This chapter describes the building, interior design, and furnishings in the location where the murders took place, drawing from a nineteenth-century historical novel about the crime.

This introduction frames the crime at the heart of the book with vignettes of historical and textual background, adding a few additional fragments to the kaleidoscope of murder and its aftermath in late-eighteenth-century Mexico City. It proposes the 1789 murders, which are the topic of this book, as early examples of Mexican True Crime. The introduction also includes select critiques regarding this genre and other comments on the different genres of literature depicting murder in Mexico. This book recreates a paper trail of Enlightenment-era greed and savagery which began with a brutal massacre. The events which took place on the night of October 23, 1789, led to politicized depictions in different fiction and nonfiction writings for the next century.

The introductory chapter examines an 1892 photograph of a meeting between the then Governor of Belize, Alfred Moloney and a contingent of the rebel Santa Cruz Maya to raise critical questions about the nature of imperialism in frontiers and borderlands. It situates Anglo-Mexican relations within internal and international developments and charts the historical evolution of governance in Belize. It also describes the nature of the border areas between Belize and Mexico as a fluid frontier – geographically, economically and racially – to set the stage for understanding the complex relations among the different groups of people on the border areas as well as colonial officials.