“This man hurt me!”. Homicide, gender, and the language of judgement in nineteenth-century Jalisco

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a national civil war, this article examines a fatal episode of domestic violence in Guadalajara in 1860. Ursino Sánchez may have silenced his partner, Sista Cuevas, and fled into the night, but the victim’s surviving family members ensured that he would face punishment at the hands of the law. By examining the language deployed in the courtroom by the involved parties, I observe both how gender norms were irremediably inscribed in the legal codes governing violence, and how these norms informed testimonies and, possibly, judicial findings. Furthermore, judicial records consulted here reveal the degree to which citizens had metabolized colonial and modern legal precedents into a shared cultural understanding of gender roles that spanned decades and class divides in postcolonial Mexico.