Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692-1810 - Hardcover

Haslip-Viera, Gabriel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826318754 ISBN 13: 9780826318756

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, 1999

Synopsis

Young, poor men and women migrated from the countryside and swelled the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed in Mexico City during the eighteenth century. With this rapid growth in population came an increase in street crime--thefts, assaults, and murders--along with moral crimes--prostitution, adultery, and vagrancy. These transgressions provided a steady flow of inmates to the city's six jails. This pioneering social history of crime and punishment in late colonial Latin America plunges us directly into the daily life and experiences of its lawbreakers.

Women typically represented 30 percent of all criminals, and by the eighteenth century concern for their welfare resulted in Mexico City's first attempts at rehabilitation. This Enlightenment-era experiment in social re-education took the form of placing women in separate facilities or in private homes to serve as maids to "respectable" families, which often amounted to little more than exploitation of unpaid laborers. For men, jail was a way-station followed by severe corporal punishment and then years of forced labor. Many male criminals were assigned to clean rubbish-filled streets and open canals of Mexico City. Others went into factories, mines, or military service. All were expendable and frequently died before completing their term of confinement.

"A superior work of scholarship."--Colin MacLachlin, Tulane University

About this title

About the Author

Gabriel Haslip-Viera is associate professor of sociology at the City College of the City University of New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0826318754
• ISBN 13: 9780826318756
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 205