This collection of six essays by Susan Socolow, John Chasteen, Julia Blackwelder, Donna Guy, Lyman Johnson, and Richard Slatta/Karla Robinson examines facets of criminality in the Platine region from the late colonial period through the early twentieth century. The essays utilize documents produced by judicial bodies, policing agencies, and other municipal authorities, data bases that support distinct patterns of analysis. Essays such as Chasteen’s that draw upon judicial sources yield more direct evidence on cultural values, while policing accounts such as the Slatta/Robinson essay serve to illustrate patterns of criminality. None of the essays but Socolow’s has been published previously.
Socolow discusses ascribed gender behavior underlying incidences of sexual and interpersonal violence that reached the judicial system in late colonial Buenos Aires. Slatta and Robinson isolate an essential continuity in criminal standards in both Unitario and Rosista Buenos Aires that tends to undermine the alleged policy distinctions between the two eras. Chasteen focuses on the role of honor in public displays of personal violence in the Uruguay/Rio Grande do Sul region. Black-welder compares the relationship between urbanization and criminality with the same period in U. S. history. The fifty years of authorized prostitution and licensed bordellos in Buenos Aires are the object of Guy’s study, in which she traces the influence of the intricate relationship between municipal government, police jurisdictions, and international pressure on the “white slave” trade. Johnson explores the alleged relationship between economic development and industrialization in his comparative study of arrest patterns in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, and Tucumán.
The volume lacks a synthetic conclusion, which leaves the task of integration to the reader. This omission is regrettable, as the essays are linked by implicit themes of arrest patterns, the role of gender in criminality, rural/urban variances, social and cultural norms, and the relation of criminality to power and authority. For example, four of the essays contain considerable information on the relation of gender to criminality. Men and women were arrested for disparate reasons that ranged from changed labor demands, to evolving social views of proper female behavior, to differing priorities of social control by authorities.
Most of the essays are clearly written and are suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students, in addition to their professors; Socolow’s and Chasteen’s contributions are noteworthy. Courses with a strong emphasis on social history or on the Platine region would be served by the collection. The University of New Mexico Press is to be commended for its release of a suitable supplementary reading in paperback.