Colonial Baracunatanas and Their Nasty Men: Spousal Homicides and the Law in Late Colonial New Granada

This article discusses 51 incidents of spousal homicide occurring in New Granada (today's Colombia) during the late colonial period, ca. 1750--1810. It examines the regional distribution of the crimes; looks at the gender, ethnicity, class, and occupations of the participants; discusses the circumstances of the crimes (weapons, motives); and evaluates the legal treatment and punishment of the defendants. Its most significant finding concerns the high incidence of spousal murder among all murders committed by women. The article establishes that women were four times more likely to commit spousal murder than any other type of homicide, a rate compatible with findings for other regions of the world and other periods in history. Unlike other studies, however, this, work claims that women's involvement in this type of crime was not the logical result of the fact that a woman's place was firmly in the home, making her more likely to strike against husbands and others present in her circumscribed space of activity. On the contrary, it finds that women had relatively active public lives and were prone to irreverent behavior that provoked their husbands' jealousy, and rage. The men, sensing that their patriarchal prerogatives were spinning out of control, resorted to abuse. In these situations, women could be killed if they did not kill their husbands first.