Journalhttp://jfh.sagepub.

com/
of Family History

The Pan American Child Congresses, 1916 to 1942: Pan Americanism, Child Reform,
and the Welfare State in Latin America
Donna J. Guy
Journal of Family History 1998 23: 272
DOI: 10.1177/036319909802300304

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://jfh.sagepub.com/content/23/3/272

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Journal of Family History can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://jfh.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Subscriptions: http://jfh.sagepub.com/subscriptions

Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

>> Version of Record - Jul 1, 1998

What is This?

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
THE PAN AMERICAN CHILD CONGRESSES,
1916 to 1942: PAN AMERICANISM,
CHILD REFORM, AND THE WELFARE
STATE IN LATIN AMERICA

Donna J. Guy

The Pan American Child Congresses provided a catalyst for child-focused welfare
policies in Latin America. Originally organized by Argentine feminists in 1916,
the congresses soon attracted many physicians and legal specialists concerned
with topics such as infant mortality, child abandonment, and juvenile delinquency.
Although feminists insisted more than their male counterparts that Latin American
governments solve all the problems of children, both groups agreed in principle on
many issues. Furthermore, women’s views became evident when Latin American
male physicians met with their U.S. counterparts at a 1927 eugenics conference in
Cuba and refused to endorse highly racist and authoritarian measures. Instead,
they worked through the child congresses and with women from the U.S. Chil-
dren’s Bureau. This led to protective legislation for children as well as a hemi-
spheric Children’s Code in 1948, indicating a shift in focus from the obligations of
the state to the rights of children.

In December 1927, the first Pan American Conference on Eugenics and Homiculture
met in Havana, Cuba. Organized by the most authoritarian and racist supporters of
eugenics in the United States and Latin America, and attended by male representatives
from the United States and fifteen Latin American nations, participants discovered
that they were supposed to endorse a code on Evantropy, a concoction of eugenics and
homiculture, a method to study human development.’ Stunned by the proposal that
governments should classify inhabitants into categories of genetically &dquo;good,&dquo; &dquo;doubt-
ful,&dquo; and &dquo;bad&dquo; and use those labels to determine who should marry, reproduce, and be
able to migrate from one location to another, delegates refused to support the code.22
Many had two weeks earlier attended the Fifth Pan American Child Congress in the

Donna J. Guy is a professor of history at the University of Arizona. She specializes in Argentine economic
and women’s history Author of Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina
(1991 ) and co-editor of Sex and Sexuality in Latin America (1997), she is currently researching the history
of state policies toward street children In Argentina from 1880 to 1955.

Journal of Family History, Vol. 23 No 3, July 1998 272-2911

© 1998 Sage Publications, Inc

272

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 273

same city. At the child congress, male and female delegates had taken a strong and co-
operative stand in favor of using social workers and other measures to prevent social
problems from emerging within families of the Americas. Faced with the prospects of
viewing problem children as the simple result of heredity or the consequence of a com-
bination of biological and environmental factors that were often preventable, the male
physicians attending the Eugenics and Homiculture Congress clearly sided with the
views promoted by the Pan American Child Congress.3 Even though the Pan American
Child Congresses advocated certain eugenic measures and strong state involvement in
public health and social welfare issues, their moderate approach was infinitely more
appealing to Latin American child specialists than were those of dogmatic eugenics
proponents. Equally important, the Latin Americans had realized the value of studying
these perspectives in consultation with female specialists.
Pan Americanism has involved more than commerce, diplomacy, and military
intervention, but these other aspects are often obscured by the more visible forms of
hemispheric interaction. After 1959, most Pan American activity related to the milita-
rization of the hemisphere due to the Cold War. Prior to 1950, however, the activities of
groups such as the Pan American Sanitary Commission and the Pan American Scien-
tific Congresses were equally well known. So were the Pan American Child Con-
gresses, one of the most important and enduring aspects of Pan Americanism. This
important component of inter-American cooperation was linked to the child rights
movement and, through it, efforts to promote the welfare state in the Americas. Profes-
sional women, often but not necessarily feminists, initiated the project that was soon
taken over by their male counterparts. Eventually, both groups changed their policy
strategies to promote goals acceptable to all. This process began in Latin America in
1916 and continues to this day. The era of Pan American Congresses selected for
analysis begins in 1916 and lasts until 1942 when World War II began to shape new
concerns. The ways that Latin American women and men forged a child-focused

hemispheric movement are explored as well as the entry of the United States as an
active participant in these meetings. Finally, the desire to promulgate a Pan American
Children’s Code reveals fundamental shifts in the child rights campaign during this
period, particularly in the Ninth Pan American Child Congress in Caracas.
Three different women’s groups were at the forefront of the child rights movement:
the Pan American Child Congresses originally organized by Argentine women, the
short-lived Women’s Auxiliary Committee to the Second Pan American Scientific
Congress organized by elite American women, and the U.S. Children’s Bureau,
founded by female child welfare specialists. Professional men-physicians, lawyers,
and educators-were also associated with the Pan American child rights cam-
paigns. They soon dominated the Pan American Child Congresses, organized the
Pan American Children’s Institute (Instituto Interamericano del Nino), and partici-
pated in Pan American scientific meetings of various types.
While these groups examined and analyzed the plight of children, they also actively
supported the formation of welfare states in the Americas. At different times, the Pan
American Child Congresses have examined topics such as child abandonment, adop-
tion, pediatric medicine, the education of disabled children, juvenile law, and the
plight of street children. Furthermore, from 1916 until 1942, the main thrust of these
conferences was the construction of state mechanisms to promote child welfare. Sub-
sequently, they changed directions to emphasize child rights issues.

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
274

The Women’s Auxiliary Committee to the Second Pan American Scientific Confer-
ence, which operated from 1915 to 1925, augmented this work by writing to female
child rights specialists throughout Latin America to ascertain the status of public and
private facilities in the 1920s for children in need. The U.S. Children’s Bureau,
founded in 1912, became active in the Pan American Child Congresses from 1924
onward and thereafter helped shape new perspectives on both child rights and the wel-
fare state, eventually encouraging the Pan American Child Congresses to attenuate
their insistence on using the welfare state.
The first phase of the Pan American child rights campaign, from 1916 to 1942, tar-
geted not only the children but also their families-or their lack of them. Most of these
efforts presumed that mothers would assume most of the responsibilities of child rear-
ing, whereas fathers’ role was principally economic. The state was expected to lead
these campaigns through a combination of reeducation, direct aid, and subsidized
medical care, at the same time that juvenile courts and special institutions attended to
the needs of problem children. Later on, during the second phase, from 1942 to the
present, the emphasis shifted more directly to the children themselves, and new
assumptions emerged about their families and caretakers. From that point on, the spe-
cific roles of mothers, fathers, the state, and public and private charity were less clearly
defined, thereby encouraging both private and public solutions to children’s problems.
Recent studies of the rise of the welfare state in Europe and the United States have
noted that state policies were devised to reform the body politic in a way that affected
not only soldiers and working men but also women and children. They examine, for
example, the struggles between gendered groups such as the male physicians of the
American Medical Association and the female social workers of the U.S. Children’s
Bureau to control the development of federal child welfare laws. Feminist groups, con-
servative Catholic women’s groups, and pro-natalist groups each wanted to determine
how mothers’ pensions would be allocated in France. Women within the British
Labour Party fought with their male colleagues to bring about major changes in wel-
fare legislation designed to help all mothers, not just specific groups. Few studies of
Latin America have pursued the topic of the rise of the welfare state, and even fewer
have analyzed the gendered and age-related aspects of this process. An examination of
this Pan American movement thus expands the historiography of the rise of the gen-
dered welfare state to include not only specific Latin American countries but the entire
region as a geopolitical group.4 It also reveals new dynamics that led to a truly hemi-
spheric child rights movement.

THE ORIGINS OF PAN AMERICAN CHILD CONGRESSES

To understand the hope and optimism most of these meetings engendered, it is
important to listen to the visions of past child congress participants. For example, Dr.
Peter Goldsmith, U.S. delegate to the First Pan American Child Congress held in Bue-
nos Aires, Argentina, in 1916, emphasized at the closing session &dquo;the need to educate

children for tomorrow’s nations.... The Pan Americanism that we need ... must
spring from the hearts of children.&dquo;5 At that time, Goldsmith spoke optimistically that
children could provide the guiding light for hemispheric reform.
In 1930, the introduction to the published report of the U.S. delegates to the Sixth
Pan American Child Congress written by Katherine Lenroot, member of the influen-
tial U.S. Children’s Bureau, once again placed children at the forefront of international

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 275

relations and peace. This time, however, her observations were more tempered by the
realities of the world economic collapse after 1929 as well as the impact of World War I
and poverty on children. By then, children had become a measurement of modernity
rather than a source of inspiration.

Cooperation in safeguarding the health and well-being of children truly ... [is] one of
the soundest means of promoting understanding and harmony among nations.... The
close proximity of nations which modem means of communication and transit have
brought about, and the world character of economic and political life, make it impos-
sible for any people to remain indifferent to the conditions under which the children of
other countries live and the opportunities they enjoy.6

Although North American delegates were quick to link child rights to regional poli-
tics and world peace, the principal participants in early years were specialists from
Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, and Brazil. Thus, it was mainly the voices of Latin
American specialists that inspired fellow specialists to pursue the child rights agenda.
In fact, despite the efforts of the Argentine women to invite more American delegates
to the first meeting in 1916, no female American child rights specialist attended the
first three congresses, and Peter Goldsmith only arrived at the end of the meetings.’ It
took many years before U.S. delegates played a principal role, and that only occurred
after 1927.
Both before and after U.S. delegates began to shape hemispheric policies, Latin
American specialists were quick to advocate the advantages of Pan American reunions.
At the first congress in 1916, Dr. Cesar Sdnchez Aizcorbe, the delegate from Peru,
stated that such meetings were important not only for the Americas, but for the entire
world, because they expressed optimism that children’s problems could be solved.’
Teodelina Lezica Alvear de Uriburu, an aristocratic Argentine woman who repre-
sented the Sociedad de Beneficencia (the Society of Beneficence, an elite state-
supported charity) at the Third Pan American Child Congress in Rio in 1922, had a
more pragmatic perspective. She believed that &dquo;these meetings of different representa-
tives of the American Republics are quite useful because they allow one to meet many
organizations interested in children’s problems ... and enables one to note which ini-
tiatives or advances have been experienced in other nations.&dquo;9 Subsequent meetings
elicited a variety of responses from Latin Americans, and most of them were extremely
enthusiastic about the congresses.
The movement to defend children in a modem world was part of a worldwide phe-
nomenon. The international child rights movement had its origins in legal reform
movements in the industrializing nations of nineteenth-century Europe and the United
States. Their aim was to protect children against exploitative labor practices; provide
an alternative to orphanages through legal family adoption; and find a way to rehabili-

tate, rather than punish, children who broke the law. There was also an important medi-
cal component focusing on lowering mortality rates, the principal goal of the
nineteenth-century sanitarian movement. Efforts to reduce infant mortality were par-
ticularly important because these deaths limited the expansion of the labor force and
thus of capitalism itself. Yet, increased urbanization and industrialization without
appropriate sanitation and public health campaigns threatened to sabotage the gains of
the modern nation-state. For these reasons, individual nation-states as well as those
comprising geopolitical regions had a vested interest in finding ways to lower these

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
276

Table 1
Pan American Child Congresses

Source: Congresos Pan Americanos del Nine, Ordenacion sistemitica de sus recomendaciones
1916-1963 (Montevideo: Organizaci6n de Estados Americanos, Instituto Interamericano del Nino,
1965), 3.

statistics. This quest for ways to measure progress inevitably authorized new pro-
fessional groups- particularly physicians, educators, criminologists, and soci-
ologists-to offer their expertise to their governments. Child reform movements were
linked to feminist as well as specific child rescue groups, often religious or medical.
Soon these ideas spread across the world, and by the early twentieth century, they had
already fostered a cadre of followers among both women and men in Latin America. 10
Enthusiasm, while often facilitating reform projects, also created partisan views. From
a political perspective, inevitable clashes between secular and religious groups as well
as female- and male-dominated organizations frustrated rapid solutions to many prob-
lems. In Catholic countries, religious views conflicted with those of secular reformists,
and the efforts of women to contest the authority of male specialists were more prob-
lematic than in Protestant nations. All of these could also be seen as factors in the Pan
American movement. Despite these clashes, however, impressive consensus on many
issues enabled the Pan American Child Congresses to serve as an important spring-
board for discussion and a key stimulus to promoting child reform laws in the
Americas.
As seen in Table 1, during this era, each Pan American Child Congress convened in
a different country. The hosts provided the bulk of the scientific papers, all designed to
demonstrate national commitment to children’s health, legal rights, education, access
to social welfare, and the evolution of official policies. Often, these formal, highly
public, and erudite ceremonies served a legitimizing function for intellectuals and
politicians endeavoring to create a political consensus on social topics. Originally,
national leaders rushed to send high-ranking officials or attended the congresses them-
selves. This early political recognition eventually disappeared and subsequent meet-
ings were held without the fanfare, pomp, and ceremony attached to the early reunions.
Both before and after the congresses, child rights advocates used their professional
authority to pressure political systems to enact significant legislation that created juve-
nile court systems, changed criminal codes, devised programs to help mothers care for
their children, implemented child labor codes, made it possible to adopt children, and
generally raised national and regional awareness. Equally important, for the first time,
significant sums of money were set aside in national and local budgets for child

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 277

welfare. This influence can be seen when legislators in different countries invoked the
names of such specialists during debates leading to passage of reforms.’Specific

examples of how child rights politics affected the Americas can be found in the efforts
in the United States to pass and maintain funding for the Sheppard-Towner Maternity
and Infancy Protection Act in 1921. Concern for children also sparked a series of
White House conferences from 1930 onward, dealing with matters pertaining to the
family. In Argentina, after the First Pan American Child Congress, the national con-
gress enacted the Agote Law in 1919; the first child rights law there gave the govern-
ment more power to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents. The various children’s codes
passed by Uruguay and other countries in the 1930s were deeply influenced by the
interchange of ideas at these meetings, and the efforts of the Cdrdenas administration
to expand the education of both children and adults in Mexico in the 1930s were proba-
bly influenced by Mexico’s hosting the Seventh Pan American Child Congress in
1935. By the 1940s, the government of Juan Per6n argued that children were the only
privileged group in that country-something the Castro government in Cuba also
boasted in the 1960s.’2 This optimistic discursive and political process continued until
a series of events led to the eclipse of Pan American Child Congresses after World War
II by other groups including UNICEF.
Laws and codes advocated by the Pan American Child Congresses treated a wide
variety of children’s issues. Sometimes they referred to infants. This was particularly
true when dealing with public health issues of infant mortality and infant abandon-
ment. Other times, laws pertained to juvenile delinquents or to children at risk of
becoming delinquents. These included street children, youngsters working in unsu-
pervised jobs in urban areas, offspring from disorganized or immoral families, and
children influenced by immoral individuals, groups, or spectacles such as movies or
theater. The plight of orphaned children and the need to provide a form of legal adop-
tion for custodial families also preoccupied specialists. At times, they conflated and
confused the categories, particularly when they combined child rescue with motherist
campaigns, but they were always referring to children who had not yet reached the age
of majority and who were perceived to need some form of state aid.
As the American component of the international child rights movement, plans for a
Pan American Children’s institute began to take shape in 1919. Eight years later, the
Instituto Intemacional Americano de Protecci6n a la Infancia opened its doors in
Montevideo, Uruguay, under the stewardship of Uruguayans Dr. Luis Morquio, Dr.
Roberto Berro, and Dr. Victor Escard6 y Anaya. Eventually known as the Instituto
Interamericano del Nino, the Instituto published a Boletin to disseminate the latest
research and thinking about children in the Americas and helped organize the child
congresses. Initially, ten American nations joined the Instituto and named delegates:
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, the United States, Uruguay,
and Venezuela. When Haiti joined the group in 1949, all of the American nations sup-
ported this institute. That same year the Instituto was formally integrated into the
Organization of American States.’3
Membership in the Pan American Child Congresses was completely voluntary. The
United States, for example, had no official delegates in the early meetings, but always
sent someone. A few countries rarely appeared and even more infrequently paid their
voluntary dues to the Instituto. The child congresses are a part of Pan Americanism
that arose first among the Latin American nations, one that always reached out to the
United States as an equal participant, never a primary force. The story of how these

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
278

congresses began offers new insights on both Pan Americanism and child reform
movements in Latin America.
The First Pan American Child Congress took shape in Argentina after an earlier
National Child Congress was organized in 1913. The congress was presided over by
Dr. Julieta Lantieri, president of the feminist Liga para los Derechos de la Mujer y del
Nino (Women’s and Children’s Rights League). The Liga invited distinguished
Argentine male lawyers and physicians to head the sections on law, hygiene, infant
psychology, and assistance and protection for mothers.’4 Legal reforms were neces-
sary to tackle problems of street children and juvenile delinquency. Better hygiene and
greater understanding of child development would effect lower infant mortality rates
and better-adjusted children. The categories of assistance and protection of mother-
hood were perhaps the most conflictive areas since they revealed strong gender dis-
agreements as well as tensions between secular and religious institutions (schools,
orphanages, and hospitals). These sections, nevertheless, defined the basic interests
both women and men shared in the child rights movements at that time.
Various disagreements emerged during the 1913 congress that reappeared in the
Pan American meetings. During the education sessions, for example, representatives
of religious schools refused to debate the relative merits or demerits of public educa-
tion with anarchists. Instead, they wanted a return to religious education. At the same
time, socialists claimed that the problems of public schools had more to do with the
presence of religious influences. Some of these disputes were also rooted in the differ-
ent ways that male and female participants viewed the problems. 15
The issues of public versus private elitist charities and religious versus secular
influence in the child rights movement divided reformers from 1913 onward. Argen-
tines were quick to bring up the issue because in Argentina’s capital city of Buenos
Aires, the largest children’s orphanages and hospitals were operated by a quasi-
governmental agency, the Sociedad de Beneficencia. Controlled by powerful elite
women (the wife of the president was often asked to serve as president of this charity),

their class vision and their control over such a large number of infants and children, as
well as their links to the Catholic Church, were challenged by bourgeois feminist pro-
fessional women. They preferred to endorse policies that helped poor women keep,
rather than abandon, their children, and they wanted trained lay professionals to work
with these women. Male professionals, however, were more reluctant to challenge the
Sociedad.
Many of the physicians invited to the 1913 meeting, both male and female, were
advocates of eugenics. As Nancy Stepan noted, &dquo;Eugenists were especially concerned
with women because they took reproduction to define women’s social role far more
than it did of men.&dquo; While this enabled female physicians to advocate greater state sup-
port for childbearing women, male doctors often used this as an opportunity to suggest
state mechanisms to control, rather than aid, mothers. This tendency was tempered by
the realities of Latin America as well as by the influence of female colleagues. Eventu-
ally, Latin American eugenicist male physicians preferred to work with American
female social workers to resolve the region’s problems rather than impose a highly rac-
ist, bureaucratic model desired by male leaders of the U.S. eugenics movement.’6
Since Argentina provided the bulk of the scholars who presented papers at the First
Pan American Child Congress three years later, it was logical that such differences
would emerge once again. As before, Julieta Lantieri served as president of the con-
gress. The official program listed a series of themes similar to those presented in 1913.

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 279

Legal specialists identified four major topics: the organization of public institutions to
protect minors (Ministerio Público de Menores), the need to remove the legal ban
against paternity suits, the problems of delinquent and abandoned children, and an
analysis of prison regimes as they pertained to juveniles. A separate section on indus-
trial law explored various topics that promoted a hemispheric policy on mother and
child labor. The Hygiene Commission recommended the study of school hygiene,
physical education, &dquo;intellectual hygiene&dquo; (how to promote child mental health
according to age), and social hygiene programs to prevent tuberculosis, aid the work-
ing class family, and analyze the roots of child poverty. Educational experts identified
illiteracy, educating abnormal children, and nutritional needs of school-age children,
as well as environmental and psychological factors as topics that affect education,

including coed schools.

The mother-child link was examined by two groups labeled Social Assistance and
Sociology. The former addressed how to protect maternity and childhood through pro-
tective labor laws, the reduction of infant mortality, efforts to help abandoned children,
the elimination of child labor, and the formation of clubs for both mothers and chil-
dren. The latter examined the social factors that affected these issues including the role
of orphanages, poverty, state protection of mothers and children, the sociology of pub-
lic education, eugenics, and the value of temperance societies.&dquo; Unlike current defini-
tions of sociology, social work, and public health, specialists in each field participated
in these loosely defined categories.
Official findings offered recommendations to establish special schools for physi-
cally weak children, provide sex education for adults as well as children, and create
milk dispensaries that encouraged the provision of breast milk to infants. They also
advocated laws to reduce the consumption of alcohol and illegal substances such as
ether, cocaine, and morphine. Asunci6n Lavrin described the 1916 meeting as &dquo;a depar-
ture point for considering the state as responsible for the protection of women and chil-
dren. It reflected the concerns of social reformers in several walks of life and their con-
victions about the vulnerability of the ’weaker’ members of the social body.&dquo;&dquo;
The meeting also displayed radical ideas that potentially could thwart a united Pan
American child reform movement. The principal newspapers of Buenos Aires covered
the speeches and official visits of the delegates, and pictures of the organizers appeared
in Caras y Caretas, perhaps the most widely read middle-class magazine of the time. 19
What they did not cover were some controversial speeches, among them Uruguayan
physician Paulina Luisi’s exhortation to support sterilization for genetically and men-
tally unfit individuals as well as abortion on demand for married women forced to sub-
mit to the sexual demands of their husbands. She supported her views by arguing that
children bom to defective parents, as well as those conceived in violence, would never
be strong enough to endure the Darwinian struggle for survival. Although she believed
that the best way to deal with these issues linked personal responsibility to reproduc-
tion, her comments probably shocked both feminists and antifeminists. Her strategy
ultimately advocated women’s need to control their reproductive activities at the cost
of advocating state-sponsored eugenics laws.&dquo;
By the time the Second Pan American Child Congress, met in Montevideo, Uruguay,
in 1919, male physicians, legal specialists, and educators, mostly Latin Americans,
had already begun to entrench themselves in both the leadership of the congresses and
in the scientific offerings. Although Luisi presided over the meeting, her influence
over its direction was limited. First of all, the masculinity index of participants was

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
280

facilitated by the increased international participation in the conference, one that

resulted in male professionals being sent with greater frequency to give papers. Fur-
thermore, these men insisted that elite women who represented private and public
charities, people who would support the men’s position, be invited to participate.
By the end of the Second Pan American Child Congress, more resolutions had been
taken, all insisting on major child-focused reforms in the Americas. They included a
series of recommendations to help single mothers as well as working-class mothers:
(1) direct state aid to mothers with young children; (2) create government agencies to
help children and protect working women and children; (3) offer mandatory teaching
of scientific child rearing (puericultura) in public schools; (4) provide educational
facilities for blind children; (5) establish vocational training for boys and girls; (6)
advocate prenatal care; (7) demand obligatory dental inspections of school-age chil-
dren ; (8) create an international American children’s bureau (Oficina Internacional
Americana de Protecci6n a la Infancia); (9) undertake anti-infant mortality cam-
paigns ; (10) regulate admission to movies; and (11) form juvenile justice systems with
separate courts and laws for children.2’ Together, these recommendations demanded
the creation of welfare states in Latin America.
The Third and Fourth Pan American Child Congresses in Brazil and Chile, respec-
tively, met during the era when few Latin American women attended the meetings.
When the 1922 meetings were held in Brazil, only two women, a teacher and the head
of a children’s home, were members of the national committee. Chile sent Dr. Cora
Meyers, but neither Argentina nor Uruguay sent female delegates.22 Nevertheless, top-
ics similar to the first two congresses were offered and included a detailed report from
the Peruvian delegation on the status of orphanages, mothers’ homes, and charitable
institutions that dealt with children in the 1920s.23 There were also many technical
medical reports on children’s diseases and an increased number of legal studies. The
resolutions of this congress indicated both continuity and change. In keeping with ear-
lier meetings, the Brazilian congress continued urging the development of juvenile
courts, censuring of movies, and provision of state facilities for blind children and for
child dental exams. At the same time, it broke with tradition by explicitly praising the
work of private charitable institutions and encouraging the passage of specific child
rights laws, as well as laws mandating prenuptial exams and the mandatory teaching of
nipology, the medical study of infants.’
The question remained, however, how men could continue to bypass, both symboli-
cally and in terms of participation, women in the child congresses. After the Brazilian
meeting, it was decided that there would be no section on mother and infant welfare.
This did not mean that such topics were not considered. Instead they were subsumed
within the sociology and pediatrics sections of the meetings.
While men tried to control the Pan American Child Congresses, another forum for
female child rights specialists emerged from the Second Pan American Scientific Con-
gress. &dquo;In recognition of the enlarging opportunity for service of the women of the
Western Hemisphere, the Executive Committee of the Second Pan American Scien-
tific Congress authorized the appointment of a committee of women to plan and hold a
Women’s Auxiliary Congress in Washington, December 1915 to January 8, 916.&dquo; By
the time the meeting ended, the women decided to expand on their appointed commit-
tee and determine their own agenda. 21

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 281

Organized by Eleanor Lansing, the wife of the U.S. secretary of state, the Women’ss
Auxiliary Committee decided that child welfare would be its principal concern.
Lansing enlisted the aid of Julia Lathrop, founder of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, an
institution deeply admired by child rights advocates in Latin America. The committee
also organized Latin American country committees by inviting the most prestigious
elite women, as well as female child rights specialists. In 1916, the report of the
Women’s Auxiliary Committee published an article that stressed that forming chil-
dren’s bureaus was central to Pan American solidarity.26
The Women’s Auxiliary Committee continued to meet the needs of a female-
focused child rights group in the Americas by corresponding with Latin American
women to collect data on infant mortality statistics, clinics, special schools, and chari-

ties for children. They published this information in 1921. Then they held a second
international meeting in Lima, Peru, in 1924 while the Third Pan American Scientific
Congress occupied their husbands. This was the last meeting because it proved too dif-
ficult to get funding to send Latin American female delegates to such a reunion. The
group continued to gather data until 1925 when it disbanded. 21

THE U.S. CHILDREN’S BUREAU AND

PAN AMERICAN CHILD CONGRESSES
After the events of 1922, it appeared that spaces for women to participate in and be
considered an integral part of the more official Pan American Child Congresses had all
but disappeared. Yet, two years later, the Fourth Pan American Child Congress pur-
sued the topic of mother-child relations in a vigorous fashion, and a number of U.S.
and Latin American women participated in the meetings. Among them were feminists
Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane (Argentina), Amanda Labarca Hubertson (Chile), and
Rose McHugh and Katherine Lenroot (United States), who presented papers and gave
comments. Their talks were filled with the message that no national program to
advance the rights of children could succeed without promoting the education of
mothers. As Dr. C.P. Knight, a male physician who worked for the U.S. Public Health
Service, put it, &dquo;There is no other activity in the vast field of public health that produces
the most concrete and precious results as those that can be obtained by reducing ...

infant mortality,&dquo; and he linked that directly with the education of future mothers and
postnatal infant care. 28
Katherine Lenroot, Sub-Director of the Children’s Bureau and a social worker by
training, related the history of the Children’s Bureau and U.S. national policy toward
wayward and vagrant children and focused on pensions for needy mothers, as well as
education for these women, as key strategies. If there were no biological mothers, pro-
grams for fostering and adopting children, as well as orphanages, substituted for the
mothers. She concluded her talk, however, by arguing that the best policy to rescue
children was to enact preventive measures such as reducing mortality from accidents
and illness, promulgating workingman’s compensation laws, improving salaries,
reducing alcoholism, and insisting that parents take care of their children.29
Chilean specialists also noted the need to empower mothers as a way to promote
child welfare. Jose Maza F., Chilean Minister of Justice and Public Instruction, gave a
talk titled &dquo;The Need to Give Mothers Legal Control of their Children&dquo; (Necesidad de
atribuir a la madre la patria potestad) that accused Latin American nations of back-
wardness because they still limited legal authority over children to fathers. &dquo;We cannot

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
282

ignore the humiliating condition of mothers at the very moment when we are gathered
to procure the improvement in the situation of their children. Legal custody of minor
children should be granted as an inalienable right to widowed mothers.&dquo;3o
All these discussions regarding the need to help mothers take care of their children,
articulated by both men and women, created an environment that promoted gender
cooperation rather than conflict. The idea that problems could be averted through pre-
ventive measures, particularly by visits from social workers, was particularly appeal-
ing to leaders of the Instituto Interamericano del Nino. This strategy would ultimately
be more economical and could help defuse the tensions between state authorities and
private charities. Similarly, the theory that mothers, if legally authorized, could take
care of fatherless children by themselves promised to lower the costs of operating

orphanages or foster care systems.

At the Fifth Pan American Child Congress in Havana, Cuba, in 1927, a significant
number of U.S. specialists attended the meeting, probably due to the close proximity
of Cuba. Furthermore, the presence of many women was due to the influence and pres-
tige of the feminist movement in Cuba.3’ Lenroot pursued parenting topics further in
her presentation. Her discussion of juvenile delinquency prevention focused directly
on the need to always incorporate parents into programs for children at risk. To her,

prevention was far more valuable than subsequent treatment of social and medical ills.
If nation-states wanted to decrease the amount of juvenile delinquency, they had to
teach mothers how to take care of their children. This implied a privatization of treat-
ment rather than turning the children over to state care facilities as male juvenile delin-
quency specialists had been advocating. She also recommended classes in child care
for mothers of newborns and more specialized activities for visiting nurses.32
Later that month, the First Pan American Conference on Eugenics and Homiculture
took place. Instead of contemplating prevention, the attendees were confronted with a
proposed Pan American eugenics code that would have turned mothers into servants of
an extremely authoritarian state with the power to control marriage for genetic pur-

poses. Shocked by the tone and direction of this code, Latin American delegates
rejected it and ultimately passed twenty-seven resolutions, a number of which per-
tained to mothers and children. Nancy Stepan has argued persuasively that this meet-
ing represented a failed attempt to impose extreme eugenics policies on the Americas. It
failed precisely because the Pan American Child Congress offered a more moderate and
culturally appropriate strategy for dealing with both mothers and children.33
The attractiveness of the new preventive strategy became clear when Luis Morquio,
head of the Instituto Interamericano del Nino, attended an international child welfare
congress in Paris in 1928, where, for the first time, he spoke of the critical importance
of social work and the promise it held for resolving family problems.

A new element has been incorporated into welfare services and social defense, one
that today plays a preponderant role: Social Work, that is a new kind of independent,
autonomous service whose goal is to analize each case individually ... in order to pre-
vent damage or to cure it. This great institution which began in North American, today
satisfies the modem tendency which seeks more and more to subsitute prevention for
assistance. 34

Morquio’s views were reinforced in early 1928 when Lenroot published a summary
and critique of the Fifth Child Congress in the Bulletin of the Pan American Union, one

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 283

that was reprinted in the Boletin of the Instituto Internacional Americano de Protecc i 6n
a la Infancia. In it, she listed as one of several important accomplishments of the con-
gress &dquo;the recognition of mothers as the most important collaborators in any efforts de-
veloped to support children.&dquo;35 She also argued that it was time to limit the number of
themes and to dwell less insistently on the issue of juvenile courts. Instead, she urged
shorter reports on the actual accomplishments of such tribunals. Another important
recommendation combined sessions on sociology and legislation into one called
social work. Although this designation could have been a matter of simple conven-
ience, it afforded female social workers a clear entry into the discourses of the Pan
American Child Congress.
By 1935, the impact of the more activist U.S. delegation to the Pan American Child
Congresses could be felt. At the Seventh Pan American Child Congress, held that year
in Mexico City, some changes in the gender of the participants were notable. Although
the Mexican Committee was chaired by male officers, all physicians, Professor
Rosaura Zapta was listed as one of the official members of the education committee.36
Furthermore, the selection of Mexican specialists included many women who spoke
about the efforts of the Cdrdenas government to improve the health and welfare of the
Mexican family. Dr. Pilar Herndndez Lira coauthored a paper on the problem of non-
professionally trained midwives in rural areas (parteras emp(ricas); Professor Elena
Torres spoke on social work with infants and domestic hygiene; and Sra. Enelda G. de
Fox explained the Mexican policy of maternal education to protect children. Women
from other Pan American countries also participated. Sra. Mercedes Rodriguez de
Jinocchio explained how the Argentine Women’s Council dealt with mother-child
issues; Katherine Lenroot offered a paper that compared efforts to promote child wel-
fare in the United States with the resolutions adopted by previous Pan American Child
Congresses; and Sophonisba Breckenridge explained the how child welfare workers
were prepared professionally.3’ Congress participants, both male and female, pre-

sented a variety of reports about the state of training for social workers in their respec-
tive countries. This profession, traditionally linked to women, offered new authority
for females to speak about nation, region, and its impact on family dynamics.
Local and international events prevented the Eighth Pan American Congress from
being held for several years. Originally, the meeting was to be held in Managua,
Nicaragua, but the government there declined the invitation in 1937. Then Costa Rica
offered to hold it in 1939, but it was canceled due to the outbreak of war in Europe. In
1940, the Instituto Internacional Interamericano del Nino voted to invite the United
States to host the meeting. Finally, the congress became a reality in May 1942. 31
Lenroot was appointed chair of the U.S. organizing committee, and her fellow mem-
bers included all males, including the surgeon general of the United States and Dr.
Henry F. Helmholz, professor of pediatrics. This time, Lenroot was not alone as the
only female head of a national delegation. The chair of the Mexican delegation was Dr.
Mathilde Rodriguez Cabo, director of Children’s Assistance in the Secretariat of Pub-
lic Assistance. In addition, almost every national committee had several women as
official delegate and mostly women as individual delegates.39
In addition to the traditional themes of the earlier child congresses, issues of how to
protect women and children during wartime were brought up as special committee
topics. They included how to provide essential services for mothers and children in
wartime, how to protect them, how to deal with children after the war, and how to
develop inter-American cooperation. The topics were not selected by Lenroot but

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
284

rather resulted from a series of meetings involving the organizing committee and other
groups. They reflected the desire of the United States to ensure support for the war
effort by its neighbors, as well the specific interests of the traditional participants of the
child congresses.
Many of the resolutions that emerged from the Eighth Child Congress were related
to issues of war and displacement of families. While this concern served to link Latin
America with World War II, it also provided a foundation to explore an issue that had
been preoccupying Latin American countries for decades: the enactment of a compre-
hensive children’s code, one that could serve as a model for the hemisphere. Although
the idea of a comprehensive code appeared feasible only for countries based on
national legal codes, the fact that support for this idea emanated from the Washington
meeting meant that U.S. delegates would work with Latin Americans to achieve this
goal. In a section titled Plans for Children in the Post-War World, the Congress prepared
a Declaration of Opportunities for Children, which included the categories of family life,

health, education, responsibility and work, leisure time, and citizenship.&dquo;

THE ORIGINS OF THE PAN AMERICAN CHILDREN’S CODE

The idea of a children’s code had roots in the national experiences of several Latin
American countries. As early as 1916, two Argentine child rights specialists, Eduardo
J. Bullrich and Roberto Gache, presented a proposed code to the minister of justice and
public instruction. The code included regulations to protect working women and chil-
dren, prohibit unregistered wet nurses, insist on mandatory school attendance, and
limit children’s admissions to theaters and other spectacles. It also envisioned a special
juvenile court for children younger than age twenty, as well as special provisions for
juvenile offenders, a concept originally created in Chicago, Illinois, in 1899. Finally, it
suggested the establishment of a children’s council (Consejo de Menores), to monitor
state-operated educational, rehabilitation, and institutional facilities.&dquo; Such councils
had operated for many years in various states within the United States. This was just
the first of many proposed codes, none of which were ever promulgated by the Argen-
tine government, although specific provisions were eventually incorporated into laws
in Argentina and elsewhere.
The first two children’s codes, promulgated by Brazil (1927) and Costa Rica
(1932), set parameters for the emerging welfare state to regulate the labor of children
and mothers. They also dealt with street children and juvenile delinquents and, in the
case of Brazil, established the first juvenile courts and judges. Uruguay, the third coun-

try to enact such a law (1934), already had a welfare state structure, and the children’ss
code was intended not only to expand the parameters of state action but also to create
new state institutions.42 Sponsored by many of the Uruguayan officials associated with
the Instituto Intemacional Intemacional del Nino, it founded a children’s council
(Consejo del Nino) to monitor state child welfare activities. These included social wel-
fare, health, juvenile justice, adoption, children’s efforts to have their parents recog-
nize them, and legal custody issues.43
Dr. Roberto Berro, one of the leaders of the Instituto Interamericano del Nino,
acknowledged that as Minister of Child Welfare (Ministro de Protecci6n a la Infan-
cia), he sent his proposal for a children’s code to the Uruguayan legislature. He did so
because he believed that state services were disorganized, making it difficult to protect
children in need. Berro was subsequently named as head of the Children’s Council. 44

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 285

The Uruguayan children’s code continued the efforts to expand state control over
child rescue activities and maternal aid programs. Besides the Children’s Council, pro-
grams for prenatal care, mothers’ canteens, day care centers, milk distribution loca-
tions (gotas de leche), and homes for mothers and infants younger than three were all
placed under government supervision. Older children in need came under the protec-
tion of their own special agency, and the government strengthened its responsibilities
to provide for public schools and moral public spectacles. The law also created a new
juvenile court system for delinquent minors. 41
Several other Latin American countries soon followed the lead both of the U.S.
Children’s Bureau and the Uruguayan children’s council. In 1935, the Argentine gov-
ernment created the Bureau of Maternity and Infancy. Ecuador and Venezuela also
promulgated children’s codes in 1938 and 1939, respectively. A number of countries
worked to establish schools of social work. Most of these reforms also expanded gov-
ernment authority to regulate the lives of mothers and children.
Although Latin Americans favored the creation of a welfare state committed to
child welfare, other trends in child reform codes made their way to the Americas and
ultimately influenced the later direction of Pan American children’s code efforts. As
part of the European reform movement, in 1923, a Declaration of the Rights of Chil-
dren was enacted by the International League to Protect Children. The document ulti-
mately became known as the Geneva Declaration, and contained seven articles that
were very different from the Latin American provisions. Instead of focusing on the

state, these articles started out by focusing directly on the rights of individual children,
regardless of their need for government aid. The second article declared that all chil-
dren should be helped, but the family should also be respected. Poor, hungry,
orphaned, and disadvantaged children had the right to be helped, but no institution or
agency was defined as the principal provider for that aid. In this way, each nation could
work out its own social problems, and the children’s declaration would not interfere
with local political or patriarchal customs.’
The United States, in principle, supported the Geneva Declaration. Its advocacy
was supported through the White House conferences that began in 1930 when the

impact of the depression had already affected U.S. families in a deleterious fashion.
Unlike the early Latin American codes and their efforts to set up children’s bureaus
and additional governmental agencies, the United States already had a children’s
bureau, many states had children’s codes or special entities to deal with needy children
and families, and U.S. policy makers had strong feelings about the need for families to
reform to meet the needs of children, rather than having the government intrude. For
that reason, U.S. declarations concerning children tended to emphasize the rights of
children to be educated, cared for, and brought up in caring, appropriate environments.
A 1930 White House document, for example, started with the emphasis on children
rather than mention of the government.4’ Thus, the effort to project child rights into the
war effort reflected not only U.S. desire but also a long history of such efforts in Latin
America.&dquo;
How did male child rights activists react to both the growing influence of the United
States and the shift in strategy from the welfare state to sociological approaches to
family and child problems? In 1944, Berro described the evolution of the approaches
of the Pan American Child Congresses and how they had been influenced by gender
issues. He argued that at the turn of the century, child rights specialists concerned
themselves solely with the child. Then the idea of the mother-child unit (binomio

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
286

madre e hijo) emerged and was supported by early male public health specialists. Now
the basic unit of study focused on the family.
The emphasis on the family as the basic unit of study, according to Berro, had domi-
nated the Pan American Child Congresses. As for current trends, he noted that &dquo;the last
meeting in 1942 in Washington, took a more marked social perspective, without
intending for a moment to exclude other approaches, but only to understand ... that
social problems demand that such studies be undertaken, like all the rest, because they
are unquestioned pillars of a complete edifice.&dquo;49
The culmination of efforts to promote a hemispheric children’s code, as well as the
formal acknowledgment of the shift from state welfare systems to state support of pre-
ventive measures, resulted in the promulgation of a Pan American Children’s Code in
1948. Unlike the Uruguayan version, it focused specifically on the rights of children
rather than on who would surveille these rights. The prologue to the code argued that
each nation-state should adapt the code &dquo;to the constitutional region and social and cul-
tural conditions.&dquo;50 All children, citizens or not, were given these rights. They included
(1) the right to know the identity of their parents; (2) the right to be cared for, fed, and
kept in good health until they are fully developed, within an environment of moral and
economic security, by legally appropriate people, or in their absence, by the state; (3)
the right to not be exploited personally or through their work and to not suffer moral or
physical mistreatment; (4) the right to a full education that focuses on the formation of
democratic spirit; (5) the right to be helped and judged by laws, measures and special
courts; (6) the right to not be considered delinquents and, consequently, to not suffer
penalties for infractions they commit; (7) the right to be defended by the law without
cost; (8) the right to remain with their families except in cases where they are in grave
danger to their moral or material security; (9) the right to insist that they not be sub-
jected to practices or religious teachings that are distinct from those found in their par-
ents’ homes; and (10) the right to not suffer humiliation as the result of the circum-
stances of their birth. 51
To implement these rights, the code clearly identified the state as having specific
mandates to protect children, although families clearly had the principal responsibil-
ity. Equally important, charities and private initiatives were not excluded either explic-
itly or implicitly.

CONCLUSION
The enactment of the Pan American Children’s Code in 1948 marked the end of the
first phase of the Pan American child rights movement. It formally acknowledged the
shift from demands that reform efforts be conducted solely by the state to ones that
included programs to help families devise their own strategies for survival. This transi-
tion also refocused the spotlight from the government to the child. Subsequent Pan
American Child Congresses highlighted previous issues in new ways. The 1963 Twelfth
Child Congress, held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, for example, had as its principal
theme the antisocial conduct of minors in the Americas. This decidedly legalistic per-
spective indicated that the child, rather than the society, was the problem.&dquo;
Other factors contributed to the differences between the first and second phases.
The Pan American Child Congresses became less visible to the public at large, and

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 287

fewer dignitaries showed up to enhance the group’s prestige. Even though these rights
issues still resonate today in contemporary discussions regarding juvenile delin-
quency, adoption, religious education, and other issues, the deliberations of regional
experts were not well disseminated or published in most countries of the Americas.
Instead, they were issued in mimeograph form with limited distribution. It was also a
reflection of the declining influence of both the Pan American Child Congresses and
the U.S. Children’s Bureau in the postwar period.
The increase in biomedical funding for vaccines and medicines delivered by
UNICEF, combined with the outbreak of the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution, and the
Alliance for Progress were all more influential in producing policy decisions than was
the child congress. Pan Americanism took a new course during the 1960s, one that was
much more concerned with military than social matters. Therefore, at the next
congress, held in Quito, Ecuador, in 1968, there was so little interest in the congress as
a key forum that professionals sent papers that had already been published elsewhere.53
The failure of the congresses to expand their mission and funding support was com-
pounded by the new directions of Pan Americanism. The need to defend the Americas
against the perceived threat of the new Cold War led to a high degree of emphasis on
security treaties and anti-Communism. The Alliance for Progress plans to promote
social reform in the Americas in the 1960s were a direct result of the Cuban Revolution
of 1959, not of any child congresses. All social goals regarding children were sub-
sumed under the overview of the Alliance for Progress, effectively cutting out the role
of the Instituto and of the discursive process that had dominated child rights politics
since the early twentieth century.
This does not mean that child rights still did not resonate in political projects in the
Americas. The centrality of children-focused programs within the ideology of Juan
Per6n’s Argentina, the success of Head Start programs in the United States, the par-
ticular emphasis on children found in the Cuban Revolution, and the battle between the
Right and Left in Chile to lower infant mortality were probably all influenced by the
Pan American Child Congresses, but the congresses themselves were no longer seen
as a source of moral suasion.
At the same time, the impact of intensive urbanization, the economic instability and
indebtedness since the 1970s, and recent neoliberal projects have done more to erase
the memory of this state commitment to children along with the welfare state than any
other factor. For nations so concerned about their infant mortality rates and programs
to support needy children, the sight of legions of abandoned children in Latin America
and desires to reduce funding for mothers and children in the United States all attest to
the consequences of abandoning the hemispheric forum to discuss the relationship of
state and region to domestic issues surrounding family and children.
It also points to the dangers of defining international relations without a gendered
perspective. According to recent studies it has been precisely those groups that this
strand of Pan Americanism sought to protect-women and children-that have suf-
fered the most from the debt crisis and free trade policies.54 The failure to maintain an
inclusive Pan American debate that focused on broad social policy rather than specific
biomedical and military agendas has left a tremendous void in Pan Americanism, one
that may ultimately affect not only the region but the individual nation-states as well.
Nevertheless, the official organism of Pan Americanism, the Organization of
American States, continues to support and recognize the efforts of the child congresses

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
288

as well as the Instituto Interamericano del Nino, the organizer of these meetings since
1927.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The original version of this article was presented at the Rethinking the Post-Colonial
Encounter: Transnational Perspectives on the United States’ Presence in Latin
America conference held at Yale University, October 1995. This article was partially
funded by a University of Arizona Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Profes-
sorship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant. I would like to thank
Osvaldo Barreneche, Ricardo Salvatore, Doris Sommer, Ann Blum, and Gary Hearn
for their comments on this draft as well as on earlier versions.

NOTES
1. According to Nancy Stepan, the word homiculture was coined in 1911 by two Cuban
physicians to name the new science that examined the role of heredity in society. Nancy Leys
Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics," Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1991), 76-79.
2. Actas de la Primera Conferencia Panamericana de Eugenesia y Homicultura de las
Repúblicas Americanas celebrada en La Habana, Cuba, desde el 21 hasta el 23 de diciembre de
1927 (Habana: Gobiemo de la República de Cuba, 1928), 328-32.
3. Quinto Congreso Panamericano del Niño, Actas y Trabajos del Quinto Congreso
Panamericano del Niño , 5 tomos (La Habana: Montalvo y Cárdenas Impresores, 1928).
4. Examples of this genre include Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New
World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York and London: Routledge,
1993); Linda Gordon, ed., Women, the State, and Welfare (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1990); Gisela Bock and Pat Thane, eds., Maternity & Gender Policies: Women and the
Rise of the European Welfare States 1880s-1950s (New York and London: Routledge, 1991);
Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the
United States (Cambridge: Belknap Harvard, 1993); Robert G. Moeller, Protecting Mother-
hood : Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993); and Diane Sainsbury, Gender, Equality and Welfare States (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1996). Argentina is among the few Latin American countries
where scholars have examined aspects of this topic. See Maria Ines Passanante, Pobreza y
acción social en la historia argentina (Buenos Aires, Editorial Humanitas, 1987); Angela de
Castro Gomes, Ana Frega, Mónica Campins, Horacio Gaggero, Alicia Garro, Estado, corpora-
tivismo y acción social
... en Brasil, Argentina y Uruguay (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Fundación
Simón Rodríguez, 1992); Héctor Recalde, Beneficencia, asistencialismo estatal y previsión
, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1991); Néstor Feroli,
social
La Fundación Eva Perón
, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Centro Editor de América Latina,
1990); and Mariano Plotkin, Mañana es San Perón (Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia Argentina,
1993). For other Latin American nations, the few studies published to date deal with the social
security system. Carmelo Mesa Lago, Social Security in Latin America: Pressure Groups,
Stratification and Inequality (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1978) offers a historical
perspective on the rise of the welfare state in several countries. None deals with the Pan American
aspects. On Pan Americanism and gender, Eleanor Lansing, see Francesca Miller, "Latin Ameri-
can Feminism and the Transnational Arena," in Women, Culture, and Politics in Latin America
,
ed. Emilie R. Bergmann (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press,
1990), 10-26.

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 289

5. La Vanguardia (Buenos Aires), 17 July 1916, 3. La Vanguardia was a socialist

newspaper.
6. Sixth Pan American Child Congress, Lima, Peru, 4-11 July 1930, Report ofthe Delegates
of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 1.
7. U.S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Pan American Congresses, Women’s
Auxiliary Committee to the Second Pan American Scientific Congress (hereafter referred to as
USLC, Women’s Auxiliary Committee), Box 4. Letter of Dr. Julieta Lantieri de Renshaw,
Primer Congreso American del Niño, Buenos Aires, 23 August 1916.
8. La Vanguardia
, 17 July 1916, 3.
9. "Tercer congreso sudamericano del niño realizado en Rio de Janeiro," September 1922,
56 of clipping book, Arenaza Library, Biblioteca Coll (Argentina).
10. See Mary Ann Mason, From Father’s Property to Children’s Rights: The History of Child
Custody in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Valerie Fildes, Lara
Marks and Hilary Marland, eds.,Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant
Welfare 1870-1945 (London and New York: Routledge 1992); Richard A. Meckel, Save the
Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality 1850-1929
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). For Latin America, see
UNICRI, ILANUD, comp., Infancia, adolescencia y control social en América latina: Argen-
tina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Venezuela; Primer informe San José de Costa Rica, 21 a
25 de agosto de 1989; Proyecto de investigación: Desarrollo de los Tribunales de Menores en
Latinoamérica; Tendencias y perspectivas (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Depalma,
1990); UNICEF, UNICRI, ILANUD, Del revés al derecho: La condición jurídica de la infancia
en América latina: Bases para una reforma legislativa (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial

Galema, 1992); María Ines Passanante, Pobreza y acción social en la historia argentina: De la
Beneficencia a la Seguridad Social (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Humanitas, 1987);
Angela de Castro Gomes, Ana Frega, Mónica Campins, Horacio Gaggero, Alicia Garro, Estado,
corporativismo y acción social ... en Brasil, Argentina y Uruguay (Buenos Aires, Argentina:
Fundación Simón Rodríguez, 1992). There is a relatively abundant literature on Argentina,
mostly dealing with public health, the Sociedad de Beneficencia, and the Fundación Eva Perón.
11. The Boletín del Instituto Internacional Americano de Protección a la Infancia (hereafter
) recounts the many ways that the congresses influenced individual
referred to as Boletín IIAPI
countries to change their laws and allocate money for child rights activities.
12. For a general history of child rights legal reform efforts in several Latin American coun-
tries, see UNICRI, ILANUD, comp., Infancia, adolescencia y control social en América latina .
For the U.S. experience see Molly Ladd-Taylor," ’Why does Congress Wish Women and Chil-
dren to Die?’: The Rise and Fall of Public Maternal and Infant Health Care in the United States,
1921-1929," in Women and Children First, Fildes, Marks, Marland, eds., 121-132.
13. The history of the Instituto can be found in Dr. Victor Escardó y Anaya, "Veniticinco
años del Consejo Directivo y de la Dirección General," Boletín IIAP 26, no. 2 (junio 1952):
91-105.
14. Juana María Begino, "El Congreso Nacional del Niño: La ’Liga para los derechos de la
"

mujer y del niño y sus trabajos,’ Cara y Caretas (16 November 1912).
, 18 October 1913, 1.
15. La Vanguardia
16. Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, 12. See also chap. 6, "U.S., Pan American, and Latin
Visions of Eugenics."
, Buenos Aires, Argentina, julio de 1916 (Washington, DC:
17. Congreso Americano del Niño
Unión Panamericana, División de Conferencias y Organismos, Departamento Jurídico y de
Organismos Intemacionales, Serie Sobre Congresos y Conferencias Número 62, 1950), "Pro-
grama de las Secciones," 7-12.
18. Organización de Estados Americanos, Instituto Interamericano del Niño, Congreso
Panamericanos del Niño: Ordenación sistemática de sus recomendaciones 1916-1963
(Montevideo: OEA, 1965), 73, 77, 232-233, 268; Asunción Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
290

Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press, 1995), 109.
19. "El Congreso Nacional del Niño, La ’Liga para los derechos de la mujer y del niño y sus
"
trabajos,’ Caras y Caretas (16 November 1912).
20. Her 1916 talk was preceded by an equally controversial paper given by Dr. Emilio R.
Coni in 1909. For the Coni talk see Stepan, Hour of Eugenics, 58. Paulina Luisi, Algunas ideas
sobre EUGENIA. Trabajo presentado al 1er Congreso Americano del Niño, Buenos Aires, 1916
(Montevideo: El Siglo Ilustrado, 1916), 11-23.
21. Organización de Estados Americanos, Instituto Interamericano del Niño, Congreso
Panamericanos del Niño: Ordenación sistemática de sus recomendaciones 1916-1963, 17-18,
29, 32-33, 58-59, 72, 79-80, 101, 117, 183-84, 219, 256.
22. Pan American Union, Third American Child Congress. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 27-
September 5, 1922, Organization and Conclusions Approved (Washington, DC, Pan American
Union, Division of Conferences and Organizations, Department of International Law, Congress
and Conference Series No. 66), 25-31. There was one female delegate from Argentina who
appears to have been the daughter of one of the male members.
23. III Congreso Americano del Niño, Rio de Janeiro (25 agosto-5 set. 1922), Memoria del
Comité Nacional del Perú (Lima, 1922), 1-44.
24. Organización de Estados Americanos, Instituto Interamericano del Niño, Congreso
Panamericanos del Niño: Ordenación sistemática de sus recomendaciones 1916-1963, 44,
71-12, 101-2. See also Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics.
25. Bulletin of the Women’s Auxiliary Committee of the United States to the Second Pan
American Scientific Congress (February 1921), 4.
26. USLC, Women’s Auxiliary Committee, Box 1, Letter of Mrs. Robert Lansing to Mrs.
Julia Lathrop, 16 December 1916; Box 3, Miss C. E. Mason, "The Solidarity of the World’s
Womanhood as an International Asset," Report on the Women’s Auxiliary Conference, 42.
27. USLC, Women’s Auxiliary Committee, Box 3, Bulletin of the Women’s Auxiliary Com-
mittee of the United States of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress in Cooperation with
the International Committee 1 (February 1921): 21-33. The reports were published in English
and Spanish. Box 8, Mimeo, "Informal Report of the Women’s Auxiliary Committee by Mrs.
G. L. Swiggett, the Committee’s Official Delegate to the Lima Conference, December 24-
January 6, 1925."
28. Dr. C. P. Knight, "La mortalidad infantil y métodos para prevenirla," in Cuarto Congreso
Panamericano del Niño, Antecedentes, actas y trabajos del Cuarto Congreso Panamericano del
Niño (Santiago, Chile: Imprenta Cervantes, 1926), 3: 10-12.
29. Katherine Lenroot, "Cuidado de los niños desamparados en los Estados Unidos," Ibid., 4:
173-82.
30. José Maza F., "Necesidad de atribuir a la madre la patria potestad," Ibid., 5: 272.
31. K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Women’s Movement for Legal
Reform 1898-1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991).
Boletín IIAPI 1, no. 4 (April
32. Katherine F. Lenroot, "V Congreso Panamericano del Niño,"
1928): 557.
33. Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, 178-82.
34. Dr. Luis Morquio, speech, Boletín IIAPI 2, no. 3 (January 1929): 360.
35. Lenroot, "V Congreso Panamericano del Niño," Ibid., 557.
36. VII Congreso Panamericano del Niño, Memoria del VII Congreso Panamericano del
, 2 tomos (Mexico: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1937), 1: 7.
Niño
37. Ibid., passim.
38. Eighth Pan American Child Congress, Washington, DC, 2-9 May 1942 (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1948), 1.

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014
 291

39. Ibid., 3-16.

40. Ibid., 41-47.
41. Eduardo J. Bullrich, Asistencia social de menores, 2 tomos (Buenos Aires, 1919), I:
399-427.
42. Susan K. Besse, Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality in
Brazil, 1914-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 95; UNCRI,
ILANUD, Infancia, adolescencia y control social en América latina. Argentina-Colombia-
Costa Rica-Uruguay-Venezuela
, 275-76. See also UNICEF, UNICRI, ILANUD, Del revés al
derecho; La condición jurídica de la infancia en América Latina, Bases para una reforma legis-
lativa (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Galema, 1992).
43. República Oriental del Uruguay, Consejo del Niño, Código del Niño
. Ley promulgada el
6 de Abril de 1934 (Montevideo, 1934), passim.
44. "Organización integral de la protección a la infancia. Opiniones de los doctores Gregorio
Aráoz Alfaro, Roberto Berro, Victor Escardó y Anaya y profesor Emilio Fournié." Boletin IIAPI
18, no. 3 (septiembre 1944), 352-54.
45. República Oriental del Uruguay, Consejo del Niño, Código del Niño
. Ley promulgada el
6 de abril de 1934 (Montevideo: Imprenta Nacional, 1935).
46. "Los Derechos del Niño; Carta de la Unión Intemacional de Protección de la Infancia;
Promulgada en 1923 y revisada en 1948," Boletín IIAPI (June 1961): 109.
47. "Los Derechos del Niño, Declaración de la Casa Blanca, Washington, DC, EEUU,
1930," translated and reprinted in Boletín IIAPI (June 1961): 110-12.
48. "Organización integral de la protección a la infancia. Opiniones de los doctores Gregorio
Aráoz Alfaro, Roberto Berro, Victor Escardó y Anaya y profesor Emilio Fournié." Boletín IIAPI
18, no. 3 (septiembre de 1944), 374-77.
49. "Organización integral de la protección a la infancia. Opiniones de los doctores Gregorio
Aráoz Alfaro, Roberto Berro, Victor Escardó y Anaya y professor Emilio Fournié." Boletín
IIAPI 28, no. 3 (septiembre de 1944), 357-59.
50. Congresos Pan Americanos del Nino, Ordenación sistemática de sus recomendaciones
, 157.
1916-1963
51. Ibid., 158-59.
52. Instituto Interamericano del Nino, XII Congreso Panamericano del Niño . Recomenda-
ciones (Montevideo, 1964), passim.
53. O.E.A., Instituto Interamericano del Nino, XIII Congreso Panamericano del Niño,
Quito, Ecuador (Montevideo, 1968), passim.
54. Lourdes Benería and Shelly Feldman, Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent
Poverty, and Women’s Work (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

Downloaded from jfh.sagepub.com at Scientific library of Moscow State University on January 15, 2014