荆州离哪个机场近:Crime and Punishment in Latin America History

Crime and Punishment in Latin America History
A Bibliographical Essay

 Carlos Aguirre
Department of History
University of Oregon

[Originally published in Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America, Carlos Aguirre and Robert Buffington eds., Scholarly Resources, 2000]

The historiography of crime and criminal justice history in Latin America has not yet reached maturity (or even perhaps legitimacy) within the field of Latin American studies. With few valuable exceptions, it is only in the last 10 or 15 years that the field has begun to produce substantial and steady progress. Despite generally solid traditions of legal studies in most Latin American countries--generally produced by jurists and amateur historians--there has been a surprising lack of interest among the community of scholars--historians, anthropologists, sociologists, both in Latin America and the US--in issues such as crime and criminal justice history. As this review will show, however, there are reasons to envision that the years ahead will bring about an increasing attention to issues that we consider central for understanding the history of Latin American societies.

Because the coverage of this book starts in the late colonial period, this concise bibliographical review does not include the (otherwise scant) literature on crime and justice in pre-Hispanic Latin America. Studies about crime in colonial Latin America concentrate on Mexico and the Andes. Colin MacLachlan opened up the field with his study of the Tribunal de la Acordada, one of the most salient institutions of penal repression in New Spain. A major contribution was William Taylor's monograph on drinking, homicide, and rebellion in colonial Mexico (1979), where he examined a specific type of crime (homicide) and its connections with other forms of "deviant behavior." Taylor found that interpersonal violence was more likely to occur against family members and outsiders than against fellow community residents, an expression of the communal cohesiveness he found within Mexican villages. Two solid doctoral dissertations dealt with crime in colonial Mexico City (Scardaville 1977 and Haslip 1980). Sexually-related offenses have been examined by Penyak (1993) and Stern (1995)--the latter within a more ambitious study of gender relations in late colonial Mexico. Several studies on bigamy, adultery, rape, and abduction in colonial Mexico also touch on related issues (see, for example, Boyer 1995).

In the case of colonial Peru, Ward Stavig has long been studying the history of crime and violence within the Indigenous communities of the Cusco region (Stavig 1986, 1990, 1991, 1995). Stavig underplays the role of crime in the strategies of resistance by Andean communities against the colonial state, stressing the divisions generated by unlawful behavior. Flores Galindo (1984) depicted crime in late colonial Lima as a major contributor to the generalized situation of anomic violence in the city, also discarding notions of "social crime" among urban plebeians.

The advent of independent nations in the early nineteenth century was bound to effect changes in the nature and patterns of crime as well as in crime repression policies, though continuities with the colonial past were also inevitable. Patricia Aufderheide (1976), for example, stressed continuity in penal practices in Brazil after independence—a process intimately linked to the maintenance of slavery as the central feature of Brazilian society. Studies about bandit gangs and their political significance before, during, and after the age of independence have illuminated many of the connections between crime and politics, especially in Mexico and Peru (Archer 1982, Taylor 1982, Hünefeldt 1979, Walker 1990). The intricate connections between the construction of new independent states and attitudes towards law and order have also been explored, especially for Argentina and Brazil. Szuchman (1988) and Slatta and Robinson (1990) have studied crime and social disorder in Buenos Aires during the early nineteenth century. Slatta (1980) also reviewed rural crime in the Buenos Aires province. In Brazil, studies concentrate on the connections between crime, repression, and slavery. Holloway (1993) highlighted the role of the police in the control of slaves in Rio de Janeiro, Huggins (1985) studied crime in rural Pernambuco from a dependentista perspective, and Pereira Machado (1987) studied crimes committed by slaves in rural Sao Paulo.

The period between 1870 and 1930 has become, not surprisingly, the focus of intense scholarly attention. This is the period in which new discourses about crime and punishment were adopted in the region--particularly positivist criminology and penology--and various innovations in crime control policies were introduced--new penal codes, modern penitentiaries and reformatories, systems of classification and scientific study of the criminal population, and so forth. This was also a period of increasing urbanization, immigration, capitalist development, and industrialization, all of whom impacted on patterns of urban and rural criminality. The development of criminology as a scientific discipline has been analyzed by Buffington (1994a) and Piccato (1995) for Mexico, Salvatore (1992), Ruibal (1993), Caimari (1997a), and Salessi (1995) for Argentina, Salvatore (1996) for Brazil, and Poole (1990) and Aguirre (1996) for Peru. An earlier regional synthesis was offered by Rosa del Olmo (1981). Ana María Goetschel (1992) produced a valuable study of the connections between ideologies of state and discourses about criminality in nineteenth-century Ecuador.

Positivist criminology informed various attempts at reforming penal institutions in the region. Laurence Rohlfes (1983) analyzed penal and police reforms in Porfirian Mexico. Several articles in the volume edited by Salvatore and Aguirre (1996), as well as other contributions (Buffington 1996, Cruz 1989 and 1992, Cavieres 1995, Picó 1994) analyzed the connections between new medico-legal discourses about crime and society and attempts at reforming carceral institutions. Studies of specific penal institutions add to our understanding of both incarceration policies and the making of criminal subcultures. A fascinating monograph is the ethnography of the Lurigancho prison in Lima written by Pérez Guadalupe (1994). Although prisons for women were less numerous, and of less concern for reformers and authorities, studies of female carceral institutions are indispensable for understanding the connections between crime and punishment and a variety of discourses and practices (Caimari 1997b, Guy 1997, Pearson 1993, Rivera Garza 1995, Zárate 1996).

Two classical themes in the European historiography of crime have received continuous attention in the context of Latin American societies: the relationship between crime and urbanization, on the one hand, and the almost universal phenomenon of rural banditry on the other. A number of articles published by Lyman Johnson and Julia Blackwelder (1982, 1984 and Blackwelder 1990) studied the connection between levels of urbanization and crime for the case of Buenos Aires, using a mostly quantitative methodology. Urban crime, as a manifestation of various forms of social and cultural conflict, has also received scholarly attention (Fausto 1984, Gudmundson 1978, Silvestrini 1980, Sánchez León and Del Mastro 1994). Rural banditry has received considerably more. Singelman (1975), Chandler (1978), and Lewin (1979) analyzed the political implications of rural banditry in Brazil. In 1982, Paul Vanderwood published his superb study of rural banditry and policing in Porfirian Mexico (2nd. edition 1992). The volume edited by Slatta (1987) offered a showcase of the "varieties" of rural banditry in Latin America, while Aguirre and Walker edited a similar volume focusing on Peru and Bolivia (1990). Rosalie Schwartz and Louis Perez published valuable studies of political and social banditry in Cuba (Schwartz 1989, Perez 1989). Lewis Taylor (1986) has studied political banditry in Hualgayoc, Peru, during a period of growing state intrusion and capitalist development. Most of this literature was inspired by (and established a critical dialogue with) the Hobsbawmian notion of "social banditry." In an insightful essay, Gilbert Joseph (1990) called for the integration of banditry within the larger field of rural conflict and resistance, thus trying to overcome the somehow sterile dichotomy between "social" and "common" banditry.

Sexually-related offenses have continued to receive scholarly attention. Although not always technically a "crime," studies about prostitution are becoming numerous and offer a fascinating angle to approach the social, political, economic, and cultural construction of "deviance." Donna Guy (1991) studied prostitution in Buenos Aires during a period of accelerated social change; Sandra Graham (1991) analyzed prostitution in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro as part of the variety of alternatives that Black women used to overcome poverty and deprivation; and David McCreey (1987) examined the lives of Guatemalan prostitutes at the turn-of-the-century. Both Katherine Bliss (1996) and Cristina Rivera-Garza (1995) have produced important studies of prostitution in Mexico City in the revolutionary period. William French (1992) has also studied prostitution and other sexually-related offenses in his social/cultural histories of Chihuahua, Mexico. Scholars have also noted other links between gender and criminality. Kristin Ruggiero (1992) has studied infanticide in late nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. The Brazilian discourse on female criminality has been studied by Sueann Caulfield (1993) and Martha de Abreu Esteves (1993) and Buffington (1997) has explored conflicting constructions of criminality and homosexual "deviance" in Mexican prisons.

The multiple ramifications of the alcohol and drug problems are also of interest for analysis of crime in Latin America. Piccato (1995) explored elite concerns about the degenerative effects of alcoholism in Porfirian Mexico and Buffington (1994b) analyzed its effects on United States-Mexico relations during Prohibition. Alonso Salazar (1992) offered a vivid portrait of drug-related youth violence in Medellin, Colombia. The legal, cultural, and social dimensions of the drug problem were analyzed in the volume edited by William Walker (1996). A historical and cultural account of the coca problem in Peru was written by Gagliano (1994), and connections between the illegal drug traffic and political subversion in Peru were studied by Tarazona-Sevillano (1990).

Studies about the police are still few in number, and most concentrate on the twentieth century. Kalmanowiecki (1996) offered an insightful reconstruction of the history of Argentinean police. For Brazil, Marcos Luiz Bretas (1994) has studied policing in Rio de Janeiro during the early decades of the twentieth century, while Elizabeth Cancelli (1993) analyzed Brazilian police during the age of Vargas. Martha K. Huggins (1991) edited an important volume on vigilantism and extra-legal violence, and Paul Chevigny (1995) studied police violence in Latin America within a comparative framework.

As we can see, scholarly attention on these topics is gaining momentum, but there is still a great deal to do in the development of studies about crime and criminal justice history. Several geographical areas and periods are much unrepresented. Some topics--rural banditry or positivist criminology--have received considerable attention, while others--the making of criminal subcultures-- are just beginning to be explored (Aguirre 1996, Bliss 1996, Piccato 1997 and forthcoming). We only hope that this volume will encourage further research and study on the criminal justice history of Latin America.

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