Pobres, marginados y peligrosos (review)

In this 2003 collection of essays focused on poverty, marginality, and power, editors Jorge Trujillo, a professor at Mexico's University of Guadalajara, and Juan Quintar, professor at the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Patagonia, Argentina, highlight the complicated social, cultural, and political dimensions of crime in Latin America between 1880 and 1930. The rationale for the collection's exclusive focus on Argentina and Mexico is that both countries witnessed a period of rapid liberalization and modernization during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during which public attention to crime, violence and marginality was especially pronounced. The editors note that each country's national experience has been the focus of intensive scrutiny by historians of crime and justice, as well. Individually, the essays provide fascinating glimpses into the daily lives of migrants, merchants, murderers and marginal communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; collectively, they help deepen understanding of the historical mechanics of conflict and repression during a period of rapid social transition and political change. The volume is organized both thematically and geographically. An introductory essay by Carlos Aguirre, historian of criminality in Peru, sets the stage, placing the study of law and crime in Latin America into historical perspective. Separate sections on Argentina and Mexico follow; each is preceded by its own historiographical essay that places the forthcoming work on poverty, marginality, and criminality in each country into broader context.

The first set of essays about Argentina is the most cohesive. All of them focus on the Patagonian territory of Neuquén, which, by the end of the nineteenth century, had only been recently integrated into the Argentine national territory. The essays bring to life the world of migrants, merchants, thieves, murderers and rapists who populated this most violent of provinces. Each author examines a different aspect of marginality and state repression in the region. One focuses on public schools as scenes of political repression and abuse of power, for example, while a second describes the role of juvenile courts in mediating ill treatment of the children of Chilean migrants living in the region. Others focus on such topics as banditry, property crimes, sexual violence, and the idea of delinquency in popular literature.

The essays on Mexico are more diverse than those on Argentina; their geographic focus ranges from Mexico City to Guadalajara and includes considerations of Sinaloa and rural Jalisco, as well. They are more topically and methodologically varied, because they examine popular discourses on criminality and science as well as the social history of crime in venues ranging from the capital city's most infamous prison to rural interactions between federal agents and petty criminals. While the essays on Argentina are generally rooted in social history methods, the work on Mexico reflects a greater reliance on the methods of cultural history. One article deconstructs the writings of late nineteenth-century journalist and crime-writer Carlos Roumagnac, while another features analysis of images and photographic evidence.

Trujillo and Quintar's collection resonates with Carlos Aguirre and Robert Buffington's Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America (2001) and Aguirre and Ricardo Salvatorre's Crime and Punishment in Modern Latin America (2002). But whereas several essays in Crime and Punishment feature gender analysis as an element of consideration, most of the essays in Pobres, marginados y peligrosos do not. This omission is unfortunate, because greater attention to how ideas about masculinity and femininity shaped perspectives on poverty, rape, and even property crimes could help shed light on repression and power relations in a variety of social contexts. Similarly, it is unfortunate that the editors decided against providing a conclusion. The volume ends with an essay on female criminality in western Mexico; the reader is thus left alone to formulate his or her own analysis regarding the relationships among the diverse topics presented and to consider what might be appropriate themes for future investigation.