Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America (review)

This is a fine anthology of essays focusing on struggles over status or honor in different historical settings and regions through Latin America, generally in connection with nineteenth-century Liberal projects. Springing from a 1998 conference at the University of Michigan, the volume addresses relations between the law and concepts of honor, status, and modernity in Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia, Puerto Rico and Brazil. Although at least one essay takes us back to the second half of the eighteenth century, most others address historical processes from the 1820s to the 1930s, referred to by the authors and others as the "long nineteenth century." The authors are an array of predominantly female scholars, both junior and senior, from universities in Bolivia, Brazil and the United States.

Following an Introduction, the thirteen essays are grouped into three parts. Part I ("Liberalism, Status and Citizenship") contains five essays touching on private crimes and notions of honor in early republican Peru; the impact of liberal laws on community service in Indigenous villages of Oaxaca from late colonial to early modern times; cases of infamy and notions of citizenship and patriarchy in nineteenth-century Bolivia; notions of paternalism and slavery as derived from some of Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis's works; and definitions of status and citizenship in the making of Brazil's civil code during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early-twentieth century. Part II ("Popular Uses of the Law") consists of five essays. Each addresses the late nineteenth and/or early-twentieth centuries and look, respectively, at slander incidents and conceptions of honor, status and race in Cochabamba, Bolivia; insult suits and the politics of honor in Port Limón, Costa Rica; slander cases and notions of honor and social legitimacy in criminal courts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; rapto and rape incidents and understandings of honor and sex in Puerto Rico; and changing notions concerning the defense of sexual honor in Rio de Janeiro. Part III ("The Policing of Public Space") has three essays that discuss the performance of popular music in early twentieth-century Puerto Rico and its association with racial prejudice, sexual regulation and municipal policing; prostitution, pandering and changes in the uses of the public space and the law in early twentieth century Rio; and, finally, forensic identification procedures and the linkage of physical attributes to social and moral values in Rio de Janeiro, during the first half of the twentieth century.

The Introduction to the volume asserts, rightly so, that both Portuguese and Spanish Americans in colonial times were obsessed with honor and status. This obsession could have been expected to change as a result of the Liberal watershed in the nineteenth century. The volume is thus intent on providing a number of representative case studies able to shed light on the extent to which, in matters of honor and status, among others, there was in Latin American law and culture more continuity than change from colonial to modern times. The authors establish, for instance, that republican times abolished racial and noble birth privileges but preserved status hierarchies. Ideals of honor, respectability and reputation, which were all closely tied to gender hierarchies, were also enduring and informed legislation and judicial decisions, not to mention day-to-day behavior.

All in all, this is a very readable anthology highly recommendable for use in anthropology, history, and sociology courses concerning modern Latin America, even more so if such courses have a comparative emphasis. It is also valuable for courses on women studies. Both research and general libraries alike must add it to their collections.