Sisters | POY Latam

A poetic look that describes who this project is about. The four sisters, my grandfather and grandmother. “My mother had to leave one day, back in the 50’s to look for another story, when my grandfather decided that his four daughters had to “make a living” in other lands… those lands were in another province: Buenos Aires. That’s why my mom went back every time she could, to where her affections and places were, and when I was born, we went back together.”

Photomontage. The footbridge that crosses over the railroad tracks is and was a meeting place for the people of Laguna Paiva. The image unites the past and the present. It places the sisters in their place, their town, as if they had never left. “First Ceferina, the eldest, arrived in Buenos Aires. She came married, as was to be expected at that time. A short time later my grandfather put Belkis, my mother, on the train; he brought her to Buenos Aires with an elementary school certificate, a shiny diploma as a typist, and a sad heart that did not want to leave the old lady. Then Elva, who was older than Belkis, but was the third one to get on the train with my grandfather. She didn’t want for anything to leave “Paiva”, as she called her land, but her soul was already split in two, so she went to meet her sisters. On the platform, friends, family and the dream of becoming a teacher. Some time later Teresita, the youngest sister, arrived to join the other three.

Photomontage with an archive photo. The square, an obligatory place to stroll in the evenings and meet with friends. “Teresa is the youngest of the sisters. Almost from another generation. The daughter of old age, as they used to say. She doesn’t like photos, or keeping memories, according to her it’s like being “stuck” in the past. I do not agree with the issue of photos, but everyone is free to want to forget what they want. When I was a child, I lived through a different stage of my grandparents’ life. They hardly spoke to each other anymore, he wanted to ingratiate himself with the only one who had not passed and suffered their presences and absences”.

Elva was next in age to Ceferina. Always with a frown on her face, sometimes she seemed angry, but I think she was just very thoughtful. “As a girl she was the best in school, she wanted to be a teacher, but she couldn’t continue with her studies, it was too expensive. In Buenos Aires she got married, and separated in less time than a rooster can crow. She had no children. Her ex-husband remarried. She never had a partner again. Some people remember that she sometimes greeted her husband by shaking his hand. Although her life was marked by loneliness, she carefully kept her wedding dress. Today that Elva is no longer here, the dress remains intact.”

Our name, the letters that compose it, its initials. They are part of our identity. I have tried to find out my roots by asking my mother and my aunts about my ancestors, and I get lost among so many paternal surnames. Do maternal surnames exist? It seems that no, all our surnames are inherited from men. Consequently, women have no surnames of their own.

Named like all the sisters after the saint of her birth, she was the oldest of the four. For that reason she had to study dressmaking, although she did not like it. She arrived in Buenos Aires married. Her husband worked in the penitentiary service, and had been introduced to her by her own brother. She had two children, named Mirta and Carlos (like her father). “Cefe” loved to read romantic novels, although my uncle didn’t seem romantic at all… on the contrary. When I went to his house I was always struck by how well kept the plants were, he liked them very much, and he also had everything super clean and tidy. She loved cats, she always had several, with names like Michi or Negrito. Cats are a great companion.

The hot afternoons in Laguna Paiva were spent at the lagoon. The whole family together. Kids and grown-ups together. Moments that remain in the memory.

My mom in Laguna Paiva. On our last visit together in 2022. “We are arriving. Our footsteps echo in the long hallway of my uncle’s house, and the smell of fresh morning and mate cocido tells me we are home. The surprise of arriving unannounced is the best part. The hugs, the joy of everyone. That was coming home for my mother, and for me, who at 4 or 5 years old, shared the joy of returning home as if it were my own.

When my grandmother died, my mother kept all the letters she had sent to my grandmother along with the letters she had received from her.

In recent times, gender violence, women’s inability to make decisions about their own bodies and inequality between men and women have become more relevant in the public debate. Analyses point to patriarchy as one of the fundamental pillars in the generation and naturalization of these attitudes through generations.

The project tells the story of 4 sisters (one of whom is my mother) who lived in Laguna Paiva, Santa Fe (Argentina) and who, forced by their father’s interest for them to get married and look for a job far from the town, left their home, their mother and their friends to start a new life in the city of Buenos Aires.

The life stories of the four sisters, marked by patriarchy, and the consequences of it: the uprooting, the distance, the search for a new belonging, the repetition of past dictates and the new life to which they made their way, with its strengths and weaknesses, and above all with the union that the four of them always had, are the themes covered in the development of the work.
This project included a trip with my mother from Buenos Aires to her hometown: Laguna Paiva, and research in the photographic archive and significant objects of my mother and aunts.

The aim of the project is to make visible and vindicate the journey of our mothers and grandmothers, their personal and silent struggle until our days, starting from the role of women in the last 90 years and reaching our days.

Understanding history in the present, to improve the future.

The new generations are very different from my generation, and from my mother’s, my aunts’ and grandmothers’. But I am sure that they were also part of this change that is being generated today.

It is necessary not to forget the road travelled, the different forms of struggle, and to make a back and forth between past and present so as not to lose the essence and the human, so that the effort does not fall into empty words and images.

SISTERS is a look at the past and present, focused on real people and events, with a poetic look, which seeks to add to a palpable understanding, that each person can feel it as their own.

The files sent are only a part of the project.