City of Suspects

Piccato Pablo Piccato

Description

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.

Sujets

• Histoire
• México
• History of the Americas
• Mexico

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822380719
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

City of Suspects

PA B L O P I C C AT O

City of Suspects

C R I M E I N M E X I C O C I T Y, 1 9 0 0-1 9 3 1

Duke University Press

Durham and London



©  Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper 

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Carter & Cohn Galliard

by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data appear on the last

printed page of this book.

Portions of chapters one and two

were published inAnuario de

Estudios Urbanos,and parts of

chapter three are reprinted from

Mexican Studies–Estudios Mexicanos

, no.  (Summer ): –, by

permission of the Regents of the

University of California.

Frontispiece art:Luis Chávez and

friends, ‘‘Friends the three of them,’’

ca. .Courtesy Tribunal Superior

de Justicia del Distruto Federal.

para Xóchitl, Catalina y Aída







I   . The Modern City

. The Policed City







ix

. The Construction of Mexican

Criminology



II   . Honor and Violent Crime

. Violence against Women





. Money, Crime, and Social Reactions

to Larceny



III   . The Invention ofRateros

. Penal Experience in Mexico City

Conclusions: Crime Contested



:   

















Contents

Acknowledgments

I owe this book to the effort of many people. Xóchitl Medina read the fol- lowing pages and improved everything about them. She and my daughters helped me see the reason to do it, so this book is theirs. The University of Texas at Austin was the place where it began as a dissertation submitted in . I thank first Jonathan C. Brown, my adviser, and the teachers (Susan Deans-Smith, Richard Graham, Alan Knight, Sandra Lauderdale-Graham, Naomi Lindstrom, and Mauricio Tenorio) and fellow students (Catherine Nolan, Daniel Hayworth, Mark Macleod, Joseph Ridout, Michael Snod- grass, Pamela Voekel, and Elliott Young) who made comments to papers or ideas that became part of this book and encouraged me beyond their duty. To many I am indebted for their advice, interest, and generosity during the research and writing process of the book: Félix Alonso, Carlos Aguirre, Jaime del Arenal, Silvia Arrom, Edward Beatty, Tito Bracamontes, Fanny Cabrejo, Gabriela Cano, Brian Connaughton, Ana Gamboa de Trejo, Re- nato González Mello, Matt Gutmann, Carlos Illades, Timothy Kessler, Her- bert Klein, John Lear, Steve Lewis, Javier Macgregor, Salvador Martínez Martínez, Jose Humberto Medina González, Kevin Middlebrook, Alisa Newman, Marcela Noguez, Juan Ortiz, Ricardo Pérez Montfort, David Parker, Cecilia Piccato, Antonio Piccato, Josué Ramírez, Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, Cristina Sacristán, Richard Snyder, Alejandro Tortolero, Eric Van Young, Heather Williams, Justin Wolfe, and René Zenteno. Robert Buffing- ton generously read the entire manuscript and, as Seth Fein, made invalu- able comments. Credit for the mistakes is entirely mine. I am indebted to the staffs of the Benson Latin American Collection at