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Bodies of Evidence: Honor, Prueba Plena, and Emerging Medical Discourses in Northern Mexico's Infanticide Trials in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2017

Laura Shelton Open the ORCID record for Laura Shelton [Opens in a new window]
Laura Shelton*
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Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
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Extract

In the early morning of February 15, 1898, a farmer named Zacarias Navarro found the remains of a newborn infant in a shallow well on the outskirts of Alamos, Sonora, in northwestern Mexico. As caretaker of the well, it was predictable that Navarro would be the first resident to make the grisly discovery. He immediately informed the chief of police, Manuel Vargas, who sent officers to retrieve the infant's body.

Type
Articles
Information
The Americas , Volume 74 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 457 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2017 

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References

1. Contra Margarita y Eduarda Diaz por infanticidio, 1898, Archivo General del Poder Judicial del Estado de Sonora, Fondo Juzgado Penal [hereafter cited as AGPJ/FJP], Hermosillo/Alamos, Tomo 982.

2. Ibid., fol. 25.

3. Ibid., fols. 47–49; 94.

4. Ibid., 96–107.

5. Infanticide and abandonment trials provided occasions for disciplining women, both for sexual promiscuity and for committing murder, and Michel Foucault's thinking about medical and judicial institutions as tools of discipline has understandably become a compelling framework for studying infanticide trials. See Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 14–18; Ruggiero, Kristin, “Honor, Maternity, and the Disciplining of Women,” Hispanic American Historical Review 72:3 (1992): 371 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Among the 63 infanticide and clandestine burial cases found in the Sonoran criminal archives between 1855 and 1929, most occurred during the Porfiriato (1876–1910). Thirteen trials took place after 1910 and nine trials happened before 1876. Overall, the cases tend to be spread out evenly over the longer period of the study, with two to three trials per year. The largest concentration of trials to occur in any given year was four in 1898 and five in 1900. Taken together, the cases suggest a growing acceptance of conclusive evidence and medical explanations of infant deaths beginning in the late 1880s.

7. See Baerga-Santini, María del Carmen, “History and the Contours of Meaning,” Hispanic American Historical Review 89:4 (2009): 647–648 Google Scholar; Fuchs, Rachel G, Abandoned Children (New York: State University of New York Press, 1984), 103–104 Google Scholar; Higginbotham, Ann R., “Sin of the Age,” Victorian Studies 32:3 (1989): 321–322 Google Scholar; Kertzer, David I., Sacrificed for Honor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 32–35 Google Scholar; Krueger, Christine L., “Literary Defenses and Medical Prosecutions,” Victorian Studies 40:2 (1997): 272 Google Scholar; Ruggiero, Kristin, “Honor, Maternity, and the Disciplining of Women,” Hispanic American Historical Review 72:3 (1992): 371 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schulte, Regina, The Village in Court (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1989), 108 Google Scholar; Wiener, Martin J., “Convicted Murderess and the Victorian Press,” Crimes and Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective 1:2 (2007): 110 Google Scholar; and Wilson, Stephen, “Infanticide, Child Abandonment, and Female Honour in Nineteenth-Century Corsica,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30:4 (1988): 763 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

8. Jaffary, Nora E., “Reconceiving Motherhood,” Journal of Family History 37:3 (2012): 5 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

9. Article 581 of the 1871 Penal Code defined infanticide as intentionally causing the death of an infant within 72 hours of its birth. Clandestine burial resulted in a lesser punishment of three to five months of imprisonment. See López, Aarón Hernández, Código Penal de 1871 (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 2000), 171 Google Scholar.

10. Nora Jaffary offers an insightful discussion of the 1871 Penal Code as it relates to infanticide. Drawing on Linda Arnold's depiction of nineteenth-century courts as careful and conservative in their handling of evidence, Jaffary also observes that court officials were reluctant to find women accused of infanticide guilty without sufficient evidence. See Arnold, Linda, “When Not Even Safe in Her Own Home,” Ars luris 28:2 (2002): 71 Google ScholarPubMed; Nora E. Jaffary, “Prosecuting Motherhood,” presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, San Francisco, California (May 23-26), 22–30.

11. There is a rich literature on the changing significance of honor within Latin American gender systems, specifically as it relates to race, caste, and class. See Caulfied, Sueann, Chambers, Sarah C., and Putnam, Laura, Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya and Johnson, Lyman L., The Faces of Honor (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Stern, Steve J., The Secret History of Gender (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Twinam, Ann, Public Lives, Private Secrets (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

12. Scholars such as Natalie Zemon Davis and Cynthia Herrup have emphasized the structural constraints of legal documents, demonstrating that the law, court procedures, and judicial officials' lines of questioning placed limits on who spoke and what they could say in the courts. Their observations apply to Sonora's infanticide trials. Yet trial testimonies also reveal how defendants and other witnesses engaged new medical knowledge and participated in forging novel understandings of childbirth and infanticide. See Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the Archives (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 4 Google Scholar; and Herrup, Cynthia B., A House in Gross Disorder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 8 Google Scholar.

13. Salas, Miguel Tinker, In the Shadow of the Eagles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

14. Gil, Juan Manuel Romero, La minería en el noroeste de México (Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora, 2001)Google Scholar; Velasco, Alfonso Luis, Geografía y estadística del estado de Sonora (Mexico City: Tip. T. González Sucesores, 1890), 95 Google Scholar.

15. According to Tinker Salas, census surveys from this period likely underestimated the numbers of people who owned property because landowners of all sizes hoped to avoid responsibility for higher property tax assessments. See Miguel Tinker Salas, In the Shadow of the Eagles, 52.

16. According to the Secretaría de Fomento, Sonora's population was 110,837 in 1878; the general population census of 1910 reported 265,383. See Arámburu, Mario Cuevas, “La población sonorense y sus movimientos,” Sonora: textos de su historia (Hermosillo: Gobierno del Estado de Sonora, Instituto de Investigaciones, 1989), 16 Google Scholar.

17. Marcos Medina Bustos has carried out the most extensive research on infant mortality rates during the early nineteenth century in Sonora's main commercial center, Hermosillo. See Bustos, Medina, Vida y muerte en el antiguo Hermosillo (1773–1828) (Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora, 1994), 295 Google Scholar. For close analysis of household composition and female-headed households in the Sonoran serrano communities, see Radding, Cynthia, Wandering Peoples (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 103–141 Google Scholar.

18. Secretaría de Economía, Estadístical sociales del Porfiriato, 1877–1910 (Mexico City: Talleres Graficos de la Nación, 1956), 25, 33Google Scholar.

19. Contra Margarita y Eduard Díaz por infanticidio, 1898, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo/Alamos, Tomo 982, fol. 25.

20. For further information about these institutions in Mexico City during the nineteenth century, see Blum, Ann S., Domestic Economies (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), xv–xxxvii Google Scholar.

21. See Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya, “A Slap in the Face of Honor,” The Faces of Honor (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 179–180 Google Scholar; and Sloan, Kathryn A., Runaway Daughters (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 174 Google Scholar.

22. Voss, Stuart F., On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), 24–27 Google Scholar.

23. Oposura, later renamed Moctezuma, was the location of a number of infanticides during the Porfiriato. Radding, Cynthia, Landscapes of Power and Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 150–55, 262CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Shelton, Laura, For Tranquility and Order (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010), 45–48, 127–130Google Scholar.

25. Cook, Sherburne F., The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 112 Google Scholar; Cramaussel, Chantal, Primera página de Historia Colonial Chihuahuense (Ciudad Juárez: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 1990), 58 Google Scholar; Jackson, Robert H., 1994. Indian Population Decline (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), 202–203 Google Scholar.

26. Chesney-Lind, Meda, “Women and Crime,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12:4 (1986): 78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. See Margaret L. Arnot, “Gender in Focus,” (PhD diss., University of Essex, 1994), 3–22; Jackson, Mark, Infanticide (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 4–35 Google ScholarPubMed; Rowe, G. S., “Infanticide, Its Judicial Resolution, and Criminal Code Revision in Early Pennsylvania,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 135:2 (1991): 201–203 Google ScholarPubMed; Ruggiero, Kristin, “Passion, Perversity, and the Pace of Justice in Argentina,” in Crime and Punishment in Latin America, Salvatore, Ricardo D., Aguirre, Carlos, and Joseph, Gilbert, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 212 Google Scholar; and Trexler, Richard, The Children of Renaissance Florence (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1993), 35–53 Google Scholar.

28. Regina Schulte, for example, conceptualizes local and state courts as spaces where the lives and worldviews of peasants, bourgeois judges, and increasingly, psychiatrists intersect. Schulte, Regina, The Village in Court (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1989), 13 Google Scholar.

29. Stern, Steve J., The Secret History of Gender, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 39 Google Scholar.

30. Schulte found similar patterns in nineteenth-century Bavaria, and argues that in these cases, the mothers, “denied the children any social existence from the outset.” See Schulte, Regina, The Village in Court (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1989), 104 Google Scholar.

31. For example, see Guarnieri, Patrizia, “Men Committing Female Crime,” Histoire & Sociétés/History & Societies 13:2 (2009): 46 Google Scholar; Knelman, Judith, Twisting in the Wind (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 145–180 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ruggiero, Kristin, “Not Guilty,” in Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America, Aguirre, Carlos A. and Buffington, Robert, eds. (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2000)Google Scholar; and Guerra, Elisa Speckman, “Las flores del mal,” Historia Mexicana 47:1 (July-September 1997): 191 Google Scholar.

32. Hernández López, Código Penal de 1871, 171.

33. Contra Salomé Farazon por abandonar su hijo, 1890, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 880.

34. Contra Ramona Pompa por infanticidio, February 7, 1908, AGPJ/FJP, Caborca, Tomo 2453, fol. 47.

35. Infanticidio é inhumación clandestine contra Mariana Burruel de García y Carmen García, January12, 1920, AGPJ/FJP, Caborca, Tomo 2466.

36. Causa criminal instruida de oficio contra Ignacio Ramirez, Gregorio Urquijo y Francisca Ramirez por presuntos responsables del delito de infanticidio, August 29, 1896 [1897], AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 962.

37. The role of gossip in shaping morals and regulating conduct through mutual surveillance is well established in the historical literature, in Latin America and elsewhere. See Hames, Gina, “Maize-Beer, Gossip, and Slander,” Journal of Social History 37:2 (2003): 351–364 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kathryn A. Sloan, Runaway Daughters, 112–117; and Tebbutt, Melanie, Women's Talk? (Brookfield, VT: Scholar Press, 1995), 4 Google Scholar.

38 Criminal contra Carlota Chacón por infanticidio, June 26, 1900, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo/Distrito Sahuaripa, Tomo 1014.

39. Criminal contra Pelagia Alvarez por infanticidio, December 4, 1913, AGPJ/FJP, Alamos/Etchojoa, Tomo 2180.

40. “Sin los aviso a ninguna personal de la casa arrojo sobre la criatura y dentro del excusado donde estaba algunos trapos y basurra con el fin de ocultrtarla, pues le daba verguenza lo que le habia pasado.” Criminal contra Severa López por el delito de infanticidio, July 24, 1902, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 1035, f. 6.

41. “para ocultar la deshonra de su hija.” Contra Doña Salome Paredes y Micaela Andrade por infanticidio y inhumación clandestino, 1894, AGPJ/FJP, Ures, Tomo 2579, fol. 1.

42. Ibid., fols. 32–33.

43. Although not a central focus of this article, local citizens approached the state courts instead of ecclesiastical courts by the end of the nineteenth century, reflecting several decades of growing influence on the part of the secular courts in a wide range of moral crimes, a trend evident across the region. See for example Caulfield, Sueann, In Defense of Honor (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2000), 5–8 Google Scholar; and Hunefeldt, Christine, Liberalism in the Bedroom (State College, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000), 79–108 Google Scholar.

44. In this respect, Luna's treatment aligns with Robert Buffington's and Pablo Piccato's observations that criminologists linked indigenous status with criminality. See Buffington, Robert M., Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (Lincoln: Lincoln University, 2000), 162 Google Scholar; and Piccato, Pablo, City of Suspects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. “una muger acostada sobre un petate y cubrierta con un zarape colorado, cuya muger es trigueña de color y al paracer tendra veite años, y segun se deja ver está enferma.” Infanticidio contra Andrea Luna, 1869, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 715, fol. 4.

46. “tomandose en consideración el temor y la vergüenza que naturalmente debia de tener, asi como su ignorancia por pertenecer a la Tribu Yaqui.” Ibid., fols. 28–30.

47. Infanticidio, Presunte Responsable, Trinidad Valencia, June 14, 1918, AGPJ/FJP, Pitiquito, Tomo 2462.

48. Pacheco, Joaquín Francisco, Apéndice a los comentarios del Código Penal de don Joaquín Francisco Pacheco (Madrid: Imp. de M. Tello, 1870), 281–282 Google Scholar; Bárcenas, Rafael Roa, Manual razonado de práctica civil forense (Mexico City: J. M. Aguilar y Cía., 1859), 587–593 Google Scholar.

49. Linda Arnold, “When Not Even Safe in Her Own Home,” 95.

50. Contra Antonia Parra por infanticidio, March 13, 1897, AGPJ/FJP, Magdalena, Tomo 2974.

51. Averiguación sobre la muerte de los niños Ramón y Antonia Torres por sumerción en la agua, January 31, 1921, AGPJ/FJP, Alamos, Tomo 2189.

52. Averiguación sobre el hallazgo de un feto en Punta de Lastre, January 24, 1899, AGPJ/FJP, Guaymas, Tomo 1877.

53. Contra Refugio y Gabriela Islas por delito de infanticidio, 1900, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo/Altar, Tomo 1014.

54 Duraznillo blanco is a floral plant now known to be an abortifacient, but it is unclear if Islas would have been aware of its effects at the time. This plant is a mycotoxin more often associated with arid regions of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, but a similar variety of mycotoxin may have existed in the Sonoran desert. See Riet-Correa, Franklin, Poisoning by Plants: Mycotoxins and Related Toxins (Cambridge: CABI, 2011), 40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. Contra Ines Escalante por infanticidio, April 10, 1909, AGPJ/FJP, Alamos, Tomo 2454.

56. Infanticidio é inhumación clandestina contra Mariana Burruel de García y Carmen García, January 12, 1920, AGPJ/FJP, Caborca, Tomo 2466.

57. Rafael Roa Bárcenas, Manual razonado, 589–591.

58. Criminal contra Pelagia Alvarez. Infanticidio, December 4, 1913, AGPJ/FJP, Alamos (Hacienda “Busconcove,” jurisdiction of Etchojoa), Tomo 2180.

59. Causa seguida por delito de infanticidio en contra de María Savas López, May 5, 1863, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo/Villa de Sahuaripa, Tomo 701.

60. Inhumación clandestina, Magdalena Rivas, April 8, 1891, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 886.

61. See for example AGPJ, FJP, Guaymas, Tomo 1840, “Averiguación [de la] cadaver [de una] criatura,” 1861; and AGPJ, FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 734, “Averguación sobre un delito de infanticidio,” 1869.

62. Criminal contra Ana Salcido por inhumación clandestina, June 17, 1901, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 1032.

63. See Francisco Canales, “Hemorragias postpartum,” (Medical thesis: UNAM, 1897), 7–32; David Cruz, “Indicaciones formales para provocar aborto,” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1897), 9–21; Fernando Gómez Suárez, “Fiebre puerperal,” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1891), 5–41; Joaquín Ibañez, “Someras reflexiones sobre el aborto obstetrical,” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1882), 7–43; Eduardo Navarro y Carona, “Del parto prematuro,” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1873), 6–81; Francisco Menocal, “Estudio sobre el aborto en México,” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1869), 1–43; and Rómulo Rendón, “Influencia del embarazo en las enfermedades del corazón,” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1891), 6–69.

64. José Gómez, “Tratamiento de aborto,” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1895), 7–14; Francisco Rodiles, “Breves apuntos sobre la histeria” (Medical thesis, UNAM, 1885), 38–40.

65. See Kathryn A. Sloan, Runaway Daughters, 169; and Garza, James Alex, The Imagined Underworld (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 140 Google Scholar.

66. “Que padece locura intermitente.” Criminal contra Rosa Paredes por infanticidio, September 1, 1900, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 1015, fol. 50.

67. Causa seguida por delito de infanticidio en contra de María Savas López, May 5, 1863, AGPJ/FJP, Hermosillo, Tomo 701.

68. See for example the case against Josefa García involving two appointed médicos legistas, Miguel Gutierrez and C. F. Zeller. Criminal contra Josefa García por el delito de infanticidio é inhumación clandestina, October 25, 1907, AGPJ/FJP, Alamos, Tomo 2162.

69. Contra María E. de Sanchez por el delito de infanticidio, May 22, 1895, AGPJ/FJP, Guaymas, Tomo 1864.

70. Ibid., fols. 30–33.

71. Sanchez's husband never testified in the trial No one mentioned him except the defendant herself, at the beginning of her testimony, when she worried about how she might explain their infant's death to him. It was unusual for fathers to receive attention in these trials.