Honor, violence and patriarchal power in the Mexican process of criminal secularization

• Main Author: Alejandra Palafox
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad de Alicante 2016-12-01
• Series: Feminismo/s
• Subjects: secularización; delitos sexuales; virginidad; honor; siglo xix
• Online Access: https://feminismos.ua.es/article/view/2016-n28-honor-violencia-y-poder-patriarcal-en-el-proceso-mexicano-de-secularizacion-penal

Through the analysis of different juridical bodies, manuals, dictionaries, law treaties and judicials files, we address some of the effects that the process of criminal secularization in Mexico had in the regulation of set of acts of a sexual nature, classified as crimes of incontinence, sensuality crimes or crimes against family order, public morality or decency, during the Nineteenth century. We show about the contradictions that occurred in the gradual separation of the concepts of sin and crime, and the supposed formal relegation of sin to the internal and private field. We conclude that this legal modernization entailed the maintenance of a christian values code, which operated as a tool of control and subjection of the female population.