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In City of Suspects Pablo Piccato explores the multiple dimensions of crime in early-twentieth-century Mexico City. Basing his research on previously untapped judicial sources, prisoners’ letters, criminological studies, quantitative data, newspapers, and political archives, Piccato examines the paradoxes of repressive policies toward crime, the impact of social rebellion on patterns of common crime, and the role of urban communities in dealing with transgression on the margins of the judical system.
By investigating postrevolutionary examples of corruption and organized crime, Piccato shines light on the historical foundations of a social problem that remains the main concern of Mexico City today. Emphasizing the social construction of crime and the way it was interpreted within the moral economy of the urban poor, he describes the capital city during the early twentieth century as a contested territory in which a growing population of urban poor had to negotiate the use of public spaces with more powerful citizens and the police. Probing official discourse on deviance, Piccato reveals how the nineteenth-century rise of positivist criminology-which asserted that criminals could be readily distinguished from the normal population based on psychological and physical traits-was used to lend scientific legitimacy to class stratifications and to criminalize working-class culture. Furthermore, he argues, the authorities’ emphasis on punishment, isolation, and stigmatization effectively created cadres of professional criminals, reshaping crime into a more dangerous problem for all inhabitants of the capital.
This unique investigation into crime in Mexico City will interest Latin Americanists, sociologists, and historians of twentieth-century Mexican history.
List of contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
I. The Context 13
1. The Modern City 17
2. The Policed City 34
3. The Construction of Mexican Criminology 50
II. The Practices 73
4. Honor and Violent Crime 77
5. Violence Against Women 103
6. Money, Crime, and Social Reactions to Larceny 132
III. The Consequences 161
7. The Invention of
Rateros 163
8. Penal Experience in Mexico City 189
Conclusions: Crime Contested 211
Appendix: Statistics of Crime 221
Notes 237
Bibliography 319
Index 349
About the author
Pablo Piccato is Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University.
Summary
An analysis of the complex moral interpretations crime was given by Mexico's urban poor and of the evolving institutional responses to crime and punishment in modern Mexico.
