From Barcelona to Buenos Aires and Beyond

From Barcelona to Buenos Aires [and Beyond]: The Millanes Sisters as Migrant Performers, 1880–1920 Kristen McCleary At four pm on August 4, 1906, the Sirio, an Italian passenger ship headed for South America, crashed into a reef as the ship captain maneuvered a shortcut through the Hormigas Islands off the coast of Cartagena, Spain. Dolores ‘Lola’ Millanes Borre (b. Barcelona, Spain, 1859–1906)1 a well-­ known theatre performer from Spain, was among the more than 200 passengers and crew who drowned that day out of 900 on board (Jáuregui-Lobera 2020, 1246). Lola’s death reminds us of the inherent dangers of transatlantic migration, one of numerous risks that performers and immigrants alike confronted as they embarked for new shores. In this chapter, I explore the careers and migrations of the most well-­ known of the six Millanes sisters, Lola, and her younger sister, Carlota 1 I put in birth and death dates and locations when the information is available. K. McCleary (*) James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2025 B. Szymanski-Düll, L. Skwirblies (eds.), European Theatre Migrants in the Age of Empire, Palgrave Studies in Performance and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69836-1_11 217 218 K. MCCLEARY (b. Barcelona 1865–d. Madrid 1924).2 Once stars of Spanish popular theatre, the two are little remembered today, a trait they share with most nineteenth-­ century touring actresses (Norwood 2020, 1). Lola and Carlota proved to be intrepid migrants who moved throughout Spain’s provinces, and crisscrossed the Atlantic venturing throughout the Americas during an era when travel was time-consuming, difficult, and inherently risky, as the opening anecdote exemplifies. The Millanes sisters often moved as a flexible unit, with at least two sisters touring together at most times. In Spain, most women might be expected to marry, raise children, and manage the domestic sphere—in one fixed location. By definition, then, the movement required to be a touring actress in the 1880s–1920s, meant that the Millanes sisters were transgressing the gender roles of their era. Tracy C. Davis’ reminds us in her study of actresses how intermingled work and family life were for actresses: ‘I do not see how actresses’ professional and personal lives can be separated; they are integrated components and must be recognized as such in the writing of history’ (Davis 1991, xi). This chapter draws from a wide variety of newspaper and magazine articles as well as playscripts to piece together how mobility shaped the lives of actresses and to surmise how their performances and mobility expanded contemporary understandings of women’s roles in society. News articles trace the movements and receptions of the actresses’ work while playscripts provide a fuller picture of the representations that they transmitted. If on the one hand, their lives on the move and their performances of diverse characters expanded conceptions of woman’s roles in society, the sisters also operated within and were privileged by an imperial system of race and ethnicity that placed whiteness at the apex of a racial hierarchy. Their lives reveal the complex and contradictory ways in which forces of mobility, colonialism, nationalism, gender, and, in the case of Carlota, motherhood, intersected in the Americas (Fig. 1). 2 The marital union of María Allue, a stage performer from the Aragon region of northeastern Spain, and Pedro Millanes, from neighboring Catalonia, produced seven children, five of who were performers. Two sisters, in particular, María (1861–1925, married name Pacello) and Teresa (1867–1933, married name Saavedra), often performed alongside of Lola and Carlota. Over time, the family networks grew to include spouses, children, nieces, and nephews. Lola was briefly married. The Argentine census of 1895 listed her as a widow. Many sources refer to her as having a daughter, Emilia Jordan Millanes. However, on Emilia Jordan Millanes’ death certificate she is identified as a widow of Joaquin Coss and her mother is listed as María Millanes, not Dolores (Death Certificate, Federal District, Mexico, Civil Registration Deaths, September 16, 1957, p. 341). FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 219 Fig. 1 Lola Millanes and Antonio Ferrándiz on horseback in the entrance of the Bullfighting Plaza in Valencia, Spain. Photographer: García Antonio, circa 1898, Biblioteca Valenciana Born into a family of performers, the sisters began their artistic studies under the direction of the composer, Francesco Pérez y Cabrero (1847–1913) in Barcelona. Lola first performed as part of a chorus in 1880. For ten years, she made a living in theatre in Valencia, Spain (‘Dolores Millanes,’ 1900). In 1886, the Spanish composer, Avelino Aguirre (1838–1901) contracted Lola to work with his acting company at the Teatro Nacional in Buenos Aires. Carlota traveled to Buenos Aires two years later (Bosch 1910, 444). She married a theatre empresario and musician, Manuel Caballé (b. Spain 1859–), and they had three children: María Caballé Millanes (b. Buenos Aires, 1890–d. Spain, 1976), Carlos Caballé Millanes (b. Valparaiso, Chile 1892–d. Mexico, 1954), and Emilia Caballé Millanes (b. Buenos Aires 1894–d. Spain, 1979). Having children while working abroad is certainly one way we can see how actresses’ personal and professional lives were intertwined. Carlota’s son, Carlos, for example, was born in April 1892, while Carlota was on tour in Chile. Being 220 K. MCCLEARY Fig. 2 Carlota Millanes in Colombia. This is a photo of Carlota portraying Angelita from the zarzuela Chateaux Margot, January 10, 1908, Wikimedia Commons pregnant and then mother of a newborn did not seem to stop her working for long (‘Desde Chile,’ 1892, 3) (Fig. 2). Of the family of performers, Lola was the closest to being an actual ‘star’ of the theatre circuit. Her career trajectory largely corresponds to that of the Spanish popular theatre genre known as the zarzuela, a form of light opera originating in Spain which had both sung and spoken dialogue.3 Argentine theatre historian, Mariano Bosch, refers to her as the ‘second best’ soprano to come to Buenos Aires in the latter part of the nineteenth century (1910, 419). Lola was not just a performer, however. In 1889, she is noted as being the head of an acting company in both Alicante, Spain (Boletín oficial de la propiedad intelectual e industrial 3 I use the terms ‘popular theater’ and ‘zarzuela’ interchangeably for this article. FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 221 1889, 4–5) and in Buenos Aires, Argentina (‘Teatros en ultramar,’ 1890, 3). She showed her star power in other ways as well and is credited as being the first actress to break a work contract because the theatre manager did not comply with their part of it in Spain (‘Espectáculos,’ 1903, 3). The authors of the play, El Mozo Crúo [The Cruel Waiter] supported Lola in her decision, pulling it from the Teatro Cómico and opening it in the Teatro Zarzuela instead (Jiménez-Prieto and Pérez-Capo 1904.) Spanish Theatre as National Export Reaching its height of popularity while Spain was losing its final colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam, Spanish popular theatre offers an intriguing example of what might be thought of as a form of ‘cultural imperialism’ but one which was propelled from ‘below,’ rather than as part of an imperialistic enterprise imposed from ‘above.’ Capitalism propelled theatre impresarios and performers abroad. In search of economic gain, they expanded Spain’s theatre industry across the Atlantic at a moment of Spanish imperial decline. The pervasiveness of Lola and Carlota’s travel was legendary. In a profile of Lola, for example, a magazine said that there was not a stage in the Americas she had not performed on (Boletín Fonográfico 1900, 1). It was a legacy of Spanish colonization that Latin American audiences had developed their taste for Spanish musical theatre. Technological innovations in the mid to late nineteenth century facilitated transatlantic immigration: railway, steamships, and the telegraph. In addition, theatre in South America, at least, coincided with the off-season of theatre in Spain, and if acting companies were willing to travel, they could easily extend their work season. Two distinct theatre circuits formed in the Americas: The most well-defined one consisted of the link between Madrid, Spain, Havana, Cuba, and Mexico City. South America had its own trajectory with Buenos Aires being the base from which performers would begin before moving to provincial theatres throughout Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and often to the northern countries of South America, as well. The port city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil had long been a main stop for opera companies who toured South America (Rosselli 1990, 165). While the large cities were the main destination of zarzuela companies, recent scholarship attests to how pervasively zarzuela companies moved throughout Latin America (Bissell 1987; Herrera Atehortúa 2011; McCleary 2017; Sánchez 2010; Sturman 2000). 222 K. MCCLEARY The zarzuela as a cultural export was made possible by the transformation and institutionalization of Spanish popular theatre as an industry in the mid-nineteenth century in Spain. The rise of urbanization and a concomitant demand for leisure time entertainment helped to transform the theatre of practice itself. Instead of four-hour performances, enterprising theatre practitioners wrote and staged short plays, ‘theatre by the hour’ which attracted a working-class audience who could afford to attend these plays which also coincided with an urban work schedule. These shorter theatre offerings flourished in Madrid where the output of popular composers such as Joaquín Gaztambide (1822–1870), Emilio Arrieta (1823–1894) and Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (1823–1894), helped fuel the one-act productions. By 1865, there were 296 theatres in Spain accommodating 150,800 spectators, and which offered 11,369 functions that year. The province of Madrid had 15 theatres, with seven of those in the city proper (Barreiro Sánchez 2009, 294). Scholarship on Spanish popular theatre has, thus, focused on Madrid which was the historic center of the género chico (small genre theatre, referring to theatre by the hour; the zarzuela belongs under this umbrella term). In contrast, the Millanes family came from Barcelona, a city which was oriented more towards Italian and French choral traditions. The Millanes sisters reflect a melding of the worlds of classical training in Barcelona with the business model of Madrid’s popular theatre (Young 2016, 22–23). It is within this context, that the Millanes sisters might be understood as migrant workers. Theatre performers modulated their migrations with the seasons: In December through March, performers would focus on European theatres, and from May to August, they would work on the other side of the Atlantic. Eventually, they made Latin America their base of operations but always returned to Spain: Lola died enroute to Argentina from Spain and Carlota died in Madrid, returning after having lived many years in Mexico. Spanish-Argentine Relations: Collaborations, Contestations, and the Gendered Dynamics of ‘Soft’ Diplomacy in Argentina, 1890s Lola and Carlota performed in the Americas during a heightened era of nation-building and nationalism. Arturo Berenguer Carisomo, writing about the Spanish community in Argentina, identified theatre as being one of the main arenas that the Spanish ‘radiated’ its influence in Argentina FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 223 (2003, 52). Indeed, theatre was more than staged entertainment; it was the main space wherein national identities were constructed and displayed through serving as places to celebrate national holidays, perform national anthems, and for the public to fete foreign dignitaries. Being Spanish in the Americas was not a neutral condition, however, and actors were often thrust into political circumstances over which they had little control. In Argentina, for example, the national anthem had lyrics that were derogatory towards Spain, their former colonizer. It was customary for acting companies to sing these lyrics on special occasions. This meant that Spanish acting companies were asked to denigrate their own nation by singing the Argentine anthem. Resistance to this tradition provoked audience members, often resulting in physical skirmishes in theatres. (McCleary 2002, 13–14). Reminders about the colonial relationship between the nations frequently appeared in the press, due to Cuba’s Wars of Independence (1895–1898) as well as the fact that the nineteenth century coincided with immense waves of Spanish emigration to Argentina where over 2,000,000 Spaniards entered the country between 1857 and 1930 (Moya 1998, 1). In the 1890s, a few theatrical trends came together on national stages, reflective of the often-contradictory way in which nation-building occurred. First, plays served as a kind of cultural propaganda, constructing and representing notions of national identity, often by using metaphor to symbolize a nation’s uniqueness. Second, national audiences increasingly demanded nuanced representations of their own gestures, accents, and regional types in the 1890s, no longer trusting that Spanish actors could adequately depict them. Three, there were also countervailing forces at play in theatre, with close collaborations between Argentine and Spanish playwrights occurring. Theatre practitioners from both of these countries viewed theatre as being an effective tool from which to pry open a relatively closed political systems towards a more democratic one and used theatre for the democratization of the public sphere. Lola and Carlota, like many Spanish actors abroad, served as unofficial cultural diplomats working amidst a Spanish exile community, one which was closely engaged with the political life of both Spain and Argentina. In Buenos Aires, much of these collaborations centered around Emilio Onrubia, (b. Entre Rios, Argentina 1849–1907) and his theatre, the Teatro Onrubia, which had served as political rallying point during a rebellion against Argentina’s oligarchic government in 1890. One of the most important and powerful Spanish immigrants in Buenos Aires, Justo 224 K. MCCLEARY López de Gomara, a playwright and the director of the Spanish community newspaper, El Correo Español, also frequently staged his plays at the Onrubia (1890, 1). It was around this time that a genre of theatre known as the zarzuela criolla evolved in Buenos Aires, where Spanish and Argentine playwrights worked together to adapt Spanish plays to Argentine settings. Three plays reflect this early connection of theatre and its construction of national identities. Spain’s El certamen nacional (The National Contest) (Perrín and Palacios 1888), La gran via (The Great Thoroughfare) (Chueca 1886) and Argentina’s De paseo en Buenos Aires, (Strolling Through Buenos Aires) (López de Gomara 1889), an adaptation of La gran via, to Buenos Aires. Lola had starring roles in at least two of the three plays. In each, actors personified national wealth and economic productivity by depicting a nation’s economic output, especially crops, like sugar and coffee, which had historically been dependent upon the labor of enslaved people, especially in Spain’s current colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. For example, Lola played the part of the mulatita [a mulata, or young woman of mixed African and European heritage] who sang the song, ‘tango del café,’ in the Certamen Nacional. The mulatita character works on a coffee plantation, harvesting beans. In the opening verse, Pancho sidles up to her, flirtatiously asking if he can help with her work. She brushes him off but later agrees to a coffee with him. In the tango del café, the character sings: ‘If you doubt that Puerto Rican coffee is the best, I will certify it for you. Anyone who wants to sample something good, should just come my way!’ The song became so popular in Buenos Aires that the Café Paulista, a local venue, invoked Lola’s name and the tango del café in an advertisement (‘Cariño…no hay major café,’ 1906, 60), substituting Café Paulista for Puerto Rico when quoting the song’s lyrics. In 1890, Justo López de Gomara adapts these lyrics to his own musical sketch comedy set in Buenos Aires, De paseo en Buenos Aires. He replaces coffee, with sugar, an actual Argentine export crop important to Tucumán, a province in the north. Lola plays the character Morenita [dark-skinned sweetheart]4 who personifies brown sugar. The character draws from 4 Morena is sometimes translated as ‘brunette’ in English but this inaccurately puts the focus on hair over skin color, which is not the meaning of ‘Morena’ in Spanish. Chasteen translates Morena as ‘dark-skinned woman.’ In this song, however, the diminutive ‘ita’ adds another dimension to the word, suggesting affection but through flirtation. In both plays, lyrics reinforce a sexualization of the woman of colour, the Morena, thus dark-skinned ‘sweetheart,’ ‘sweety-pie,’ or ‘honey,’ might all be more accurate translations of the word. FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 225 stereotypes about dark-skinned/mixed-race women in Latin America, who are depicted as overtly sexual and/or as sex objects (Chasteen 2004). Lola sings the following lyrics: Gentlemen, I am brown sugar Sweeter than any that ever there was born from the radiant and beautiful land of Tucumán And although I am somewhat dark It’s my superior ‘class’ ification That turns any man who samples me Into a glutton for more Oh! Yes, Because my sweetness gives such great pleasure Once someone brings me to his lips He continues to lick them for at least a month after. Morenita, Morenita! They always want to ‘refine’ me because I am so tasty The very best of Tucumán So any good-looking young man from Buenos Aires If he chooses me, He will have my sweetness For the rest of his life (López de Gomara 1889, 78) Both of these songs draw from racist and sexist tropes of the era, evolving out of the Latin American colonial system which established whiteness as a ‘racial’ ideal. This explains why Morenita’s dark skin color was positioned as a defect (‘although I am somewhat dark’). Giving insight into the race, class and gender construction of the era, the playwright deftly explains that ‘defect’ might be ameliorated via class. The lyrics playfully make this connection through an emphasis on ‘class’ and ‘classification,’ with the former denoting social class and the latter identifying the quality of the product itself. Morenita also exemplifies a stereotypical schematic of the dark-skinned woman in Latin American narratives where she is both sexual temptress and sexual object—a powerful myth which covers up the reality of women of color as victims of outright rape at times and commonly in relationships which reflected the colonial hierarchy where white men had sexual relationships with women of color, reflecting great 226 K. MCCLEARY differentials of power in the colonial system between the colonizer and the colonized (Wade 2015, 71–76). Historian John Charles Chasteen explains the power of the myth of the Morena in Latin American narratives: …by Morena I mean not a person but a lyrical motif, a motif that includes Negra or Mulata or Morocha or China or any other name amounting to Dark Woman. This Dark Woman is the American Eve because she stands at the center of the imagery of popular music and dance, prime representations [of] the region’s foundational myth. When popular dance is put forward to symbolize the special genius of Latin America—attractively vital and spirited, a persuasive example of creative cultural hybridity—the dancer most easily imagined is, without question, the Morena [my emphasis]. (Chasteen 2004, 201) Throughout their careers, the Millanes sisters and their daughters are asked to perform some rendition of the Morena archetype. This will include not only performances of mestiza/mulata/that is, of mixed-race women, but increasingly as Native American as well. Richard Dyer points out in his study of race and performance that white people have had the ‘right to be various, literally to incorporate into themselves features of other peoples’ (Dyer 2017, 49). This was certainly the case for the Millanes sisters and roles available to them which were linked to the racial and gender ideologies of a colonial system. I have not found any evidence that Lola was criticized for depicting mixed-race Latin American women, which indeed, would have been surprising for the era. In Argentina, it was national types not ethnic ones which were contested on stage. In fact, it was quite common for Spanish actors to play a variety of racialized roles and Lola was frequently lauded for her depictions of regional types and dances from Spain and Latin America. One newspaper complimented her for performance of the Argentine folkloric dance, the gato criollo, also from De paseo, which she delivered ‘with the good humor to which we have come to expect of her.’ (El Correo Español 1890, 2). She was just as convincing performing Andalucian flamencos as she was Argentine tangos. She combined Spanish regionalisms in Chateau Margaux, where her Spanish flamenco was delivered with a ‘Galician’ flair and her delivery of a malagueña (folk song from Malága, Spain) while strumming a guitar was also praised (El Correo Español 1895b, 3). Lola also knew how to cultivate ties to her Argentine FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 227 audience. For example, in a performance of the Chateau Margaux, set entirely in Spain, she extemporized: ‘I would die for Buenos Aires’ (El Correo Español, March 8, 1895, 2). In just five years, the political climate in Buenos Aires changed reflecting Argentina’s own national consolidation, the onset of Cuban independence wars, and increasing tensions in theatres about the dominance of Spanish actors and their depiction of Argentines. In 1895, Cuban independence kept questions of Spanish colonialism in the public eye. On Argentina’s national holiday of May 25, El Correo Español published an editorial explaining why Cuba should not become independent, for example (1895c, 1). In addition to the question of Cuban independence, theatre in Argentina entered a unique moment where entertainment was fused to the transformation of the nation’s national guard. Political reforms created six new national guard regiments in Buenos Aires, and theatres offered benefit performances as fundraisers to support them. To further support this effort, playwrights incorporated bellicose plots into their plays, cementing the tie between theatre as a public space for recreation as well as for nation-building purposes. Furthermore, Argentina’s Minister of War gave permission for theatres to suspend a prohibition on wearing military uniforms inside, allowing the national guard regiments to show up in full dress (La Tribuna 1895b, 5). If days of national celebrations in Argentina were increasingly tense, the additional layer of theatre’s support for the Argentine national guard ramped things up even further. Thus, May 25 and July 9, which commemorated the establishment of self-­ rule (May 25, 1810) and the declaration of independence from Spain (July 9, 1816) respectively, turned into riotous scenes in 1895. In order to contextualize what happens in theatres and how it relates to the Millanes sisters, it is important to understand the contours of the gender and social class ideology of the era. In Argentina, two social types set the standard for masculinity: caudillos [political strong men] and gauchos [cowboys—a distinct social group in the mid-nineteenth century] (Slatta 1992, 15). Caudillos were charismatic figures, who used exaggerated notions of maleness (sexual prowess, political relations based on submission and dominance, and the use of violence) to assert their will over others (Wolf, Hanson, and Hamill 1992, 62–63). Gauchos emphasized similar traits, but they did not do so from a position of political or social power. The Argentine cowboy’s nomadic way of life stressed individual freedom and feats of physical prowess, including dexterity with weaponry, related to his work with cattle and livestock on open plains. There was a 228 K. MCCLEARY particularly close connection between Argentine national identity and these masculine types at the end of the nineteenth century (McCleary 2013, 76). In the world of theatre, these tropes were frequently expressed in one of the most popular plays of the era, Eduardo Gutiérrez’ Juan Moreira, which was based on a true story. Moreira was unjustly persecuted by the law. He ended up being killed, stabbed in the back by the authorities. Such a cowardly act was the result of a corrupt legal system, one which reflected the modern era, replacing the gaucho’s oral culture and codes of honor with that of written ones (Gutiérrez and Podestá 2008, 122–125 and Gutiérrez 2014). In Buenos Aires, elite young men—whose life had none of the hardships of an actual gaucho—absorbed and expressed some of the traits of the Argentine cowboy, knowing that unlike Moreira, they would suffer no repercussions for their performative acts of bravura. They referred to themselves as ‘Indians’ and the press also referred to them as the ‘indiada’ [‘Indian’ horde], reflecting stereotypes generated by Argentina’s own history where two campaigns, Juan Manuel de Rosas’ Desert Campaign (1833–1834), and Julio Roca’s Conquest of the Desert (1878–1885) sought to eradicate threats to the state’s expansion by eliminating Indigenous peoples through warfare (Slatta 1992, 126–31). The public nature of theatres was especially appealing to these elite young men giving them an audience for their exercises in social power (Bosch 1910, 451–454). A Spanish actor, Diego Campos, who had worked with the Millanes sisters since at least 1892, became the target of their wrath. On May 25, the company tried to avoid singing the Argentine national anthem, by appointing just one person to do so. The audience demanded that the entire company participate in the singing. Campo came to the stage and there are conflicting accounts of what happened next with El Correo Español (May 27 and 28, 1895d, 2) defending him and La Tribuna, (1895a, 2) condemning his actions relating to his handling of the Argentine flag and streamers. On May 26, the ‘indiada,’ returned to the theatre, sitting near the stage so they might throw eggs and chairs at him. Apparently, the chairs met their mark, wounding him badly enough so that he missed a few subsequent performances. Campo, apparently attempting to calm the situation and likely in collusion with López de Gomara, wrote a letter explaining how his actions had been misinterpreted which was then printed in El Correo Español (May 27 and 28, 1895d, 2). FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 229 A month after these events, Ezequiel Soria’s (b. Argentina, 1873–1936) play, Amor y Lucha (Love and War), debuted at the Olimpo theater (Soria 1899). Soria drew his plot from actual border disputes between Chile and Argentina to create a fictionalized account of a war between the two nations, in which patriotism and nationalism run high (Sillone 2018). Lola plays the part of Raúl—an iconic Argentine gaucho who, according to the script, also sings in the ‘national’ style of Argentina, suggesting that great delicacy was required to play this role given the political volatility of the moment (Soria 1899, 8). I assume that this curious casting decision was made because Campo—the natural choice to play Raúl—had become a lightning rod drawing the ‘indiada’ to theatres and sowing chaos there. Amor y Lucha tells the story of the gaucho Raúl and his love interest, Julia, played by Carlota, set two years into the future with the play imagining that the border conflict has erupted into war. Casting Carlota as Raúl’s love interest was yet another puzzling choice. It meant that Lola and Carlota—both well-known as actresses and as sisters—would have romantic scenes together. The play focuses on Raúl and Julia’s romance and Raúl’s jealousy towards Julia after he sees her in intimate conversation with another man, Tuper. It turns out that Julia and Tuper are half-­ siblings, but due to a complex backstory, their relationship has been kept secret. Acting on his jealous suspicions, Raúl seeks out Tuper, challenging him to a duel—as would be expected of a gaucho in such a situation. Raúl is about to kill Tuper, when Julia arrives and tells him the truth about their relationship. They make amends, Raúl returns to battle but is tragically killed. Julia, who has followed Raúl to the battlefield, takes up arms in his stead (Soria 1899, 12, 35–37). Lola and Carlota were lauded for their performances and, since they were in most of the scenes of the play, for its success (La Tribuna 1895c, 3). Both sisters perform non-traditional gender roles in the play. I am most intrigued by Lola, a Spanish woman, depicting the macho Argentine gaucho and how that was apparently acceptable to an Argentine audience. Lola’s ability to perform Argentine types well, to cultivate the Argentine audience, allowed her to execute the role of a soldier/gaucho without drawing attention to the unorthodox casting. Because Lola was also the co-director of the acting company that performed Amor y Lucha, it is clear she had achieved a high level of respect and legitimacy, another measure of freedom allowing her to depict Raúl without too much scrutiny (Pellettieri 2001, 43). Carlota’s depiction of a woman taking up arms in battle was 230 K. MCCLEARY also atypical for an era where women had no role in state affairs—not through the vote nor through military service. Was it so common for women to take on male roles that play critics did not even mention it as a novelty? Women often did perform male characters in Spanish popular theatre. Lola and Carlota both played the altar boy in El monaguillo (The Altar Boy), Lola was the devil in El diablo en el Molino [The Devil in the Windmill], and the king in the zarzuela, El rey que rabió [The King Who Went Mad] (El Cascabel, February 3, 1892 and El Cascabel, January 12, 1892). Carlota played the dauphin in La tragedia de Pierrot [The Tragedy of Pierrot] (Páginas Ilustradas 1907b, 2410). Still, playing the role of Raúl in Amor y lucha, was quite a different enterprise since it was a tragedy where transgender roles were not as frequent as they were in comedies. Arguably 1895 presented a unique moment where the construction of masculinity was so volatile given the context of nation building and the decline of Spain’s power in the Americas that it became easier for Spanish women to play male Argentine characters than for Spanish men to do so. Such representations also created opportunities for audience members to see women in dynamic roles that were undefined by strict gender codes. These types of stage representations were an early step towards accepting actual women in non-traditional social roles. Issues related to masculinity and the performance of nationality followed Lola to Brazil where, once again, she found herself in fraught terrain related to the representations of national types—only here the tensions focused largely on how the play depicted Brazilians. In 1894, the Argentine playwright, Nicolás Granada, wrote a play, Juca-Tigre, based on contemporaneous events related to a caudillo who fought in the civil war in Brazil between 1893–1895 (Granada 1896). In 1896, two years after the play had first been performed in Argentina, Granada accompanied the Pastor Spanish Company by steam vapor to Rio de Janeiro. Lola was part of this company. Upon arrival, the company was met with an organized protest trying to block their disembarkation, led by students from Brazil’s military academy who interpreted the play as mocking Brazilian soldiers. Actors had to blend in with other passengers in order to safely exit the ship. To resolve the conflict, Brazilian police recommended that the women of the acting company take the lead on defusing the situation (Granada 1896, 9). The request to have women be lead negotiators is reminiscent of the reason Lola played the role of a macho gaucho: women could de-escalate tensions that would be impossible for men to do so given the codes of masculinity of the era. Apparently, this did not happen, and the acting FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 231 company returned to Buenos Aires without performing the controversial play in Rio de Janeiro. Carlota and Lola commonly performed in roles designated as male, even though it would be their daughters and nieces who are later credited with breaking ‘gender’ barriers: Teresa Saavedra (b. Spain, 1894–1984, born to Teresa Millanes Allue (1867–1933)), has been credited as being the first woman in Europe to perform on stage dressed in a tuxedo—a curious detail which must have carried meaning at the time—in El príncipe carnaval [The Carnival Prince] (1920) (‘Ha muerto Teresita Saavedra,’ 1894). The press has also highlighted the importance of María Caballé, Carlota’s daughter, for transgressing gender boundaries when she was photographed as a ‘lady’ bullfighter, appearing before the Prince of Wales in 1927 (Smith Archive 1927, Alamy Stock Photo). The gendered landscapes of the twentieth century rendered something which had previously been mundane—women dressing as men on stage to perform male roles— into something now seen as remarkable. Beyond Buenos Aires: Carlota Millanes Becomes Mexican During her career, Lola frequently moved between two main territories: Spain and Argentina. These dual home bases were possible due to the dominance of the zarzuela in Madrid and Buenos Aires. Carlota moved much more than her sister had especially in the years after Lola’s death in 1906. Carlota lived and performed in Spain in 1903 and 1904 but by 1905 and 1906 she was back traveling through the Americas. She travelled and performed throughout Ecuador, Peru, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Cuba between 1905–1909. It is likely that her children were not with her for much of this time. Her eldest daughter, María, at the very least, mentions ‘reuniting’ with her mother in 1906 in Central America (Fiol 1923). Here I offer a brief example of Carlota’s peripatetic ways in the wake of Lola’s death in August 1906. I have been unable to track Carlota’s movements in August but by September, she was performing in Lima, Peru, accompanied by her sister, Teresa, and daughter, María (El Arte del teatro (Madrid), 1906, 23 and El Heraldo de Madrid, Sept. 19, 1906, 3). Carlota performed in Trujillo, Peru, then moved onto Panama working at the Teatro Nacional in Panama City. She, Teresa, and María returned to South 232 K. MCCLEARY America, performing in Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador. Notably, Carlota and Teresa performed in the drama, Abuela, in 1907. This play had recently been penned by the feminist Ecuadorean author, Mercedes González de Moscoso (b. Ecuador, 1860–1911). The collaboration between the Millanes sisters and González de Moscoso suggests that theatre, at times, created a circuit of intellectual vanguardism. Indeed, Abuela is an explicitly feminist play (González de Moscoso 1906, 6). Following this, Carlota returned once more to Peru with a contract to work at the Teatro Principal in Lima before touring Peru’s northern provinces (‘News from the Americas,’ 1907, 1). In June, Carlota, Teresa, and María moved onto Costa Rica where ‘la señorita’ Millanes—possibly María since Carlota is referred to as ‘señora’ in the press—performs as Angelita in Chateau Margaux, a role that both Lola and Carlota had played for most of their careers (Páginas Ilustradas 1907a, 2370). One journalist criticized the company’s performance of Verdi’s Traviata, using the most painful language possible, given that Lola had drowned less than a year before in an actual shipwreck: ‘[Carlota] Millanes was able to save herself from the shipwreck [of a play] and we felt very sorry for her because of the sweat that must have been flowing down her body due to the exertions she made [on stage]’ (Páginas Ilustradas, 1907, 1249). The same magazine criticized her once again speculating that she must have either been sick or simply forgotten her lines when they reviewed her performance another evening (Páginas Ilustradas 1907c, 2426). It is possible she was in mourning or sick or both because after June, Páginas Ilustradas returned to lauding her performances, signaling a recovery on her part. Reading between the lines, it is easy to see that the rigors of work combined with grief took a toll on her evident in her performances. The particular lack of sympathy offered to her by the press, however, provides a small window into the day-to-day challenges of her life on the road in the wake of personal tragedy. Still, she continued touring. In 1908, Carlota performed in Cuba: Her name appeared in Gazeta Oficial de Cuba, for letters that were not picked up for lack of sufficient address (1908, 5765). She also worked in Colombia that year. Carlota relocated to Mexico, somewhat permanently, in 1909 (Borroso 1911, 6). One magazine shows how many of her family members worked together there that year (Arte y Letras, 1909, 16) when she performed in a play with Isabel Saavedra (her niece, daughter of Teresa), her daughter, María Caballé, and her sister, María Millanes. These connections also point to the importance of Joaquín Coss, the husband of Emilia Jordan FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 233 Millanes (daughter of María Millanes), for unifying them in Mexico. Like the Millanes family, Coss, too, was from Barcelona. He had performed with Lola and Carlota in the same zarzuela companies for years. Coss performed with them in Amor y Lucha, for example (Soria 1899, 5). He had moved to Mexico in 1904 working in theatre. Over the years, he found success in silent cinema, working with film stars like Cantínflas, (1911–1993) the comedian who dominated the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Coss also worked with Mimi Derba (1893–1953), who had founded Azteca cinema, Mexico’s first national film studio. Derba was also a theatre performer and also from Spain—her parents were from Bilbao (García 2007, 100). Carlota and María Caballé worked with Derba in 1913, performing in the one-act musical comedy, El país de la metralla [The Country of Shrapnel] in Mexico City’s Teatro Lírico. In 1917, Coss wrote the script for the silent film, En defensa propia [In Self Defense], in which both Derba and María Caballé appear. Theatre continued to connect the Millanes family to feminist intellectuals who used the arts to explore and promote social change, but it seems that Coss had the possibilities to have the central career in Mexico, around which the family united. Lola’s fame as a zarzuela performer and her relative stability in two cities meant that she was known as being Spanish. However, this was not the case for Carlota, whose nationality shifts once she is outside of the dominant urban centers of the zarzuela circuit. Theatre managers advertise her by comparing her to globally known opera stars: In Costa Rica, she was the ‘Patti of the zarzuela,’ with the advertisement referencing Adelina Patti (b. Madrid to Italian parents, 1843–1919) (Moncloa y Covarrubias 1905, 99). In California, Carlota was advertised as the ‘Mexican Tetrazzini,’ (Complimentary Souvenir Album 1915, 186) evoking opera star, Luisa Tetrazzini (b. Italy 1871–1940), and identifying Carlota as being Mexican not Spanish. Over time, Carlota became increasingly misidentified as ‘Mexican’ in both primary and secondary sources of the era (Largey 2006, 121). She became thoroughly integrated into Mexican theatrical life and her Spanish heritage rendered increasingly invisible. She continued to portray men, even once depicting Francisco León de la Barra (1863–1939), Mexico’s interim president in 1911, in El futuro funcionario (The Future Bureaucrat), a political satire (Quiroga Pérez 2008, 1–2). Several things might explain the ‘Mexicanization’ of Carlota. In Mexico, Carlota tended to perform in smaller roles and peripheral theatres. She had become marginalized there due to her age, her lack of stardom, and the decline of the 234 K. MCCLEARY zarzuela as a popular theatrical genre. Claiming a Spanish identity did not help her stage career. For all intents and purposes, that was now better supported through a Mexican identity. Carlota continued migrating northward for short tours. In 1915, she, her two daughters and one son-in-law, musician German Bilbao, performed in the Mexican exhibition for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE). The PPIE attracted 18 million visitors in just about three months (Markwyn 2016, 52). If Lola had performed as a mulata in the late nineteenth century, Carlota and her daughters now depicted indigenous Mexican women. Carlota performed as part of Mexico’s exhibit, the Tehuantepec Village, in the ‘Joy Zone,’ of the PPIE. It was described to the press as presenting ‘A Bit of Old Aztec Land,’ to spectators (Cannata 2014, 86–87). (Tehuantepec is an actual village in Mexico, and the Tehuana people who live there are known for having a matriarchal culture.) At the PPIE, the exhibit contained a hodgepodge of Mexican stereotypes of indigeneity, advertising that it featured dances of the Aztec peoples past and present, as well as Aztec and Toltec artisanal crafts and dances. María had recently performed as a Native American character, ‘La Indita’ [‘the Indian sweetheart’] in the comedy, Tenorio Sam [Uncle Sam, the Lady-Killer] (Foppa Fray Mocho, 1913), a parody of José Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio (Anzzolin 2023, 47.) In the cast notes, the character is described as being of ‘pure Aztec’ heritage. Anzzolin argues that she represents the Mexican nation-state to a working-class audience (2023, 50). The phenomenon of ‘racial masquerading’ in Mexico where white actors perform as indigenous peoples has primarily been studied in relationship to cinema (García Blizzard 2022). Film emerged out of these theatrical traditions. Carlota and María show just how important actors from Spain were in the contemporary racialization of indigenous peoples into being ‘white’ in stage plays which set the template for early Mexican cinema. That Spanish actors were cast as Mexican indigenous women reveals the complexity of staged performances as they intersected with ethnic and national identities. Carlota’s Spanish and Maria’s Argentine national identities had been erased. However, their whiteness had not. Carlota’s continual northward movements during the peak years of the Mexican Revolution—which often was fought near the US-Mexican border—had been a bit of a mystery to me. Lacking any concrete evidence, I surmised that by 1915, Carlota was 50 years old, likely past her prime as a star of the stage, so maybe she had to chase after work. In addition, FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 235 zarzuelas and operettas had given way to musical reviews with their emphasis on skimpy costumes, and song and dance numbers performed by women closer in age to her daughters. Maybe during the turbulence of the revolution, fewer actors wanted to face the potential danger of northern Mexico and thus more jobs were available to her? Or perhaps, Carlota followed her more employable family members to wherever it was that they could find work? I finally found the answer to this puzzle when I located a 1923 interview which her eldest daughter, María Caballé, gave to the Spanish magazine, La Esfera. This interview fills in some of the gaps about Carlota’s role as a mother, a significant aspect of her life and career that most of my sources did not really touch upon. María explained that in 1914, when she was about 22, she was performing in the previously mentioned musical, Tenorio Sam, at the Teatro Lírico, in Mexico City. Victoriano de la Huerta (1850–1916) was the self-declared head of state, declaring himself as such in 1913 after he had conspired to assassinate President Francisco Madero (1873–1913). Huerta, himself, would be overthrown in June 1914, just a couple of months after Tenorio Sam’s February 28 opening. Huerta frequented the theatre where María worked. She recalled that he was intrigued by the fact that a young Argentine woman like herself would play a Mexican character ‘with such great passion.’ According to María, Huerta liked her a little too much and increasingly pressured her to have sexual relations with him. María said that she and her mother could only come up with one way out of the precarious situation and that was to flee. One night after her performance, Carlota drove an automobile to the theatre awaiting María to exit the theatre once the play had ended. They then drove many hours north and eventually made their way to San Francisco, where they were already scheduled to perform in the PPIE, along with Emilia (Fiol 1923). María married Rafael Martinez Alvarez a few months later. At the time of Huerta’s advances, she was single and Carlota a widow (María’s marriage certificate from November 23, 1914, lists her father as deceased. November 23, 1914, Civil Registry, Michoacan Mexico). María certainly offered a cinematic tale of intrigue and escape from the clutches of the powerful and violent Huerta. Much of it rings true, of course, especially in this post-Harvey Weinstein era of the twenty-first century. Carlota’s migrations were always shaped to a certain extent by her family but María’s story allows us to see how Carlota, as head of household, took action to protect her daughter. Her decision to continue 236 K. MCCLEARY working allowed her to continue to make money but also, and more importantly, to mentor, protect, and advocate for her daughters, who had also chosen to live a very public life during precarious times in Mexico. Conclusion Lola and Carlota were amongst the first female performers to export Spanish popular theatre to the Americas. They were ‘stage migrants,’ a career made possible because of transformations in travel and communication technologies which allowed for the movement of people and scripts from one side of the Atlantic to the other and beyond. Lola’s career as a star during the height of Spanish popular theatre in the Americas meant that she had to negotiate the fraught politics of entertaining Spain’s former colonies during an era of intensified nation-building which was largely a masculine enterprise. Ironically, since this was an era where politics was in the domain of men, women performers were more easily able to soothe over nationalistic tensions through ‘soft’ cultural diplomacy. In Argentina, the audience always knew Lola and Carlota were Spanish. For Carlota, who continued to work on the stage as a middle-aged woman, and who was increasingly cast in supporting rather than starring roles, she became identified as Mexican. An emphasis on whiteness in Mexican theatre and, later, cinema, allowed her transformation from Spaniard to Mexican to occur seamlessly and without questions asked—the opposite of Lola’s experience in Argentina where Lola was always known as being Spanish. Their lives show that society had created spaces for gender roles to be transformative whereas racial and ethnic ones still reflected deep structural ties to the past and a present which commodified and mimicked indigeneity and mixed-race women. As women performers on the move, Lola and Carlota had lives full of adventure, including tragedy, most clearly signified by Lola’s death in a shipwreck. Family networks and units were an essential element of their migrations. The contours of much of their public lives were framed by codes of masculinity, be it irate audience members demanding that Spanish actors perform Brazilian and Argentine national types authentically or from overbearing politicians. Yet, at the same time their migrations allowed them to be in command of their lives through their own work which gave them economic independence and by meeting and collaborating with a feminist vanguard of Latin American theatre and cinema, and in many FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 237 other ways. Lola and Carlota were on the center stage of the public sphere, carving out new models of womanhood and preparing the next generation of women to do the same. References Anzzolin, Kevin M. 2023. ‘Rewriting José Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio in Revolutionary Mexico. Inés as a Working-Class Heroine.’ Literatura Mexicana, 34 (1): 43–61. El Arte del teatro. 1906. June 15, 23. Arte y Letras. 1909. Year V, no. 106, April 4, 16. Barreiro Sánchez, Sergio. 2009. ‘La escena madrileña en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX: 1866, el año de los bufos.’ Teatro: Revista de Estudios Culturales/A Journal of Cultural Studies, 23: 293–322. Berenguer Carisomo, Arturo. 2003. España en la Argentina: ensayo sobre una contribución a la cultura nacional. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Bissell, Sally J. 1987. ‘Manuel Areu and the Spanish Zarzuela in Mexico and Cuba.’ Dissertation, University of Iowa. Boletín oficial de la propiedad intelectual e industrial. 1889. September 1, no. 73, 4–5. Boletín Fonografico, (Valencia) Year 1, no. 7, April 5, 1900, 1. Borroso, Judas. 1911. Fe de erratas lírico-dramáticas: con su obertura, intermezzo, final, ... y casi biografías y retratos intercalados en el texto. Mexico, D.F.: Tip. José R. del Castillo. Bosch, Mariano G. 1910. Historia del teatro en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Establecimiento Tipográfico de El Comercio. Cannata, Amanda. 2014. ‘Articulating and Contesting Cultural Hierarchies: Guatemalan, Mexican, and Native American Music at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915).’ Journal of the Society for American Music, 8 (1): 76–100. ‘Cariño…no hay major café.’ 1906. Caras y Caretas. June 30, no. 404, 60. El Cascabel. 1892. Year I, no 2, January 12, n.p. El Cascabel. 1892. Year I, no. 5, February 3, n.p. Chasteen, John C. 2004. National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Chueca, Federico. 1886. La gran vía. Madrid: R. Velasco. ‘Complimentary Souvenir Book, 53rd Annual Convention, National Education Association and International Congress of Education, Oakland, CA Meeting, 1915.’ 1915. Arthur Henry Chamberlain, August 16. El Correo Español. 1890. April 30, 2. 238 K. MCCLEARY El Correo Español. 1890. June 1, 1. El Correo Español. 1895. March 8, 2. El Correo Español. 1895b. May 15, 3. El Correo Español. 1895c. May 25, 1. El Correo Español. 1895d. May 27 and 28, 2. Davis, Tracy C. 1991. Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture. Gender and Performance. London: Routledge. ‘Desde Chile.’ 1892. La España Artistica, October 10, 3. ‘Dolores Millanes.’ 1900. Boletín Fonográfico I, April 5, no. 7. Dyer, Richard. 2017. White: Twentieth Anniversary edition. London: Routledge. ‘Espectáculos.’ 1903. El Heraldo de Madrid. December 4, 3. Fiol, E. González. 1923. ‘Domadores del exito: María Caballé.’ La Esfera (Madrid), April 21. Foppa, Tito Livio. 1913. ‘Fray Mocho en Centro América: Artistas argentinas, María Caballé Millanes, Carlota Millanes, Andrés S. Dalmau.’ Fray Mocho: semanario festivo, literario, artístico y de actualidades II, no. 86, December 19. García Blizzard, Mónica. 2022. The White Indians of Mexican Cinema: Racial Masquerade throughout the Golden Age. Albany: State University of New York Press. García, Irene. 2007. Mimí Derba and Azteca Films: The Rise of Nationalism and the First Mexican Woman Film-Maker. London: Routledge. Gazeta Oficial de Cuba. 1908. June 17, 5765. González de Moscoso, Mercedes. 1906. Abuela: Drama en tres actos. Quito: Imprenta Nacional. Granada, Nicolás. 1896. Juca-Tigre!: Zarzuela en un acto. Montevideo. Gutiérrez, Eduardo. 2014. The Gaucho Juan Moreira: True Crime in Nineteenth-­ Century Argentina, ed. William G. Acree Jr., transl. John Charles Chasteen. UK ed. edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Gutiérrez, Eduardo and José Podestá. 2008. ‘Juan Moreira.’ In Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Latin American Theater and Performance, edited by Margaret Carson, Diana Taylor, and Sarah J Townsend, 122–35. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ‘Ha muerto Teresita Saavedra.’ 1894. El País. January 1, n.p. El Heraldo de Madrid. 1906. Sept. 19, 3. Herrera Atehortúa, Cenedtih. 2011. ‘Zarzuela en Medellín: El caso de la Compañía Hispanoamericana Dalmau-Ughetti, 1894–1895.’ Historia y Sociedad, 20: 133–150. Jáuregui-Lobera, Ignacio. 2020. ‘Navegación e historia de la ciencia: el naufragio del Sirio.’ Journal of negative & no positive results, 5 (10): 1245–1261. Jiménez-Prieto, Diego and Felipe Pérez-Capo. 1904. El Mozo Crúo. Madrid: S. Velasco. Largey, Michael. 2006. Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism. University of Chicago Press. FROM BARCELONA TO BUENOS AIRES [AND BEYOND]: THE MILLANES… 239 López de Gomara, Justo S. 1889. De paseo en Buenos Aires: bosquejo local en dos actos y díez cuadros. Buenos Aires: Imprenta Tribuna Nacional. Markwyn, Abigail M. 2016. ‘Queen of the Joy Zone Meets Hercules.’ Western Historical Quarterly, 47 (1): 51–72. McCleary, Kristen. 2017. ‘Nation, Identity and Performance: The Spanish Zarzuela in Argentina, 1890–1900.’ Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 44 (1): 28–53. McCleary, Kristen. 2013. ‘Papás, Malevos, and Patotas: “Character”izing Masculinity on the Stages and in the Audiences of Buenos Aires, 1880–1920.’ In Modern Argentine Masculinities, ed. Carolina Rocha. Bristol, England: Intellect. McCleary, Kristen. 2002. ‘Popular, Elite and Mass Culture? The Spanish Zarzuela in Buenos Aires, 1890–1900,’ Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 21, 1–27. Moncloa y Covarrubias, Manuel. 1905. Diccionario teatral del Perú: Indice de artistas nacionales y extranjero, autores y sus obras, escenógrafos, empresarios, tecnicismo, fraseologia, teatros del Perú, apuntes históricos, anécdotas, etc. Lima/ Peru: Badiola y Berrio. Moya, José C. 1998. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. ‘News from the Americas.’ 1907. El arte del teatro, March 15, Year II, no. 24, 1. Norwood, Janice. 2020. Victorian Touring Actresses: Crossing Boundaries and Negotiating the Cultural Landscape. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Páginas Ilustradas. 1907a. June 2, Year IV, no. 148, 2361. Páginas Ilustradas. 1907b. June 16, Year IV, no. 150, 2410. Páginas Ilustradas. 1907c. June 23, Year IV, no. 151, 2426. Pellettieri, Osvaldo. 2001. Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: La emancipación cultural (1884–1930). Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna. Perrín, Guillermo, and Palacios, Miguel de. 1888. Certamen Nacional. Madrid. Quiroga Pérez, Héctor. 2008. ‘Iconografía del escenario mexicano (1909–1919). Parte II.’ Telon de fondo: revista de teoria y critica teatral, 4 (7). https://doi. org/10.34096/tdf.n7.9433 (accessed March 20, 2024). Rosselli, John. 1990. ‘The Opera Business and the Italian Immigrant Community in Latin America 1820–1930: The Example of Buenos Aires.’ Past & Present, 127: 155–182. Sánchez, Víctor Sánchez. 2010. ‘Es California una tierra ideal… (2). Zarzuelas en los teatros de San Francisco durante el siglo XIX.’ Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana 19: 117–144. Sillone, Jorge Osvaldo. 2018. ‘Guardia Nacional de Buenos Aires durante las presidencias de Sáenz Peña (segunda parte), Uriburu y Roca,’ La Revista de la Escuela Superior de Guerra Tte Grl Luis María Campos, 96 (599), 7–39. Slatta, Richard W. 1992. Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 240 K. MCCLEARY Smith Archive. 1927. ‘Senorita Maria Caballe, the Lady Bull Fighter Who Will Appear before the Prince of Wales.’ Alamy Stock Photo, April 25. Soria, Ezequiel. 1899. ‘Amor y lucha.’ In Zarzuelas criollas, 8–37. Buenos Aires: Padró & Rós. Sturman, Janet. 2000. Zarzuela: Spanish Operetta, American Stage. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ‘Teatros en ultramar.’ 1890. La España Artistica, May 1, no. 92, 3. La Tribuna. 1895a. May 27, 2. La Tribuna. 1895b. June 27, 5. La Tribuna. 1895c. June 28 and 29, 3. Wade, Peter. 2015. Race and Sex in Latin America. London: Pluto Press. Wolf, Eric R., Hanson, Edward C., and Hamill, Hugh M. 1992. ‘Caudillo Politics: A Structural Analysis.’ In Caudillos: Dictators in Spanish America, ed. Hugh M. Hamill, 62–71. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Young, Clinton D. 2016. Music Theater and Popular Nationalism in Spain, 1880–1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.