certain representation attached to them, as both Levi-Strauss (1963) and Mauss (1950) have taught us, what is being given and how it is being given are two sides of the operation of political clientelism that in the case of Peronist political clientelism take a special relevance.

Although the location of the brokers within a network is central to grasping the structure of the clientelist network and a necessary first step in the research, it does not say much about the way in which brokers act, their practices and their `anchored' relationships with their clients. My contention is that through a particular and historically specific type of performance brokers function as gatekeepers but present their role to the public --the beneficiaries of their favors and third parties-- as if they were merely representing or coordinating. Thus, this paper will explore a way in which three of the ideal-typical brokerage relations (gatekeeping, representation, and coordination) become articulated in a single practice: the brokers' political performance or, to borrow Goffman's expression, the presentation of the broker's self in the everyday political life . ₁₁

It is almost impossible to empirically detect the exchange of `favors for votes' that much of the literature on political clientelism takes for granted, but we can explore a process that might tell us something about how to solve the riddle: the process by which the actors who grant favors and distribute goods present themselves, justify their function and place and, last but not least, attempt to teach something to "their" beneficiaries. "Referentes" or "punteros" -- as the Peronist brokers are known in the political jargon-- strive hard to "teach" one essential lesson to their public: that no matter how terrible the social situation is, they are the only ones who can guarantee the continuation of the flow of goods in the form of "programs of social assistance". Their social presence, their everyday problem-solving should be interpreted in this way not to lose sight of the impact they are making. They are acting out a mechanism that is going to be put a work during election times: implicitly both "officials" and "referentes" are going to blackmail the "beneficiaries": "if we leave office, you might loose access to the food the mayor and I give you: it's your choice". But this "blackmail" is embedded in a system of representations that covers it as such and that is worth exploring in order not to reduce the richness of `clientelist interactions' and reproduce a sort of mechanistic argument: clients seen as Pavlovian agents who act --vote, support and demonstrate-- in response to things --favors, goods.

Patrons and brokers do not explicitly exchange votes for favors --what Gay (1995:18) calls "thick clientelism". On the contrary, they erect themselves as synonymous with things and synonymous with the people: they implicitly link themselves with the continuation of the distribution of favors or of a specific program of social assistance fostering what Gay (1995:20) calls "thin" or "institutional clientelism."

For this "blackmailing" or "institutional clientelism" to work and reproduce over time, benefits have to be given in a certain way, with a certain representation attached to them, with a certain performance that publicly presnets the thing given or the favor granted not as blackmail, but as "love for the people", as "what we have to do as `referentes"', as "what Evita would have done", as "Peronism". Thus, clientelist practices have to be understood not just as "exchange of goods for votes", but as containing things, and words; distributive actions and performances.

Following Goffman, I understand performance as the activity carried out by actors "on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way of the other participants" (Goffman 1959:16). According to Taylor, a public performance "includes organized and repeated action that takes place in a public space and that may or may not have artistic aspirations." With the broad concept of performance, we are able to "explore numerous manifestations of `dramatic' behavior in the public sphere which tend to drop out of more traditional approaches to theater." (Taylor & Villegas 1994:13) ₁₂

Just as Taylor and Goffman understand it, performance is here understood neither in opposition to `reality' nor implying artificiality. "More in keeping with its etymological origins, performance suggests a carrying through, actualizing, making something happen." (Taylor & Villegas 1994:276). What is the "reality" that Peronist brokers bring about each time they grant a favor, every time they hand out a food package or a needed medicine?

Problem-holders and problem-solvers in the theater: the third floor of Municipal building and the "Unidad Básica"

Matilde and Susana are the presidents of two "Unidades Básicas" (UB). Matilde owns a "UB" in Villa Herrera but her "area of influence" extends to Villa Rene, Villa Edace and Barrio Pomo. Susana is the president of the "UB The Leader" in Villa Edace. They both work at the Municipality of Cospito -- Susana in the welfare section, and Matilde in the Consejo Deliberante. Susana is in charge of the special Program of soup-kitchens for children, kitchens located in poverty-stricken neighborhoods which every weekday of the year prepare the lunch for a variable amount of kids (the amount of children ranges from 20 to 50 per `comedor'). Susana is responsible for securing the provision of food and gas to cook, for supervising the safety conditions of the kitchens, and for opening or closing a kitchen when problems arise or when conditions are not met. She is the one that the coordinators of the kitchens (all women) come and see when problems occur in their kitchens, from personal problems between the women coordinating the activities to shortage of provisions, to increasing demands to including more people into it, etc. Susana has a team of female social workers assisting her in this supervision.

People come to see her not only because of the kitchens. People drop by and knock on her door --there is no secretary to shield them from special requests-- to ask for various types of things: to obtain a fellowship for a summer camp for their children, to avoid a ticket issued by the police, to ask for a job, and, most often, to ask for food and medicine. She seems to be always available to listen to many different types of requests.

Twice a month, Susana's mornings are occupied with another task. She moves to the Annex of the Municipal building where food is handed directly to people who ask for it, with the sole requisite of showing the document that attests that they live in the city of Cospito. Twice a month, food is distributed in the Annex of the Municipal building. A two-block line of people with a bag in their hands wait for hours to receive nine food products (sugar, rice, flower, yerba mate, noodles, polenta, lentils, corn oil). In front of the place where the food is being distributed there is a gate at which Susana stands. She is the first municipal official the people have to confront, she is the one in charge not of the direct distribution of food but the one who checks everyone's document to see if he or she has an address in Cospito. She is the one who gives them access to the place where other officials will fill their bags "with nine kilograms of things". Some of the people who line up in front of the Annex do not have money to go back to their homes, Susana will give them money: "See, they don't even have the money to go back", she tells me with her hands opened, showing me the coins.

How do this people know the precise date in which food is being distributed? The various "Peronist referentes" in the poverty-stricken neighborhoods know the dates, Susana knows the dates, Matilde knows them. They send people here, where Susana will have the final `yes or no'. She is, literally, the gatekeeper. But, as we will see, she is not the impersonal bureaucratic official, specialized in the "production of indifference" typical of Western bureaucracies (Herzfeld 1992). She will give reasons and try to have the `audience' know why she is saying `no'.

Every weekday, Susana leaves her office at 2 PM. She returns home to Villa Edace, and has lunch. After a short nap, she goes to her "Unidad Básica" where weaving activities, distribution of food, and one of the 47 `kitchens' she coordinates function. There, once a month, poor kids will have their hair cut and Susana will be there to assist people in whatever problems they present. She might find some medicine that someone needs, or a fellowship so that the daughter of a single working woman might spend her holidays in one of the middle classes club of the center of Cospito.

Matilde is a councilwoman. Although she is not in charge of any special program at the municipal level at this time, she was the director of the "Social Action Area" of the Municipality and was also in charge of food distribution in a way not very different from that of Susana. Her daughter-in-law, who works with her in the "Unidad Básica" of Villa Herrera is the coordinator of the "Life Program" (Programa Vida). This recently launched program distributes milk, eggs and cereals to the poor on a daily basis. The requirement for entering the program is to be pregnant or to have at least one son or daughter who is less than six years old.

The plan is directed by the wife of the Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, "Chiche" Duhalde, and functions in different cities in Greater Buenos Aires. Municipal officials coordinate the plan at the city level and organize groups of women who are in charge of keeping track of the distribution of the food. Once a month the municipal coordinators meet with these women -- usually one woman per block of a poor neighborhood, slum or squatter settlement-- in a neighborhood's association (the Sociedad de Fomento). The women who participate in the program at the grassroots levels are called manzaneras, a sort of delegate of the block who carries out a census of `her' block to check the amount of kids and pregnant women there and is in charge -- without any salary-- of distributing the milk, eggs, and cereals in `her' block. ₁₃ The manzaneras report any problems --new people added to the list, drop outs, etc.-- to the coordinators.

Rosa, Matilde's daughter-in-law, coordinates the program in Villa Edace and Villa Rene. Matilde shows up at the meetings to greet Rosa and the manzaneras and listen to their concerns and problems. Although she does not work for the Program, she attends the meetings taking place a block away from her house.

Her house is half a block from the "Unidad Básica". The "Cultural Center Arturo Jauretche" functions in the first floor of her house; her son is the president. Five blocks from there, the cultural center owns a plot of land -- lended by the Municipality-- where the children of Villa Herrera and Villa Rene play soccer and other sports. The cultural center also has a mobile library and distributes food.

The neighbors of Villa Herrera or Villa Rene may knock on her door at any time of the day. One of her sons, her husband or she herself opens the door and listens to this or that demand: a medicine that is unaffordable, a package of food, the lack of `water pressure' in the block and hence the need to bring the water truck from the Municipality. People also ask her for a plot of land to build their casilla or a job at the Municipality. She listens to them, takes note of their requests, and if possible, promises to get in touch with them as soon as she finds a solution to the problem. Plots of land or jobs are almost impossible demands for her, but food and medicine are things she can obtain, problems she can solve.

Problem-solving and sacrifice-making. The (social) elimination of bureaucratic indifference

"Authority always seeks to cloak its iron fist in a glove of sweet reason" (Knoke 1990:6)

Brokerage as any other social position or status " is not a material thing, to be possessed and then displayed; it is a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well articulated. Performed with ease or clumsiness, awareness or not, guile or good faith, it is nonetheless something that must be enacted and portrayed, something that must be realized." (Goffman 1959:75). When appearing in public, brokers have a plethora of motives for trying to control the impression the audience receives of the situation. Here, I will explore some of the common techniques of `impression-management' utilized by the brokers in front of their audience (the poor "problem-holders" and me). My interest dovetails with Goffman's central concern when exploring the `presentation of the self', namely, "the participant's dramaturgical problems of presenting the activity before others." (1959:15).

"How beautiful you are today, darling!!", Susana tells a lady in her fifties who has been waiting four hours to receive "nine kilograms of merchandise". Glancing at the picture in the document, she tells a man in his late 70s, "How young you are in this picture, abuelo!!", "Oh, look who's here!! You finally showed up!!", she tells another woman with her empty bag. She seems to know every one of the more than 500 hundred people who are waiting in line under a hot summer sun. She orders to the two men at her back to open the gate: "They can pass, I know them all". She also says no, when someone comes without his or her document: "The one who sent you, should know about this..."

The "Unidades Básicas," the third floor of the Municipal building, or its Annex where food is distributed, are the theaters in which Matilde and Susana perform their part, the places in which their everyday work takes place and where they present themselves and their activities to others, guiding and trying to control the impression people --the beneficiaries and the general public, me included-- form of them.

The people who frequent the third floor of the municipal building or the "Unidades Básicas" to ask for special favors, the coordinators of the "comedores infantiles," the poor who line up in front of the former municipal building --now storage-- to receive "nine kilograms of merchandise" constitute, among other things, the audience in front of which the officials and brokers perform their part. The researcher is one among the audience, one that --surely-- provokes the enhancement of certain aspects of the performance. Yet, the countless times in which I was not noticed as one among the audience, the public presentation of the broker's self was not altered in any significant way. In the interviews, on the other hand, certain aspects of the speech presentation acquire an overacted character that --although present-- were downplayed before the "poor audience".

What is the "routine" --i.e. the pre-established pattern of action that is being unfolded during a performance-- played by brokers on the occasion of granting favors or distributing goods? There are six central elements in the presentation of the female broker's self: a) there is a "sacred compatability" between them and their jobs due to the existence of a mission, of a vocation in their life fostered by an early sense of compassion for the poor; b) their birth coincides with that of Peronism and their initiation in `politics' was tightly bound with the mayor's trajectory; c) they have `special relationship' with the poor, in terms of debt and obligation, in terms of special care for them, in terms of the "love they feel for them" to the point that `bureaucratic indifference' is to be eliminated; d) their work is not a job but a "passion for the people"; e) theirs is "all sacrifice" to the point of exhaustion in the post; f) they claim to be "only one among others", but special ones: they are the `mothers' of the poor. ₁₄

Because they are related to the poor in a "special way", because their job is actually not a job but something they do naturally, because they are self-sacrificing and hard-working, they erect themselves as the mothers of the poor. The effect of the maternal routine they play is almost always the same: the personalization of the favor or good. ₁₅ At the same time, `mothering the poor' has another consequence: the construction of a gendered view of politics and the reproduction of gendered relations within the political field. The division of political labor is, thus, gendered: while governing and deciding is gendered male, the informal securing of favors and the prompt solution of problems is "female." ₁₆

The Brokers' Sociodicy

Bourdieu and Passeron assert that school "succeeds, with the ideology of natural `gifts' and innate `tastes', in legitimating the circular reproduction of social hierarchies and educational hierarchies." (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977:208). Constructing an analogy with Weber's notion of theodicy (Weber 1968: 518-541), they term this process: sociodicy, meaning the justification of society as it is.

Susana and Matilde claim to bear these "natural gifts" and these "innate tastes" that justify their position. As some of the performers analyzed by Goffman, Susana and Matilde foster the impression that they: a) have ideal motives for doing what they are doing because they were born to do it; and b) they have ideal qualifications for the role. Because these ideal motives and the ideal qualifications have been present since they were born, it follows that they present their jobs and their brokerage role not as a job but as something they do "naturally".

"I think that people are born to be priests, to be nuns, to be doctors...It seems to me that I was born with a gift, the gift of being able to help the one who is in need, so, if I can do it, I am happy, and I thank God when I go to sleep and I when I wake up for being able to help someone." (Susana)

Early in life, they were socially concerned children. "I think that the social activity starts when one is a kid, when one does a good deed for an old man, or when you feel that someone asks you for something and you try to get it," Susana tells me. Matilde comments, "When I first came to Villa Rene, I was so blond, so delicate...I didn't match with the environment. I used to sit in my doorways and clean children's noses."

The "cleaning" device is always present in the origins of their work. Cleaning lice from heads, cleaning noses full of mucus, bathing poor kids, cleaning the sidewalks full of dust. They were "born to clean," born to -- paraphrasing M. Douglas-- put things back in their place. They were born to clean with passion, as frantic housewives.

"Politics for me is a passion, one has been living in that passion...it is a very great passion, the great fondness I always have for kids, since I was a teenager, I always bring them together. When I was sixteen years old, in the hairdresser salon, I cleaned and washed them. Hidden from the clients, I even removed lice from their hair, because kids were my passion, when I came to the neighborhood I realized that there was a need...." (Matilde)

These precocious kids were born Peronists and asserted their Peronist identity beginning in early childhood. "I am a Peronist from the crib" Matilde repeats. "I was born on February 24 1946, so you can imagine..."

"I was nine years old when the revolution came (the coup that expelled Perón from power in 1955), and I remember a teacher saying from her pulpit: `Those delinquents, those negros...". And I remember I was looking at her, and one day I stood up, with my bright eyes, and with my hair which was as blonde as it is now, because it (the blond color of the hair) is mine [she tells me touching her hair], now as it is gray, I dye it, but it is mine. So, I stared at the teacher and asked her: "And where were you born? Because if you work as a teacher, I am sure, you are not rich." Then I told my classmates, "Let's sing the Peronist march!!" and we sang the Peronist march. From that day on, I told myself that I was going to be a Peronist militant."

According to Luisa Passerini (1987), the narratives of oral histories do not necessarily reveal behavior patterns. I am not concerned here with the `truthfulness' of this anecdote (whatever that might mean). When confronted with the narrative of an oral history, it is the tension between forms of behavior and mental patterns that should draw our attention. What Matilde is saying is that she was born a Peronist, that she was born to, in one way or another, "lead", and that she was born to `defend' the poor (personified in the anecdote by the `delinquents' and `negros'.) It is an anecdote that matters not because of what it tells us about the precociousness of her political attitude, but because what it tells us about the way in which she presents herself to the public: a "born Peronist," a "born leader." Paradoxically as it might be, what we confront in the anecdote is the performance of an essentialism that serves the purpose of encoding a particular sociodicy. Thus, it is the sociodicy built into the anecdote that should draw our attention.

"Gradually I began to love this place (Villa Herrera and Villa Rene), with those kids that broke my heart...", Matilde tells me when referring to the moment she arrived at Villa Rene. "I used to clean their noses, to play marbles with them ...This is how I am, my persona, not my post." The love for children and adolescents is the basis --the "founding feeling"-- for both Matilde's and Susana's political careers. In loving the children of their neighborhoods, they started to become what they are now: the mothers of the poor.

They were not only "born Peronists" and "born activists", but they also know Rolo Fontana, the mayor, the leader of the Peronist Party of Cospito city, and --as Susana openly says-- the "last caudillo", since they were born.

"I am related to Rolo...my sister is married to his nephew. She started to date him when she was 13. She is now 51, and I am 50...so, you can see how long we've (Rolo and I) known each other. We are even part of the same family." (Susana)

"(I've known Rolo) since I was born...he is younger than my father..." (Matilde). Later in the interview, Matilde identifies herself with both Rolo and with Peronism.

"(Rolo) walks throughout the neighborhoods, from neighbor to neighbor, he goes alone, only with his chauffeur. Saturdays, Sundays...the neighbor got used to that...because they have Rolo at hand, as they have Matilde. People stop him in the streets and he gives them a card. Maybe he cannot solve their problems, but he listens to them. He is from our school, the Peronist school, the school of Perón and Evita, and that is what many politicians lack, no matters the political party to which they belong. The people needs the people, there lies the secret."

Like Matilde, Susana associates her practice with love and, in the same move, she links her activity with that of Eva Perón.

"When the compañeras ask me when I will take office in the women's secretariat of the (Perónist) party, I feel really happy, because I receive so much affection, so much love from them, but I also tell them: Evita was not only Argentinean, Evita was worldly, a woman who represented all women, mostly because of the way she carried out `social help'. And not everybody loved her, some people hated her. I do not claim everybody loves me...but, at least the majority, and thank God, I have a majority....they love me..."

It is part of the brokers public presentation to display the closeness they have with the "last caudillo". They were there, near him, since the beginning to collaborate with Rolo, the leader, the man.

Since they were "Peronist from the crib", precocious "social workers," and part of the caudillo's inner circle from the beginning of their careers, it follows that their political trajectory was a smooth and an almost natural progress towards the post they now occupy, the quintessential element of any sociodicy. In the production of the impression of a "sacred compatability" between them and their positions, deals, negotiations, and difficulties, are ruled out. "I was so used to political activism because I was always very close to my father, I felt obliged to continue his struggle. I never thought I was going to occupy any public position, I didn't do it (work in politics) with that objective, I did it with the objective of taking part in the struggle." (Matilde)

Matilde was previously a hairdresser in the center of Cospito, and also supervised the sales of hair products in the area with a network of more than 300 saleswomen all over the city. "(I was) the leader of the area, and that made me aware of the situation of the majority of the people who were doing this (selling products) as a last resource. And I began to penetrate into the needs of the people. That is why, sometimes, everybody says `Matilde, Matilde, Matilde', They recognize me not only because of politics." Her life "has always been (full of) activities for the people" in a way that prevents the emergence of any obstacle in her way to public recognition. "As I was raised in this environment (a family of politicians), for me it's not so difficult."

Susana also comes from a "family of politicians". Modestly, with no special ambitions, she climbed her way up the local political hierarchy.

"That is to say, I was born with Peronism...my uncles were all activists. But I started to work in politics since I began working with the mayor....I was working `socially' in a Unidad Básica, but I never wanted anything. I used to come to see the mayor and tell him `I have this for you, this group of women, we are going to come and visit you, but I do not want anything."'

It would be difficult to find a better description of the logic of accumulation within the local field of politics, than that provided by the sharp distinction Matilde and Susana make between "politics" and "social work". Both started doing "social work"; politics, they say, "is a natural consequence of that." And "that", as we just saw, was there from the very beginning. Politics start by the solution of `social' problems: making petty favors, you construct your basis --in their words, you "have your own people". With that basis, you assure the continuity of yourself as a `problem-solver' and you start negotiating on behalf of `your people' within the field of local politics. "Tell me how many people you have, and we'll see who you are", that's the axiom. ₁₇

But this "negotiation", this logic of accumulation of political capital (posts) through a maximization of social capital (networks), is never part of the public presentation of the brokers. On the contrary, theirs has been a smooth path to the top. The narratives of their histories are saturated with stories of people "asking them to stay", "offering them the post". Their presentation of their political trajectory is not a story of sufferings, obstacles to be overcome, and deals to be made, but a steady upward movement. It is not that they deny politics, but `politics' --understood as the need to bargain and to deal-- always happens elsewhere. It is a universe foreign to them. Political deals are one of those under-communicated aspects of impression management.

How, then, do they explain their transition from one position to another? Because "that thing called politics" just happened, and, "we" took the vacant place. Their public image never includes the displaced, the fired, the defeated. Their post is "theirs", it was "theirs" from the very beginning because they were born Peronists, they were born social workers, and they were born to support the mayor. The sociodicy is complete and the sacred compatability between them and their position is tight enough against "politics". Their post is a position that only they can occupy, a post which --as implied in their sayings-- "fits" them (and they fit in it). They are there because of their history, they say, thereby presenting --me and the problem-holders-- their particular sociodicy.

The manipulation of identity: "I am as you are, a compañera."

Because they were born to care for the poor, they have a special sensitivity to do what they do: it comes from the heart,

"...when you have affection for what you do, when there is a feeling for the needy, you know that you have to take care of them. Sometimes the things that they ask for are not so important or difficult to obtain...I think that the official starts when the human being is open, it is simple: when they come to me to solve their problems, I take them on as my own problem...."

(Susana)

Brokers foster the impression that their actions and their relationship to the beneficiaries is `something special' because there is no distance between them and the poor. They are one of them, "I am identified with the compañeras de base", Susana says.

The permanent shift between "I" and "We" as a rhetorical strategy takes full force here: dissolving the problem-solver into the mass of problem-holders and making "one of them". "I am like you, we are all compañeras, we are all Peronists". There is something special because "we" are "part of a family", the "great family of the children's soup kitchen" as a speaker announced at the Fourth Anniversary of the soup kitchens, a celebration that took place in the Municipal building. Upon this occasion, Susana gave a brief speech that is worth recalling:

"Queridas compañeras, I hope I have humbly fulfilled my obligations with you, I am one among many, I am here side by side with the mayor, the compañero Rolo, because he, truly, is the compañero, and not the mayor. I wish to thank you all, I am a worker among many, thanks chicas, thanks."

Susana is not the only one who establishes an special relationship with the beneficiaries, the mayor also abolishes the distances and is defined by Susana --and by himself-- as one "compañero" among many compañeros. It is important to remark, with De Ipola (1995), that this type of "inclusive interpellation" has been part of the Peronist discourse since the beginning. The definition of themselves as part of the universe to which the deliver the goods and services dovetails with the Peronist `interpellation'. The "inclusive interpellation"--compañeros is the best known one-- names the receiver and at the same time defines the sender as a member of the same group to which the message is being directed. ₁₈

Having been mayor for the last fourteen years allows Rolo to publicly presents himself as "someone special", as "the Master of mayors"."Rolo is unique, he is the last caudillo", Susana told me. He is the quintessential expression of the personalization of politics and of the public misrepresentation of the removal of social and political distance: always available, always present. Rolo is physically, symbolically or potentially everywhere: in pictures in the wall of the functionaries, in the wristwatches of the officials, in the painted walls throughout the city, in the announcements of public deeds, in the voice of an airplane that --in Christmas time-- greets you from the air: "Rolo wishes you Merry Christmas!! and that --in the time when the cholera epidemic was threatening the city-- warns the population from the air: "Rolo prevents you from cholera!!", and in his incursions of places where `normal' mayors are not supposed to go: the anecdotes of relating the ways in which Rolo `suddenly appears' in this or that neighborhood are countless.

"When kings journey around the countryside, making appearances, attending fetes, conferring honors, exchanging gifts, or defying rivals" Geertz claims they are marking their realm, "like some wolf of tiger spreading his scent through his territory, as almost physically part of them" (Geertz 1983:125). Matilde and Susana would agree with Geertz: the mobility of Rolo is a central element in his power. Restlessly searching out contact with "the people," Rolo imposes a style of "personal touch" in Municipal politics, a style that Matilde and Susana follow closely: "entering into the passageways of the slum," "traversing the different barrios on my bicycle;" both Matilde and Susana know that "getting in touch with the people" is an essential part of their routine.

The importance of Rolo's visiting the different neighborhoods --poor or not-- of the city is defined as a "style" by both Matilde and Susana. His "personal style" that "we follow": near the people, with no barriers whatsoever between them and we, because we are part of the same "family". They are both "close to the people" because they are "part of them", "one among others". The "closeness" is not always expressed in their sayings, they practice the abolition of distance in a way that surprises even an observer acquainted with the Peronist tradition.

She always interacts with the people in a very "personal" way, as "Rolo would do it,"

"See, you cannot always solve their problems, but what people needs is someone who listen to them with their heart...people need someone to listen to them...and talk to them as if they were your sons and daughters, your people, the one you love, not only as a problem because you are a politician and you have to look for votes. No...you have to talk to people as what they are: people. That is to say, my passion is the people, so I take my time to answer to them..."

"(the thing I like most from what I do) is being with the people. As difficult as it might be, it is what I like the most, it's the essence."

"One thing is the passion and another is the function, you are or you are not, and today many politicians are professionals... In the past, you were a politician as a natural thing, today some people take politics as a profession, it seems to be a good business. I don't know...because for me, it's far from being a good business...I am passionate about the people." (Matilde)

One of the things that surprises the observer is the ease with which you can talk to Matilde and Susana. There are no secretaries shielding them from `difficult' requests, no doors from which they can escape from public demands. Her house, Matilde says, is open to everyone who needs to see her. Her office, Susana proudly admits, has no obstacles to be removed, she is always available.

"they (the adolescents that spend their afternoons in her UB) do not have any instructions, (I do not give them any instructions, because you) lose what is natural in you, it does not work...you love the people or you don't love them, and if you love them, you have to love them, period. With all that love implies..."(Matilde)

When in 1991, the mayor appointed her Advisor of the Secretary of Social Welfare, Susana "did not want to become a functionary, I wanted to go on working as if I were an employee, with the difference that there was more responsibility. Because the soup-kitchen were created and I assumed the coordination of them. I started to coordinate and I became so enthusiastic about them, I took that responsibility as if the `comedores' were mine and I loved them. So, I started to work with the kitchens, where the compañeras responded to me wonderfully, we now work closely with each other; and when something is lacking, they understand the situation..." "People love me, people love me, because they appreciate the way I treat them, the way I talk to them." (Susana)

Along with the elimination of bureaucratic distance, the "love of the needy" obliterates any political distinction. They are there, they claim, to "serve everyone." Therefore, "the political work starts when someone lends her helping hand to someone else, there is no better way to play politics. Because the people say `Go and see Susana, she is a good girl'. No one asks whether Susana is a Peronist or a Radical, or Communist. First, you have to be a human being, politics come afterwards."

The Poor: their sons and daughters

"I direct the comedores, as I do my own house...The quality of the food is great because I personally taste it." (Susana)

"...when the mayor offered me the Direction of the "Social Action", I told him that I did not want it. He was really angry, because he had counted on me. But I said no, not out of arrogance, but because I wanted to be where I could respond to the people. It is difficult, because there are some places where everything is `no', and I am good at saying `no'. And, besides that, I told him `I gave birth to 50 sons and daughters, the fifty kitchens, I want to keep on raising them."

The association between their social and political practice and the practice of mothering is openly displayed. "I took (responsibility for) the kitchens with that love with which you have children...Thank God, all my children are good, I never had a headache because of them, not even serious problems...I don't know, that's why I say that I must be one of those persons who were born with luck...because people love me....[W]e, women, we are mothers, and we know about the needs, even if the father knows, he is different, he has to go out and be the breadwinner."

In explaining how her "Unidad Básica" works and what do the adolescents do there, Matilde remarks "unity and base (referring to what the term "Unidad Básica" means)...family, the Unidad Básica is a temple, is something sacred, you sometimes have to teach them when they do something wrong.... sometimes they get angry at me because I tell them not to drink, but they still come back because I am the only one who says `no'....At least they have someone who reprimands them, and someone who, if needed, will save them....The day of the acto I give money to them to buy a coke, but they are here every day of the year, they can knock at my door any time, whatever the problem." But this is not something that she does only with the adolescents in her "band", "(when someone comes with a problem) you have to talk to them as if they were you sons, or your daughters..." ₁₉

Mothering of the poor, as mothering as such, is understood as naturally carried out by women like them. Not only the "care" for the poor, but the sustenance of the primary emotional ties ("you have to listen to them, treat them well") is understood and displayed as part of their activity as brokers-mothers. They carry what they take to be their natural mothering capacities to the public realm, to the realm of `social work', changing its primary location in the domestic sphere. The reproduction of mothering as a constitutive element of the practices of the women-brokers in a specific area of the political field --that of survival problem-solving-- is central in the production and reproduction of gender differences in politics: men do politics, women do social work; they deal, we are pure; they decide, we...

Women brokers see their public role as based on "traditional" roles: taking care of the household and developing domestic functions. They legitimize their role in politics by conceiving of it as that of a mother in a house larger than their own: the Municipality. They are supermadres (Chaney 1979). They become so, in order to be public Peronists: Being "public" and being "mothers" coexist.

In front of the gate where people wait to receive food, Susana performs her maternal role. Something she says clearly conveys that she is the only one capable of doing her job: "If I am not here, everything goes wrong" (Si no estoy aca, se pudre todo). Remarkably sensible, they also claim to be extremely indispensable; just like mothers.

Although they claim to obtain gratification from the act of mothering, they also --like every "Mother"-- "suffer" to the extent that their own health is always in jeopardy. Their "problem-solving" goes hand in hand with "sacrifice-making". Their continuous exposition to the problems people bring to them, their constant availability and their abnegation and hard-working are said to produce health problems.

"The three years (that I was director of "Social Action") were very hard. I was so tired, so stressed. It is a mental exhaustion, it's terrible." (Matilde)

"I am like that, you know...it affects your health, because twice a year I am in the hospital because my defenses go down, because of this vocation that one feels for what one is doing." (Susana)

The "special" quality of the relation they claim to have with "the people" takes --with motherhood--an extra turn. In the same way Nietzsche says that the priest is the one who "calls his own will God", the broker is the one who labels her will and her own practice the will and the practice of the "people". In case of Peronist brokers, the transposition takes an extra turn. It is not `in the name of the people' that they do what they do -what is known as representation-, but in the name of "their people", "their sons", "their daughters."

Matilde and Susana abolish themselves into the "people" (utilizing, moreover, not the more populist term like `pueblo' which presupposes its antagonistic term, but the more soft version: "la gente"). Thus --negating their hierarchical position-- they become the people; they become --as Bourdieu would say-- "Nothing". And "because I am capabe of becoming Nothing, of abolishing myself, of forgetting myself, of sacrificing myself, of dedicating myself-- (is) that I become Everything." ₂₀ They claim to be nothing, "I am only one among others...I am what people want me to be." "I am," Susana and Matilde seem to be saying, "nothing but a delegate of my people." Yet, those in the name whom I speak, are Everything, they are, after all, the "people". On this account, Susana and Matilde are everything, they are synonyms of the people .

Performing Evita

When I first entered the third floor of the municipality of Cospito, I came across a woman social worker who, upon my request, explained the myriad of programs of aid to the poor that the local government was implementing. When I told her that I was writing the social history of Villa Rene, she asserted; "It is impossible to understand what is going on there without knowing the way in which the neighborhood is politically crosscut" (the "atravesamiento politico"). Then, without my request, she traced the different key positions within the "welfare area" of the third floor of the Municipality, pointing out that Susana was the one in charge of the soup kitchens in Villa Rene and elsewhere. Upon my request, she identified Susana saying: "The blond woman over there, the Evita-type-of-blond over there". She then proceeded to imitate her flamboyant style, and then she added, "All of them (referring to the women working within the `social area' of the municipality) want to be Evita".

More than forty years after Eva Perón's death, this statement might come as a surprise, as an idiosyncratic manifestation on the social worker's part or as an anachronism typical of people who are `stuck in the 1940s'. Current neoliberal policies carried out by a Peronist government are said to be effacing all that what was left in populist Peronism. This `death' of Peronism is not new in Argentine politics. When Perón was ousted from power in 1955, Peronism was also believed to be dead. Yet, unions --Peronism's backbone and the main mobilizers of the Peronist masses-- gave birth to the "Peronist Resistance", and the eventual return of Perón in 1973. A year later, Perón died, and Peronism was again thought to be defunct. In 1989 however, the Peronist Party defied al beliefs about its demise by returning to power. "Menemismo" does not embody --as many seem to believe--another death of Peronism but a third phase of the life of a party that persists in demonstrating its resilience.

It is in the context of this `resiliency' and persistence of certain cultural elements of Peronism that I want to read the broker's public presentation. How are we to make sense of the central traits in the presentation of brokers' selves described above? The working-hypothesis I want to advance in final section of this paper is that through this performance, through this presentation of the self, someone else's practice and image is being restored, recreated, and reinvented. This `someone else's self' is that of one of the founding figures of Peronism: Eva Perón. In other words, the woman broker actualizes, re-presents and re-invents Eva. The Eva Perón they actualize is neither the image encoded in the Black Myth of anti-Peronism nor the Revolutionary Eva of the leftist Peronism and of the guerrilla groups of the 70s, but that of the "Lady of Hope". ₂₁

Besides the melodramatic content and soap-opera style of some of the broker's sayings, it is quite clear to someone barely acquainted with Peronist folklore that brokers' performances incorporate other's speeches. When confronted with the transcript of the interviews and their public presentations the reader gets the impression of being faced with "another's speech in another's language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way." (Bakhtin 1981:324) This "other" is the image of Eva Perón.

A "mission in their lives", "an early sense of outrage", a "born Peronist", a "vocation for the poor", a special --i.e. maternal-- relationship with them: all the elements present in the brokers' public performances are elements said to have characterized Eva's identity as an intermediary between President Perón and the masses, as the "bridge of love" between Perón and his people. Eva Perón was also born Peronist. She also claimed to have been born on another founding day of Peronism: 17 October 1945 (the day in which the masses took the streets of Buenos Aires to ask for the freedom of the then Coronel Perón). She also presented a innate vocation, a mission. In La Razón de mi vida, her ghost-written autobiography, her "past is subsumed under the flat image of what she had then become, and the character of her acts represented as something outside her personality, a `mission' mysteriously implanted rather than evolved." (Navarro & Fraser 1985: 5)

In that book, Eva --much like Matilde and Susana-- talks about an early "sense of outrage against injustice. As far as I can remember the existence of injustice has hurt my soul as if a nail was being driven into it. From every period of my life I retain the memory of some injustice tormenting me and tearing me apart." ₂₂

Her self-portrayal as a homeloving woman and as "one among others" was also a constant discursive strategy. "I am only a woman...without any of the merits or defects ascribed to me." "In this great house of the Motherland, I am just like any other woman in any other of the innumerable houses of my people.", she says in La Razón de mi vida.

She constantly presented her identity as collective, she was the poor, not just a carrier of their aspirations and needs. Eva incarnated her people, she --like Matilde and Susana and like many others Peronist brokers-- was one of them. She was all sacrifice and abnegation, stressing her "own martyrdom for the sake of the Peronist cause" and making explicit a "staunch refusal to take any course of action other than that of fatal self-sacrifice". (Taylor 1979:57) As she publicly announced a year before her death,

"I left my dreams by the wayside in order to watch over the dreams of others, I exhausted my physical forces in order to revive the forces of my vanquished brother. My soul knows it, my body has felt it. I now place my soul at the side of the soul of my people. I offer them all my energies so that my body may be a bridge erected toward the happiness of all. Pass it over...toward the supreme destiny of the new fatherland." ₂₃

According to J.Taylor, (1979) the Myth of the Lady of Hope constructs an image of an Eva who knew nothing of politics and who "found in social work a sphere for which her womanly intuition and emotional life qualified her perfectly. She dedicated much of this work to children, as would be expected from such an ideally feminine, thus deeply maternal, woman." (Taylor 1979:75). Eva Perón, according to this myth,

"had no sons and daughters of her own; she was mother to the children of Argentina. More than that, she was mother of the nation as a whole, particularly to the common people and the poor and needy of Argentina. It was maternal devotion that motivated her attendance on the poor, her work to raise money for her cause, her conferences with governors of the provinces, and her meetings with labour delegations. In grateful response, popular Peronism dubbed her its Lady of Hope and Good Fairy." (ibidem.)

In La Razón de mi vida, Eva says that the reason she had not had any children, was because her real children were those she protected --the poor, the needy, the helpless, the children-- "together with whom she joined in adoration of Perón, their father. Thus, pure, virginal, without sexual desire, she had come the ideal mother." (Fraser & Navarro 1985: 140).

According to the myth of the Lady of Hope, Eva's love for the common people impelled her to enter "social action." Out of passion, out of vocation, "social work" was not a job but a mission: her mission in life. The myth of the Lady of Hope asserts that: "She felt and expressed this devotion as interchangeable with, if not identical to, a motherly devotion." Her feminine nature was conceived of as a source of physical nurturing and of moral guidance. This is exactly what is encoded in the brokers' association of their political practice with mothering: nurturing and moral guidance. They are the ones who `feed' and `guide' the poor --Susana does this by being in charge of the soup-kitchens, and Matilde guides the youngsters of the block by treating them as her sons, "saying no, when necessary."

The accent placed in the "social" aspect of politics was also a central feature of Eva Perón's discourse. As she stated in El Hogar "More than political action, the women's movement needs to carry out social action. Precisely because social action is something which we women carry in our blood."

It is June 1948, Philip Hamburger reported in the New Yorker that the acts of Perón and Evita are based on love . "They are constantly, madly, passionately, nationally in love. They conduct their affair with the people quite openly. They are the perfect lovers --generous, kind, and forever thoughtful in matters both great and small." ₂₄ Of the many titles Evita had (the Lady of Hope, the Mother of the Innocents, the Workers' Plenipotentiary, the Standard-bearer of the Descamisados) the one she used most was the one that publicly declares her feelings towards "her descamisados" ₂₅ : "The Bridge of Love".

Dissolution in and passion for the masses, that was the key of Eva's public presentation. As she put it: "life has its real value not when it is lived in a spirit of egoism, just for oneself, but when one surrenders oneself, completely and fanatically, to an ideal that has more value than life itself. I say yes, I am fanatically for Perón and the descamisados of the nation."

A "woman of the people", a synonym with the people: her public presentation excluded all bureaucratic distance between her and "her people". According to Taylor, one of the most enduring traditions associated with the image of the "young blonde woman who received homage and dispensed favors seated at her desk" is that of the "stream of the innumerable poor with their individual problems." (Taylor 1979:41).

Problem-solving and sacrifice-making are also inseparable in both Matilde, Susana and the mythical Eva. As Taylor puts it, "In the world of the Peronist myth she [Eva] willingly and even happily undertakes abnegation and sacrifice, recognizing this as the only way to her true self-fulfillment." (Taylor 1979: 95)

Problem-solving and the negation of politics, the image of Eva Perón as someone who was "outside" of and "untainted" by "politics" was also part of her public presentation:

"...no vean a la señora de Perón o a la compañera Evita --como a mi me agrada que me llamen--, a una politiquera. Jamas haré política: tratare de formar un movimiento puramente al servicio del peronismo (...) Me dedicare pura y exclusivamente a mi Ayuda Social que tanto necesita la Patria y los descamisados argentinos." ₂₆

Problem-solving as a collaboration with the leader, the man.

"ni somos ni aspiramos a ser otra cosa que colaboradoras del general Perón. Ese titulo de honor nos basta y nos sobra (...) Ser colaboradoras del Líder es renunciar a si misma para seguir fielmente el ejemplo y las enseñanzas del general Perón." ₂₇

Eva Perón's deeds, sayings, image and the different myths that surrounded and constructed her, define what a "Peronist Woman" is supposed to be. The "authentic" Peronist woman, she used to say, "is the one who lives in the pueblo and who everyday creates a little bit of pueblo." In performing Evita Matilde and Susana, as many other Peronist brokers, demonstrate that they are "authentic Peronists".

The main characteristic of a performance is, according to Schechner (1985), the "restoration of behavior". In fact, performance means exactly that: never for the first time; it means: "for the second to the nth time. Performance is `twice-behaved behavior'." (Schechner 1985: 36).

The source of the "restored behavior" may be lost, ignored, contradicted and --as it is the case here-- re-invented, "even while this truth or source is apparently being honored and observed." (Schechner 1985: 35) Who is the Eva that is being "constructed" in brokers' practices? The Eva who helps the poor, not the incendiary Eva. The "distributionist" Eva, the one who erects not "bureaucratic distance" but a "bridge of love" between Rolo and the poor. It is not an antagonist Eva; it is the self-sacrificed, the martyr. The woman who loves her children, the poor; not the woman who pointed to the causes of their deprivation.

In this way, the performance and the original, turn into each other, modify each other, and construct a new original.

When Susana and Matilde present themselves before others, their performance incorporates and manifests the values that are accredited in the Peronist side of the political field. They incarnate the "authentic Peronist woman". As actors they are ideal-typical condensations of the way Peronism conceives of a woman in politics: self-sacrificing, hard-working, sensitive, assertive and, last but hardly least, maternal. In the sense that they highlight Peronist values, we can, following Durkheim, talk about these performance as ceremonies, "an expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of the moral values" of Peronism (Goffman 1959:35).

The "performance of Evita", the restoration of a "constructed" behavior, is not a purposely engineered or cynical action. This performance is --contrary to a theatrical one-- a practice in Bourdieu's sense of the term: taken-for-granted, unreflective, and outside the realm of discursive consciousness. Their practice is the embodiment of the way a woman should behave if she is going to be a public, Peronist woman. It is not that these women consciously intend to perform the role of "Standbearer of the Humble" as Evita defined herself. Taking care of the poor in a maternal way and in a way that, somehow, replicates the original "Lady of Hope" is something inscribed in the field of Peronist politics. There is no other way for a Peronist woman to enter politics and it goes without saying that if they want to "succeed" in any area of the political field, there is an "original" to be performed. As Goffman would have put it, the Peronist (woman) broker,

"will intentionally and consciously express [her]self in a particular way, but chiefly because the tradition of this group or social status requires this kind of expression and not because of any particular response (other than vague acceptance or approval) that is likely to be evoked from those impressed by the expression. Sometimes the traditions of an individual's role will lead [her] to give a well-designed impression of a particular kind and yet [she] may be neither consciously nor unconsciously disposed to create such an impression." (Goffman 1959: 6).

In other words, like playing jazz, like boxing ₂₈ , brokerage --in the case I am focusing on-- is a regulated improvisation: ₂₉ regulated in the sense that it is an activity constrained by the social relations in which it is embedded, by its position within the network of political relations, by the way in which these women see themselves and `read' their situation --`reading', or better, `readings' founded on socio-historically generated classifications of the world like "Peronist/anti-Peronist", "women's work/men's work"-- and, last but hardly least, by the way in which the "social programs" of which they are in charge are structured and gendered. The historical imperative of "mothering," of "care-taking" operates: as Diana Taylor notes <sub>30</sub> these women "perform Evita" not only out of affinity and admiration for Eva, but also because, as Eva Perón herself found out, there are few good roles for women in the Latin America public arena. But their practice is, also, an improvisation . Truly, the performance of Evita is part of the `oughts' inscribed in Peronism, i.e. if a woman wants to practice popular politics in Peronism there is only one way: Eva's. If you want to be a "referente Peronista" you must have some --discursive, attitudinal, aesthetical-- resemblance to the `original' Peronist woman. Yet, women brokers are not cultural dupes who mechanistically reproduce an original or who enact supposedly unchanging "gender roles". Different political and ideological orientations, different histories, different relations with other brokers and patrons, will impact in the way they perform. Some will enhance their long time commitment with "their" neighborhood, others their long-lasting and loyal relation to the mayor. Within the framework of historical imperative, there is always room for some "more personal" style.

Matilde and Susana are involved in this form of giving, they are committed to this Peronist way, they are taken by a role that `fits' them as second nature. Their lives are invested in the game of local politics and it is this game that fosters the illusio that they enact. Brokers --Goffman and Bourdieu would agree in this point-- are neither cynical agents nor --merely-- utility maximizers; they are absorbed in a game in which they believe. They perform a strategy that is inscribed in the Peronist practice since the time of Eva. Through this bodily, aesthetical and discursive strategies, brokers seek the satisfaction of material and symbolic interests --as much as they are impelled to pursue them as a condition of possibility of being a Peronist women broker. ₃₁

This performance not only presupposes and creates an arbitrary definition of Eva Perón's life and work --as would any other performance-- but also reproduces a distinctive --and also arbitrary-- definition of gender (here understood as the "multiple and contradictory meanings attributed to sexual difference" [Scott, 1988:25]). ₃₂ Being a Peronist woman in politics "naturally" implies taking maternal care of the poor, doing "social" (as opposed to "political") work and collaborating with the man who makes the decisions. Thus, through performance, brokers propose their own cultural construction of sexual differences in politics.

Conclusions and tasks ahead: exploring the "domination effect"

"The act of giving itself assumes very solemn forms...The giver affects an exaggerated modesty...The aim of all this is to display generosity, freedom, and autonomous action, as well as greatness. Yet, all in all, it is mechanisms of obligation, and even of obligation through things, that are called into play."

Marcel Mauss The Gift. p.23

It was one of Eva Perón's closest collaborators --Father Benitez-- who probably best captured Marcel Mauss' dictum: for him, the act of giving and the form of the act of giving are inseparable. The `form' is not an addenda to the `concrete' act of solving a problem, but constitutes it. According to Father Benitez, the real importance of Eva's work was not the distribution of objects (shoes, cooking pots, sewing machines, etc.) "but the gestures that went with these gifts. `I saw her kiss the leprous', he said, `I saw her kiss those who were suffering from tuberculosis or cancer. I saw her distribute love, a love that rescues charity, removing that burden of injury to the poor which the exercise of charity implies. I saw her embrace people who were in rags and cover herself with lice'." ₃₃

Again, the truthfulness of Father Benitez's statement does not concern us here; what matters is his insight concerning the interpenetration of the act and the gesture, of the form and content of the act of giving. Susana and Matilde know this, things are important, but what goes with them is as important as them. The benefits provided, the favors granted should occur with a presentation that does not `separate' but brings the problem-solver and the problem-holder together in an imagined community: the solidaristic community of Peronism.

In addition, the statement by Father Benitez wonderfully illustrates one of the central shortcomings in most of the litterature on political clientelism. Although some of the literature has paid attention to intermediary role played by brokers, the traffic of influences over those who control the goods and services these brokers exercise, and their position vis-àa-vis the clients, their `structural location' doesn't say much about their practices. The brokers are not just intermediaries --"go-betweens"-- but, as this paper contends, are cardinal figures in the production and reproduction of a "special" way of distributing goods, services and favors, in the articulation of the imaginary "bond of love" --an implicit ideology-- that relates brokers and clients. "Clientelism" and broker-client ties thus become ceremonial performances; performances in which actors "play particular roles, and their behavior can be seen to contain a variety of meanings and `messages"' interactions as "social rituals and etiquette" (Weingrod 1977:50-51).

Susana's and Matilde's sayings and practices --their words, aesthetic appearance, public gestures-- are there to be read. They are special signs that gain meaning in the context of the distributive practices in which they are embedded. They are, in the language of the linguistics, referential indexes or shifters: signs that do not have a semantic-referential meaning independent of the context of usage. ₃₄ The entity signaled here is the favor, and the signs stand for the history of Peronism.

Outside of a version of the history of Peronism, what they say and how they act --the `passion' they say to feel for `their people', the exaggerated modesty to describe their own actions, their `dissolution' in the `gente', etc.-- cannot be understood. Yet, what they say and how they act do not only replicate a `disputed original' --in this case, Eva's work and life-- but also create a new one. ₃₅

In performing Evita, brokers perform what Bourdieu calls the "oracle effect" ₃₆ by which they erect themselves as the synonymous with things and with the people, thereby producing a domination effect. In erecting themselves in synonymous with the goods delivered, they threaten the beneficiaries with deprivation: the continuity of the distribution of goods and services is presented as contingent on their re-appointment or re-election. ₃₇ This domination effect, however, needs to be explored in more detail. As the full force of a performance lies in the relationship it establishes between performers and those-to-whom-the-performance exist --i.e. the audience (Schechner 1985:6), it is the relationship between performers and problem-holders that has to be explored now in order to grasp the effect of the oracle effect.

Their "blond hair" is not "phony" (although their hair might be dyed), their "affected behavior" is not "fake", their "sacrifice" is not "inauthentic" --whatever `phony', `fake' and `inauthentic' means--: there are part of the way in which their political practice has to be embodied. This means that their hair, their way of using their body, the discourse of `sacrifice and love' could be interpreted as a performance once we remove from this notion any connotation of inauthenticity. They are "restoring a behavior', yet they are not simply re-enacting a "golden past". Performances might seem simple re-enactments; yet, they are "conjunctions whose center can be located not in any single time or mood but only in the whole bundle, the full complex interrelations among times and moods." (Schechner 1985:55)

Their performances link the past of Peronism --and specifically the history of Eva Perón as the "Lady of Hope"--, with their own present and with their --and Eva's-- "mission in life", with their "vocation": love "their" children, help "their" poor. In this way, the performance of Evita, joins first causes to what is happening now, in the everyday problem-solving. Thus, the performance is, "a model of destiny." (Schechner 1985:79)

Almost since they were born, their destiny --as what they are now, a councilwomen and a municipal official-- was marked. They present themselves to me, and to anybody who wants to hear, a particular sociodicy. Through performance, and even without words, they construct a sociodicy of their own place. By performing Eva they are constructing a teleology and linking their past, this present and their --and their "people's"-- future.

An examination of the "effectiveness" of the `oracle(domination)-effect', that is to say, the impact of the problem-solvers' public performance on the problem-holders requires an examination of the network of relationships --"the whole bundle, the full complex interrelations among times and moods"-- in which brokers construct strong and weak ties, hot and cold relations, with the problem-holders. This is the task ahead.

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Notes

*: Research for this project was carried out with a grant from the Janey Program for Latin American Studies, New School for Social Research. I would like to thank Deborah Poole, Robert Gay, Diana Taylor and Charles Tilly for their helpful comments. Back.

Note 1: Quoted in Navarro & Fraser 1985:152 Back.

Note *: The names of people and places in this paper are aliases. Back.

Note 2: As suggested by Robert Gay (personal communication) an important difference between brokers is that some of them are "tied" to a specific political party (or to a specific patron), as is the case with the punteros peronistas. As Gay shows (1990, 1994) the allegiance of the cabo eleitoral to a specific political party is much less solid. The "Peronist broker" that will be the focus of this essay lies somewhere in between two ideal types of members of an organization: in Pizzorno's (1986) (and Hirschman's) terminology, the "high-loyalty" member and the "identifier." For a review of the representations of brokers, caciques and other types of bossism in Latin American literature, see Nason (1973). Back.

Note 3: This does not mean that in rural settings patron-client relationships are not contested. See Scott (1977a; 1977b; 1972) for an examination of the way in which patron-client relationships aquire or lose legitimacy. Back.

Note 4: In this paper, I will elaborate on one of the shortcomings of the literature on political clientelism that emerges from the structural bent permeating a relevant part of the extensive literature on the subject, namely the tendency to treat the role of the brokers as merely intermediaries between clients and patrons. As it will be clear, brokers are not just mediators. I reviewed the literature on political clientelism elsewhere (Auyero 1996). See also, various articles in Roniger & Ayata (1994), Eisentadt (1994), and Gay (1995). Back.

Note 5: One of the few serious studies on the subject, T. Guterbock's Machine Politics in Transition. Party and Community in Chicago, shows that this is a wrong presumption. In his words, "the services distributed by party workers have no direct effect on the political loyalities of the voters who receive them." (xviii) Whether or not this conclusion can be applied to other settings is an open empirical question. Back.

Note 6: For a summary of voting studies in the US, specially the Michigan Model and the Columbia Voting Studies, see Knoke (1990:31-34) Back.

Note 7: See Lomnitz (1975) and Margulis (1982) for Mexico; Torrado (1985) for a general understanding of the notion of survival strategy; and Hintze (1989) for an application of the notion to food strategies among the urban poor in Argentina. Back.

Note 8: Both Matilde and Susana are the legal owners of the places in which the UBs function. Back.

Note 9: Yet, as noted by R. Gay (personal communication), "informal" access to public resources could be seen as illegal in more than one sense. Back.

Note 10: On the difference between "strong" and "weak" ties (time, intimacy, and emotional intensity involved in the relationships), see Granovetter (1973). Back.

Note 11: For a description of these and others ideal types of brokerage relationships, see Gould and Fernandez (1989). For a summary, see Knoke (1990). Back.

Note 12: Neither Goffman nor D. Taylor assert that performance is always a "conscious" activity. As it will become clear latter in this essay, I am attempting to theoretically link --and empirically utilize-- the notions of "performance" and "practice" so as to account for the doxic adjustment between the brokers' dispositions and the male gendered political field in which they act. Back.

Note 13: The "Plan Vida", as many other supplementary feeding programs in Latin America, exemplifies the "unequal burden" that women have to bear in the unremunerated maintenance and reproduction of human resources. As Elson (1992:26) notes, "In the context of economic crisis and structural adjustment, women are particularly valued for their ability to devise and implement survival strategies for their families, using their unpaid labor to absorb adverse effects of structural adjustment policies." Back.

Note 14: The maintenance of the impression fostered by the performance involves the over-communication of some facts and the under-communication of others. Which facts are over-communicated? All the ones that are related to the solutions provided to this or that kind of problems. A fellowship to attend a summer camp, a driver's license, the opening of a soup kitchen, the distribution of food in the former municipal building on a certain date: all this information is stated over and over again in order to foster the impression of an effective performance. "We solve problems" both Matilde and Susana say, "and we do it in our own way". As will be seen all the nitty-gritty details of politics (la interna) is often being under-communicated as part of their performance. Back.

Note 15: Long ago, R.K. Merton, in his functional analysis of political machines noted that politics, in the machine, "is transformed into personal ties...In our prevailingly impersonal society, the machine, through its local agents, fulfills the important social function of humanizing and personalizing all manner of assistance to those in need." (Merton 1949:74). Back.

Note 16: Diana Taylor (personal communication) noted that, Evita resolved a structural problem for Perón (as the brokers analyzed here continue to do for Peronism) by gendering the division of labor. As she notes in Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's `Dirty War' (forthcoming): "The General (Perón) could remain strong, tough, and rational, in charge of important matters such as the economy, the military and international relations while Evita picked up, and actually came to embody, excess --that which overflowed institutional structures and could not be officially mandated. Her passionate intervention on behalf of the poor, especially women and children, could be construed as `soft,' `maternal,' a complementary plus or add-on to the national well-being." Back.

Note 17: This does not mean that the relationship between broker and clientele is the only basis for re-election or re-appointment. The broker's history within the party, his or her relationship with the mayor and with other political patrons, are also important elements to be taken into account. Back.

Note 18: As De Ipola shows, there is a permanent ambivalence, a tension, a back and forth between inclusion and exclusion, that can be traced back to the discourse of Perón himself. According to De Ipola "Podemos parafrasear esa ambivalencia en los siguientes términos: `soy como ustedes, civil, pero a diferencia de ustedes soy también un soldado; soy igual a ustedes, puesto que soy vuestro hermano, pero soy también diferente de ustedes, puesto que soy vuestro hermano mayor, soy, como ustedes un trabajador, pero a diferencia de ustedes, soy el primer trabajador, etcetera." (1995: 142 emphasis in the original). The constant playing between being a "man of the state" and a "man of the people, the masses", of being different and of being --at the same time-- one "of them", "simply one among others" is something that appears both in the discourses and practices of Perón and Eva Perón themselves and in that of the brokers.(ibid. 145-147) Back.

Note 19: The association between the Peronist Party and a "great family" was a central element in Perón's own discursive strategies. See Bianchi & Sanchis, El Partido Peronista Femenino (Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1988) Back.

Note 20: P. Bourdieu (1991:211). Back.

Note 21: For an analysis of the three versions of the myth of Eva Perón, their differences and their similarities, see Taylor, J.(1979) Back.

Note 22: Quoted in Navarro & Fraser 1985:5 Back.

Note 23: Quoted in Taylor 1979:58 Back.

Note 24: Quoted in Navarro 1985:110 Back.

Note 25: Person's supporters came to be known as descamisados (shirtless ones). This was a derogatory label bestowed by the opposition to the Peronist masses. The value of the term was soon transformed and "adopted in proletarian pride as a handy variant of the French sans-culottes" (Navarro & Fraser 1985:68) Back.

Note 26: Quoted in Bianchi & Sanchis 1988:72 Back.

Note 27: Quoted in Bianchi & Sanchis 1988:73. For a full examination of Eva Perón's thoughts about the role women should play in politics, see Bianchi and Sanchis 1988. This work also documents the origins and development of the Feminine Peronist Party. Back.

Note 28: See Wacquant's numerous articles on this subject (1992a; 1992b; 1993b). Back.

Note 29: The idea of practice as a "regulated improvisation" is taken from Bourdieu (1977; 1990). See also Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) Back.

Note 30: Diana Taylor (personal communication) Back.

Note 31: Interest is here understood, following Bourdieu, not as a rational calculation product of rational subjects who attempt to maximize capital. Rather, interest is here defined in relation to a system of "objective potentialities, immediately inscribed in the present, things to do or not to do, to say or not to say, in relation to the forthcoming reality which --in contrast to the future conceived as `absolute possibility'...--putitself forward with an urgency and a claim to existence excluding all deliberation." (Bourdieu 1977:76). "Strategy," on the other hand, is understood not as an intentional and always conscious act but as "objectively oriented lines of action that obey regularities and form coherent and socially intelligible patterns, even though they do not follow conscious rules or aim at the premeditated goals posited by a strategist." (Wacquant & Bourdieu 1991:25). In other words, the brokers' presentation of the self is the enactment of a constant and persistent way of organizing the Peronist act of giving. For an interesting analysis of strategies, interests, and illusio for a "game" other than politics see, Wacquant, L. (1992, 1993). Back.

Note 32: The term gender, Scott notes, "suggests that relations between the sexes are a primary aspect of social organization (rather than following from, say, economic or demographic pressures); that the terms of male and female identities are in large part culturally determined (not produced by individuals or collectivities entirely on their own); and that differences between the sexes constitute and are constituted by hierarchical social structures." Joan Scott (1988, 25). Back.

Note 33: Navarro & Fraser 1985:126. Back.

Note 34: Silverstein (1976:27) describes them as "signs where the occurrence of a sign vehicle token bears a connection of understood spatiotemporal contiguity to the occurrence of the entity signaled." Back.

Note 35: Virginia Dominguez clarifies this double quality of referential indexes, this dialectic between presupposing and creating: "As such, terms of this type can be both presupposing and creative. They can presuppose aspects of the speech situation as perceived by the speaker --the existing relationship between speaker and hearer, the position of both speaker and hearer within the larger society, the particularities of the historical moment in which the speech event takes place. They can also create aspects of the speech situation that are not automatically presupposed, as in the demarcation of the boundaries of a social group through selective use of we and they in the discourse" (1989:69). Back.

Note 36: "The oracle effect, a limiting form of performativity, is what enables the authorized spokesperson to take his authority from the group which authorizes him in order to exercise recognized constraint, symbolic violence, on each of the isolated members of the group....I take my authority from the group, and that group authorizes me to impose constraints on the group" (Bourdieu 1991:213). Back.

Note 37: The threat of deprivation as a way of attempting to control the behavior of another actor is a central aspect of a relationship of domination as understood by Knoke (1990:4-6). As he asserts, domination is a "relationship in which one actor controls the behavior of another actor by offering or withholding some benefit or harm....one actor promises or actually delivers a sanction (reward or punishment) to an actor in order to gain compliance with commands. Sanctions may be physical events (a salary increase, a new highway, execution at sunrise), but may also involve primarily intengible symbols (redesigned flag, a benediction, ridicule on the editorial page). Obviously, domination can occur only if the dominee is responsive to the sanction.... Domination is clearly relational, because it involves one actor exchanging some valued (or abhorred) resource for obedience by another actor"(1990:4). Back.