Many recent cultural histories of Latin America have focused on the contentious and negotiated character of everyday social realities. They emphasize that the poor and marginalized majority in society have resisted and effectively limited elite initiatives and thereby played significant roles in the process of defining the meanings of key cultural and political institutions. In this historiographical vein, Pablo Piccato studies crime and punishment to understand how views and values of the authorities and lower classes conflicted and to create a rich, detailed cultural history of early twentieth-century Mexico City. City of Suspects is analytically innovative, magnificently researched, and full of fascinating cases that bring the reader inside the homes, minds, and hearts of the urban poor.
Pablo Piccato vividly creates a tale of two cities at the turn of the century: the minority, Porfirian elites, attempted to build a modern and ordered ideal city, while the majority, the urban...
