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Crowning a decade of innovative efforts in the historical study of law and legal phenomena in the region, Crime and Punishment in Latin America offers a collection of essays that deal with the multiple aspects of the relationship between ordinary people and the law. Building on a variety of methodological and theoretical trends-cultural history, subaltern studies, new political history, and others-the contributors share the conviction that law and legal phenomena are crucial elements in the formation and functioning of modern Latin American societies and, as such, need to be brought to the forefront of scholarly debates about the region’s past and present.
While disassociating law from a strictly legalist approach, the volume showcases a number of highly original studies on topics such as the role of law in processes of state formation and social and political conflict, the resonance between legal and cultural phenomena, and the contested nature of law-enforcing discourses and practices. Treating law as an ambiguous and malleable arena of struggle, the contributors to this volume-scholars from North and Latin America who represent the new wave in legal history that has emerged in recent years-- demonstrate that law not only produces and reformulates culture, but also shapes and is shaped by larger processes of political, social, economic, and cultural change. In addition, they offer valuable insights about the ways in which legal systems and cultures in Latin America compare to those in England, Western Europe, and the United States.
This volume will appeal to scholars in Latin American studies and to those interested in the social, cultural, and comparative history of law and legal phenomena.Contributors. Carlos Aguirre, Dain Borges, Lila Caimari, Arlene J. DÍaz, Luis A. Gonzalez, Donna J. Guy, Douglas Hay, Gilbert M. Joseph, Juan Manuel Palacio, Diana Paton, Pablo Piccato, Cristina Rivera Garza, Kristin Ruggiero, Ricardo D. Salvatore, Charles F. Walker
List of contents
List of Tables and Figures
Preface / Gilbert M. Joseph
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Writing the History of Law, Crime, and Punishment in Latin America / Carlos Aguirre and Ricardo D. Salvatore
Part I. Legal Mediations: State, Society, and the Conflictive Nature of Law and Justice
Crime in the Time of the Great Fear: Indians and the State in the Peruvian Southern Andes, 1780-1820 / Charles F. Walker
Women, Order, and Progress in Guzmán Blanco’s Venezuela, 1870–1888 / Arlene J. Díaz
Judges, Lawyers, and Farmers: Uses of Justice and the Circulation of Law in Rural Buenos Aires, 1900–1940 / Juan Manuel R. Palacio
Work, Property, and the Negotiation of Rights in the Brazilian Cane Fields: Campos, Rio de Janeiro, 1930–1950 / Luis A. González
Part II. The Social and Cultural Construction of Crime
The Criminalizaton of the Syphilitic Body: Prostitutes, Health Crimes, and Society in Mexico City, 1867–1930 / Christina Rivera-Garza
Healing and Mischief: Witchcraft in Brazilian Law and Literature, 1890–1922 / Dain Borges
Passion, Perversity, and the Pace of Justice in Argentina at the Turn of the Last Century / Kristin Ruggiero
Cuidado con los Rateros: The Making of Criminals in Modern Mexico City / Pablo Piccato
Part III / Contested Meanings of Punishment
The Penalties of Freedom: Punishment in Post-emancipation Jamaica / Diana Paton
Death and Liberalism: Capital Punishment after the Fall of Rosas / Ricardo D. Salvatore
Disputed Views of Incarceration in Lima, 1890–1930: The Prisoners’ Agena for Prison Reform / Carlos Aguirre
Girls in Prison: The Role of the Buenos Aires Casa Correccional de Mujeres as an Institution for Child Rescue, 1890–1940 / Donna J. Guy
Remembering Freedom: Life as Seen From the Prison Cell (Buenos Aires Province, 1930–1950) / Lila M. Caimari
Afterword: Law and Society in Comparative Perspective / Douglas Hay
Contributors
Index
About the author
Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph, eds.
Summary
Representing a wave of legal history that has emerged in recent years, this title presents essays about the relationship between ordinary people and the law. It discuses other topics that include the need for more studies on women's shifting legal status and the ways in which legal systems in England, Western Europe, and the United States.
