Read or listen to Argentina Baltodano Elvir’s full oral history. Original interview in Spanish. An English translation is also available.
The struggle of women is very great. There are women who are father and mother, who have to go to work from four in the morning. For example, women who work in the field work very hard. They get up at three in the morning to go work in the fields. To work hard because maybe they are alone, they are fathers and mothers at the same time, and they work for so little, what they earn is ridiculous. What they earn is too little, and they work very hard. All the women that you see on the street very early in the morning, selling. It’s so little money, it is ridiculous how little you earn when the expenses of a household are so great.
You come out with just enough money to, as we say here, buy the rice and beans. You don’t have the chance to tell your daughter, “I am going to buy you a pair of new shoes or new clothes,” because there is no money to do that. And right now, with school starting, some children attend school with almost nothing, maybe barefoot because they don’t have shoes, they don’t have a uniform. The situation is very sad. You see these situations all around. Look, when you go out, look at the poverty around you. It is very sad. The situation of many women here is very depressing. Because sometimes men are afraid of the responsibility of caring for so many children, so they decide to leave and leave the woman alone with so many children. Then she has to fight hard to be able to support her family.