Scholars have mined the complex political and economic events during the reign of Mexico’s Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911) to unearth essential material for their studies on the profound economic transformations that took place during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Kathryn Sloan’s original contribution to the historiography of this formative time in Mexico’s history is to delve beneath the surface of political events and uncover how working-class citizens from Oaxaca de Juárez (today’s Oaxaca City) interacted with the state over issues of honor, courtship practices, and everyday gender conflicts. Court cases involving rapto, or the abduction of young women at the hands of their lovers, provide the backbone of Sloan’s engaging study, and the witnesses’ intriguing accounts are as seductive as the lovers’ promises of marriage and life-long love.
Throughout her work Sloan stresses women’s strength and agency despite their calculated court testimony that often professed weakness at the...
