Gabriel Haslip-Viera - Crime and Punishment in Late Colonial Mexico City, 1692-1810

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 citys 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 Citys 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.