Synopses & Reviews
This collection brings together recent scholarship that examines how understandings of honor changed in Latin America between political independence in the early nineteenth century and the rise of nationalist challenges to liberalism in the 1930s. These rich historical case studies reveal the uneven processes through which ideas of honor and status came to depend more on achievements such as education and employment and less on the birthright privileges that were the mainstays of honor during the colonial period. Whether considering court battles over lost virginity or police conflicts with prostitutes, vagrants, and the poor over public decorum, the contributors illuminate shifting ideas about public and private spheres, changing conceptions of race, the growing intervention of the state in defining and arbitrating individual reputations, and the enduring role of patriarchy in apportioning both honor and legal rights.
Each essay examines honor in the context of specific historical processes, including early republican nation-building in Peru; the transformation in Mexican villages of the cargo system, by which men rose in rank through service to the community; the abolition of slavery in Rio de Janeiro; the growth of local commerce and shifts in womenandrsquo;s status in highland Bolivia; the formation of a multiethnic society on Costa Ricaandrsquo;s Caribbean coast; and the development of nationalist cultural responses to U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. By connecting liberal projects that aimed to modernize law and society with popular understandings of honor and status, this volume sheds new light on broad changes and continuities in Latin America over the course of the long nineteenth century.
Contributors. Josandeacute; Amador de Jesus, Rossana Barragandaacute;n, Sueann Caulfield, Sidney Chalhoub, Sarah C. Chambers, Eileen J. Findley, Brodwyn Fischer, Olandiacute;via Maria Gomes da Cunha, Laura Gotkowitz, Keila Grinberg, Peter Guardino, Cristiana Schettini Pereira, Lara Elizabeth Putnam
Review
andldquo;Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America makes an important contribution to the historical understanding of andlsquo;honorandrsquo; by examining its relationship to state formation, the law, sexuality, and racial mores. The creative and interesting essays, from scholars based both in Latin America and elsewhere, show the interplay of national and regional culture in how honor was understood and used in day-to-day social relations.andrdquo;andmdash;Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil
Review
andldquo;This book will change how we view the long nineteenth century in Latin America, as it allows the reader to weave into the same cloth the two strands that ran through, respectively, the liberal state and postcolonial society, namely, the drive to form citizens and the desire to maintain status hierarchies.andrdquo;andmdash;Teresita Martandiacute;nez-Vergne, author of Shaping the Discourse on Space: Charity and Its Wards in Nineteenth-Century San Juan, Puerto Rico
Review
andldquo;[T]he volume offers a wealth of historical and ethnographic detail. . . . The strength of the book lies in the drawing together of studies from different parts of Latin America. . . . [T]he volume is further enriched by the inclusion of what is, for historians, an unusual but promising approach: that of including a (historical) analysis of literary works. . . . [T]he collection offers an effective yet insightful introduction to the theme of honour, and, more especially, the interplay between honour and the law.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Essays examine the relationship of honor in Latin America to issues such as state formation, modernity, the law, sexuality, and racial mores.
About the Author
“Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America makes an important contribution to the historical understanding of ‘honor’ by examining its relationship to state formation, the law, sexuality, and racial mores. The creative and interesting essays, from scholars based both in Latin America and elsewhere, show the interplay of national and regional culture in how honor was understood and used in day-to-day social relations.”—Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil“This book will change how we view the long nineteenth century in Latin America, as it allows the reader to weave into the same cloth the two strands that ran through, respectively, the liberal state and postcolonial society, namely, the drive to form citizens and the desire to maintain status hierarchies.”—Teresita Martínez-Vergne, author of Shaping the Discourse on Space: Charity and Its Wards in Nineteenth-Century San Juan, Puerto Rico
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Transformations in Honor, Status, and Law over the Long Nineteenth Century / Lara Putnam, Sarah C. Chambers, and Sueann Caulfield 1
I. Liberalism, Status, and Citizenship
Private crimes, public order: honor, gender, and the law in early republican Peru / Sarah C. Chambers 27
Community service, liberal law, and local custom in indigenous villages: Oaxaca, 1750andndash;1850 / Peter Guardino 50
The andldquo;spiritandrdquo; of Bolivian law: citizenship, patriarchy, and infamy / Rossanna Barragan 66
Interpreting Machado de Assis: paternalism, slavery, and the free womb law / Sidney Chalhoub 87
Slavery, liberalism, and civil law: definitions of status and citizenship in the elaboration of the Brazilian civil code (1855andndash;1916) / Keila Grinberg 109
Trading insults: honor, violence, and the gendered culture of commerce in Cochabamba, Boliva, 1870sandndash;1950s / Laura Gotkowitz 131
Sex and standing in the streets of Port Limon, Costa Rica, 1890andndash;1910 / Lara Putnam 155
Slandering citizens: insults, class, and social legitimacy in Rio de Janeiroandrsquo;s criminal courts / Brodwyn Fischer 176
Courtroom tales of sex and honor: rapto and rape in late nineteenth-century Puerto Rico / Eileen J. Findlay 201
The changing politics of freedom and virginity in Rio de Janeiro, 1920andndash;1940 / Sueann Caulfield 223
III. The Policing of Public Space
The plenaandrsquo;s dissonant melodies: leisure, racial policing, and nation in Puerto Rico, 1900andndash;1930s / Jose Amador de Jesus 249
Prostitutes and the law: the uses of court cases over pandering in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the twentieth century / Cristianna Schettini Pereira 271
The stigmas of dishonor: criminal records, civil rights, and forensic identification in Rio de Janeiro, 1903andndash;1940 / Olivia Maria Gomes da Cunha 295
Contributors 317
Index 321