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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