Abstract

SHELTON, Laura. Infanticide and popular discipline in Sonora, Mexico’s judicial system between 1855 and 1929. Culturales [online]. 2017, vol.5, n.1, pp.255-298. ISSN 2448-539X.

The objective of this article is to explore why local communities began to use their judiciary in new ways to discipline women accused of infanticide, abortion, and infant abandonment during the Porfiriato. This work uses gender analysis of criminal trials to uncover changes in the local gender order and to argue that disruptions in masculine identities contributed to increased policing of women’s sexual conduct and efforts to use the State to maintain a traditional moral order during a period of rapid change. Infanticide trials provided a space for discourses of ethnic, economic and gender inferiority towards women, especially young single women who hid their pregnancies. This study finds that State agents were not unified in their treatment of female criminality, but popular pressure still played a role in expanding the reach of State power to impose moral order and provide a platform for public shaming of female sexuality.

Keywords : infanticide; gender studies; Sonora; construction of social order.