Un caso de Arqueología Industrial

LIBROS:

por Andrew Graham-Yooll



sketch FABRICA LIEBIG a orillas del río Uruguay, 2008 


Memorias Obreras de La Liebig

          La era post industrial argentina se halla todavía en un intermedio indeciso.  Debatimos acerca de si hubo una etapa que aún se pueda reciclar a medida de las necesidades del país “emergente” o si definitivamente todo lo que se proyectó en los años treinta, cuarenta y cincuenta quedó en el pasado.  Hemos visto instancias del cine documental que tratan de conservar la memoria del Rastrojero Diesel, del avión Pulquí, de empresas textiles, de talleres ferroviarios y de algunas grandes fábricas que hoy apenas conservan indicios de sus manufacturas originales y para qué se usaron. 

          Por todo esto es importante registrar el relato histórico, la investigación académica y los esfuerzos personales, que buscan evitar que ese patrimonio que alguna vez tuvimos se pierda en un montón de escombros o se tape bajo el manto que impone la codicia inmobiliaria.  Es de celebrar la aparición, en Alemania, y con el sello de la Editorial Académica Española la nueva publicación de la arquitecta Adriana Ortea, Memorias Obreras de La Liebig, subtitulado Patrimonio Industrial Alimentario de la producción y el trabajo de la carne.  El tema de las grandes fábricas neo coloniales y la fuerza laboral que las hicieron posibles en las últimas décadas del siglo diecinueve y primera mitad del siglo veinte, han ocupado a importantes estudiosos como Mirta Lobato (Swift-Armour, de Berisso), Gastón Gori (La Forestal) y Santiago Senén González (historia del sindicalismo argentino), Mariela Ceva (Flandria), Olga Paterlini (pueblos del azúcar, en Tucumán), María Marta Lupano (fábricas y sus pueblos industriales), entre unos cuantos otros.  A estos, se agrega el segundo libro de la arquitecta Ortea (el primero fue Fotografía en Palabras – La Liebig de Martí, 2008), de nuevo en el tema de la industria de la carne y específicamente en la empresa británica Liebig, recordada por su “extracto de carne”.

           La Liebig’s Extract of Meat Co. Ltd. se instaló en Sudamérica, a fines del s. XIX, para producir alimentos a partir del recurso ganadero. Desarrolló sus fábricas de carne, dando origen a pueblos industriales, junto al río Uruguay y al Paraguay.

          El libro es una revelación de la historia de La Compañía; el auge y fin de La Fábrica; el progreso y riesgo del Pueblo Industrial, la ilusión y abandono de los trabajadores; y la innovación y permanencia de los productos y marcas de los alimentos cárnicos: extracto Liebig, corned beef Fray Bentos y caldos Oxo.

          Memorias Obreras de La Liebig presenta el proyecto de rescate e investigación de las historias de los trabajadores, marcando con esta presencia la ausencia en los vacíos espacios fabriles. El interés por “sacar el polvo” del Registro de Obreros de Liebig, encierra una acción de resistencia y disenso frente a la desaparición de  una sociedad de productores; donde lo producido no fue sólo un alimento sino un valor de identidad cultural, portador de pertenencia.

           La gestión cultural del Patrimonio Industrial Alimentario de la producción y el trabajo de la carne propone un cuidado equilibrio entre olvido y memoria, donde: ¡La memoria no tiene más límites que los que queremos poner!

            Cómo quedó dicho más arriba Adriana Ortea es arquiteca, egresada de la Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo, de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1986. Tiene un Master en Gestión Cultural, Patrimonio y Turismo, en la Fundación Ortega y Gasset, 2002 y es Miembro del TICCIH, Comité Argentino para la Conservación del Patrimonio Industrial, desde el año 2009.  Es Directora del archivo marca LIEBIG, espacio cultural para la conservación, difusión y puesta en valor del patrimonio industrial de Liebig.

Memorias Obreras de La Liebig, se vende únicamente, vía Internet:

https://www.eae-publishing.com/catalog/details/store/gb/book/978-3-8484-5505-8/memorias-obreras-de-la-liebig

https://www.morebooks.de/store/es/book/memorias-obreras-de-la-liebig/isbn/978-3-8484-5505-8

Successful update of a tragic classic

Buenos Aires Herald, Tuesday, 5 June 2012.

García Lorca’s Yerma,

by Andrew Graham-Yooll

for the Herald

For theatre-goers of a certain age, mention Federico García Lorca’s play Yerma (1934) and not a few refer to the dramatic performance of Spanish actress Nuria Espert whose company staged the piece in 1971. The show, though only 40 years ago, was ground-breaking because of the defiance entailed: that opening happened when the “generalissimo” Francisco Franco was finally admitting he could not outlive an elephant.  What people probably remember as much was that Espert (1935) flipped open her clothes on stage to reveal some very white flesh while the ancient monster’s censors were still around. That too was defiance.

In conversation with the actress Malena Solda, who plays Yerma in the new staging at the Cervantes Theatre (Av. Córdoba and Libertad, tickets at 50 pesos), she shrugged off the reference to Nuria Espert heard several dozen times. The drama opened last Thursday and plays Thursdays through Sundays during June. Try to see it, you will be richly rewarded. Solda, and director Daniel Suárez Marzal obviously, wanted to show that a new Yerma was possible and could still be relevant.  It is. Malena Solda, at times waif like for such a powerful role, shows a deeply distressed character trying to produce the child that a backward rural Spanish society expects of her.  García Lorca presents a woman who feels that her mission in life is to bear a child. The pain of her failure might prompt the thought that the subject is out of date in today’s post-yuppie society. It is not. 

Yerma, which in Spanish means uninhabited, bare soil, barren in the case of the young woman in the play, is married to Juan (played by Sergio Surraco), an ambitious sheep farmer whose father arranged their marriage. For her it is a loveless match.  She only wants children from her spouse, to reproduce like the other women in the village.  Juan cannot conceive, he is not interested in having children. Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) sets several timeless critical points: one, that it is the man’s impotence that thwarts the woman’s desire for a child. We understand the woman to be fertile, whereas the conviction in a bygone society – especially in a close, backward and remote rural group –  put the weight of failure to conceive on the woman, not on the man.  It is Yerma’s sense of honour that prevents her getting laid with passing merchants or minstrels in a gypsy fair, or even seeking the contribution of an old flame (Victor, played  by Pepe Monje) who had once made her skin tingle.  She wants her unloved husband to deliver. The clash within her is one of instinct versus repression. A woman without child is only a scrap of humanity, she says. She does not envy the other women in the village, she says, she is burdened by a sense of poverty, a feeling that clashes with the material comfort her husband offers her. In her frustration, Yerma kills her husband and in her fantasy the dead man in his infertility becomes her son. This scene, at the end, is difficult, because Yerma finishes off the lad rather quickly.
         Malena Solda is great, and there is no quibble, but she seems a frail figure and would have sounded better if she could have expressed her indignation at the unfairness of fate with greater force.

        García Lorca’s symbolism comes across strongly as he resorts to sense and surroundings to depict fecundity betrayed.  The rain is at once cleansing and a cause of fertility, as is the woman’s daily pilgrimage to the village fountain where her fingers draw ripples of life. The warm milk she wants to feel flowing from her breasts represent maternity and the flowers she sees growing in the garden celebrate absent joy.  Another point for debate is Yerma’s virtual rejection of the idea of children as a product of love: they are the biological product of her body, the right and duty of woman, a physical necessity.  To transpose Yerma into modernity inevitably prompts controversy over whether a woman, a couple, who do not want children are “normal” or not, a spurious argument, and whether or not those couples who seek the assistance of expensive fertility drugs, test tubes and rented wombs are right to do so in an attempt to counter nature’s dictates.

García Lorca read excerpts from his play for the first time in March 1934 in Buenos Aires at a PEN writers’ association conference and dedicated the reading to actress Lola Membrives (1888-1969).  The show opened with a low profile but with a great actress, Margarita Xirgu (1888-1969), in December 1934 in Madrid, where the piece was seen as an advocacy for maternity.  Later, after García Lorca’s murder in 1936, Yerma was taken to Mexico, where it played to the exile Republican community, who saw in it a political statement of rebellion more than the intensely human drama the author had portrayed.  Other great Spanish actresses who have been Yerma include María Casares (1922-1996) and Aurora Bautista (1935), which meant Malena Solda, at 35, was competing against a formidable first division when she opened last Thursday. She played well.

The play is an enjoyable spectacle in spite of the tragedy, with Flamenco music (Sebastián Espósito), dancing (Maribel Herrera, directed by Omar Saravia) and song (Geromo Amador), emphasizing the remoteness and the tradition.  In the 90 minute show, director Suárez Marzal, who trained long and hard in Andalucía where he learned about flamenco and the gypsy world, at times had over thirty actors on stage, most of them quite young, which adds to the challenge and the pleasure of success.  Do see Yerma, it’s good stuff.