About the Book
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, 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 women's status in highland Bolivia; the formation of a multiethnic society on Costa Rica'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 Jose Amador Rossana Barragan Sueann Caulfield Sidney Chalhoub Sarah Chambers Olivia Gomes da Cunha Eileen Findley Brodwyn Fischer Laura Gotkowitz Keila Grinberg Peter Guardino Cristina Schetti Pereiva Lara Putnam
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, 1750–1850 / Peter Guardino 50
The “spirit” 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 (1855–1916) / Keila Grinberg 109
Trading insults: honor, violence, and the gendered culture of commerce in Cochabamba, Boliva, 1870s–1950s / Laura Gotkowitz 131
Sex and standing in the streets of Port Limon, Costa Rica, 1890–1910 / Lara Putnam 155
Slandering citizens: insults, class, and social legitimacy in Rio de Janeiro’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, 1920–1940 / Sueann Caulfield 223
III. The Policing of Public Space
The plena’s dissonant melodies: leisure, racial policing, and nation in Puerto Rico, 1900–1930s / 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, 1903–1940 / Olivia Maria Gomes da Cunha 295
Contributors 317
Index 321
About the Author :
Sueann Caulfield is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is the author of In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early Twentieth-century Brazil, also published by Duke University Press.
Sarah C. Chambers is Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780–1854.
Lara Putnam is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870–1960.
Review :
"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 Martinez-Vergne, author of Shaping the Discourse on Space: Charity and Its Wards in Nineteenth-Century San Juan, Puerto Rico "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 in both 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, author of Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil "All of the essays present fascinating analyses... The editors have provided a substantial service to professors by pulling this particular set of articles together in a single English-language volume, reasonably priced ... in the paper-back version... The writing is generally accessible and colorful... User-friendly and well-done."--Kif Augustine-Adams, Law and Politics Book Review "The editors have crafted a volume that is intellectually rigorous, lucid in argumentation, and timely in the application of scholarly ideas. Even better, the arguments of these essays run together to a degree that is rare in edited collections... The result is a textual unity that makes for a satisfying read."--Joshua Rosenthal, History: Reviews of New Books "This volume ventures beyond history and politics of nation building and delves into topics related to paternalism, gender, class, and racial discrimination issues, among others... This book is recommended for classroom use."--Colonial Latin American Historical Review "This set of essays is an important contribution to the emerging literature on honour in the modern period and should be useful to anyone with an interest in the history of ideas." --Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Canadian Journal of History "This fine collection of essays will definitely be of interest not only to historians of modern Latin American but also to those scholars of the human sciences who work on cognate issues of gender, honor, law, and the social construction of citizenship in other areas of the world."--Eric Van Young, American Historical Review "This fine anthology examines a key concept in Latin American history and culture: honour... This is a very interesting book that is well organized and historiographically up to date."-- Osvaldo Barreneche, Social History
