Picture from the departure of Coral Sanz from Cadiz to Buenos Aires, with Puri Zahino and family
Posted by Cristina Colmena- PhD Candidate at Spanish and Portuguese Department NYU
My project focused on the construction of identities through the correspondence of Spanish migrants who went to Argentina during the 1960´s under Francoism. My point of departure was the letters sent by Purificación Zahino to her family in Spain from 1962 to 1969. She died at the age of 34 in Rosario and those letters and photographs were the “texts” to elaborate a kind of autobiography not only by her, but also by their relatives who stayed in Spain. In Puri´s letters there was some confusing information about her life and the people who were her employers -and at the same time a sort of “family”- so I came to Argentina to get some interviews and maybe find more archival material that allow me to fill the gaps. After some research in CEMLA (Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos) in Buenos Aires and contacting with Centro Navarro in Rosario where she used to work, I found the relatives who lived with her and also had the chance to talk to people who knew her and gave me very relevant information for my study.
