How Juan and Leonor won their freedom: Litigation and liberty in seventeenth-century Mexico

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 85, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 39-79

  Owensby, Brian P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61449387412     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-85-1-39     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. The literature is enormous. In the Mexican context, Laura Nader and Susan Kellogg have been central figures in bringing anthropological insight to bear on issues of law. See Laura Nader, Harmony and Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990)
2. Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700 (Norman: Oklahoma Univ. Press, 1995)
3. For a broader geographical perspective on these issues, see June Starr and Jane Collier, eds., History and Power in the Study of Law: New Directions in Legal Anthropology (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989)
4. Sandra Burman and Barbara Herell-Bond, The Imposition of Law (New York: Academic Press, 1979)
5. For the newer strain emerging from linguistic and cognitive studies, see Steven Winter, A Clearing in the Forest: Law, Life, and Mind (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001)
6. Steven Winter, "The 'Power' Thing," Virginia Law Review 82 (Aug. 1996): 736
7. and Altamira's Técnica de investigación en la historia del derecho indiano (Mexico: Porrúa, 1939) were the seminal works and are still the starting point for a scholarship that remains quite robust
8. For a survey of recent developments in the field, see Víctor Tau Anzoátegui, Nuevos horizontes en el estudio histórico del derecho indiano (Buenos Aires: IIHD, 1997). Levene and Altamira were followed by a generation of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic
9. Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half-Real (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), 1
10. See also Colin MacLachlan, Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: A Study of the Tribunal of the Acordada (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1974)
11. Carlos Aguirre, Ricardo Salvatore, and Gilbert Joseph, eds., Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late Colonial Times (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2001), 7
12. Charles Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1995)
13. and Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture
14. See E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (New York: Pantheon, 1975)
15. Douglas Hay et al., Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Pantheon, 1975)
16. See, e.g., Steve Stern, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1987)
17. Frederich Katz, ed., Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988)
18. Susan Schroeder, ed., Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1998)
19. See, e.g., Juan Méndez, Guillermo O'Donnell, and Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, eds., The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1999)
20. See Salvatore et al., Crime and Punishment, 14-15. On this view, the rule of law has never obtained in most countries of the region, and law (such as it is) has remained arbitrary, informal, particularistic, and favorable to rulers
21. There is something of an elision here, as I am more or less taking for granted critical legal studies' undermining of the formalist account of law. See, e.g., Rogert Gordon, "Critical Legal Histories," Stanford Law Review 36, no. 57 (Jan. 1984): 57-125
22. Winter, A Clearing in the Forest, 345
23. See also Winter, "The 'Power' Thing."
24. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 551-68
25. A similar tone has recently been struck with regard to early American legal history. See Christopher Tomlins, "Introduction: The Many Legalities of Colonization - A Manifesto of Destiny for Early American Legal History," in The Many Legalities of Early America, ed. Christopher Tomlins and Bruce Mann (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001), 1-20
26. See also Joan Corominas, Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana (Madrid: Gredos, 1961), 344
27. AGI/AHN, Inquisición, 1727, no. 2, 4v-9v
28. R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 97
29. See Brígida von Mentz, Trabajo, sujeción y libertad en el centro de la Nueva España (Mexico City: CIESA, 1999)
30. The literature on or using cases from the Inquisition is substantial. In addition to Alberro's works, see Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2003)
31. Richard Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Community in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1995)
32. and Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1994) for recent creative discussions of the Inquisition's role in colonial life
33. Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 112
34. Solange Alberro, ed., La actividad del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en Nueva España, 1571-1700 (Mexico City: INAH, 1981), 55
35. Alberro, Inquisición y sociedad, 462-79
36. Alonso de Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud (1627), 243
37. Silvio Zavala, Servidumbre natural y libertad cristiana según los tratadistas españoles de los siglos XVI y XVII (Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1944), 23
38. See Celestino del Arenal, "La teoria de la servidumbre natural en el pensamiento español de los siglos XVII y XVIII," Historiografía y Bibliografía Americanista 19-20 (1976): 67-124
39. Antonio M. García-Molina Riquelme, El régimen de penas y penitencias en el Tribunal de la Inquisición de México (Mexico City: UNAM, 1999), 444-51, 461-67
40. Solórzano, Política indiana, 5:68, lib. 6, cap. 14, no. 22
41. Recopilación, lib. 9, tít. 46, ley 40, f. 140
42. Solórzano, Política indiana, 5:375, lib. 4, cap. 24, no. 42
43. Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud, 246
44. Solórzano y Pereira argued that there should be a presumption of venia for Indians. Política indiana, lib. 2, cap. 28, no. 30
45. See Agustín Bermúdez Aznar, "La abogacia de pobres en Indias," Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 50 (1980): 1039-54
46. Paulino Castañeda Delgado, "La condición miserable del indio y sus privilegios," Anuario de Estudios Americanos 28 (1971): 27-91
47. Borah, Justice by Insurance, 13-15, 83
48. Bartolomé de Góngora, El corregidor sagaz: Abisos, y documentos morales; para los que lo fueren (1656; Madrid: La Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1951), 49
49. Solórzano, Politica indiana, lib. 2, cap. 28, no. 33
50. See Víctor Tau Anzoateguí, "La noción de ley en América hispana durante los siglos XVI-XVIII," Anuario de Filosofía Jurídica y Social 6 (1986): 197
51. Solórzano, Política indiana, lib. 5, cap. 16, no. 6
52. See Víctor Tau Anzoateguí, Casuismo y sistema: Indagación histórica sobre el espíritu del Derecho Indiano (Buenos Aires: Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del Derecho, 1992), 455
53. See, e.g., Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 35
54. See Ordenanzas de Palafox, "Ordenanzas para la Real Audiencia desta Nueua España, Ministros y officiales della," tít. 1, no. 24
55. Julio Caro Baroja, El señor inquisidor y otras vidas por oficio (Madrid: Alianza, 1970), 23-24
56. Ralph Vigil, "Oidores Letrados and the Idea of Justice, 1480-1570," The Americas 47, no. 1 (July 1990): 39-54
57. See also Pilar Arregui Zamorano, La Audiencia de México según los visitadores (Siglos XVI y XVII) (Mexico City: UNAM, 1985)
58. See Anzoateguí, "La noción de ley," 223-28
59. Anzoateguí, Casuismo y sistema
60. Solórzano, Política indiana, lib. 1, cap. 11, no. 13
61. On doubt and casuistry more generally, see Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1988), 139-79
62. Solórzano, Política indiana, 1:142, lib. 2, cap. 2, no. 2
63. Covarrubias, Tesoro, 765
64. See, generally, Zavala, Servidumbre natural y libertad cristiana
65. Bartolomé de Las Casas, De regia potestate o Derecho de autodeterminación (Madrid: CSIC, 1969), 17
66. Solórzano, Política indiana, 1:178, lib. 2, cap. 6, no. 42
67. Solórzano, Política indiana, 1:448, lib. 2, cap. 30, no. 41
68. See also Edgar Love, "Legal Restrictions on Afro-Indian Relations in Colonial Mexico," Journal of Negro History 55, no. 2 (Apr. 1970): 131-39