De víctimas, receptadoras y ladronas. La mujer en el mundo del robo y la criminalidad en el Jalisco del siglo XIX

Abstract

This article analyzes women’s implication in the domain of criminality in an area that, according to contemporary public opinion, was being besieged by a “plague” of robberies. In a setting so heavily marked by public insecurity and violence, women were the victims of innumerable abductions, assaults, sexual attacks and rapes; acts of violence exercised directly on their persons. However, and despite the submissive role so often assigned culturally to women, in some cases they were active participants in criminal acts, usually acting as fences of stolen goods and objects, but on occasion also as thieves themselves. Of course, those activities sometimes resulted in arrests, trials and punishment. The analysis follows the approach of the sociocultural history of crime as it seeks to reconstruct this context from a gender perspective. Research was based on judicial sources and newspaper reports from the period.