Maternity and Morality in Puebla's Nineteenth-Century Infanticide Trials

Abstract

The criminal trials of twenty-seven women processed for the crimes of abortion and infanticide in the state of Puebla, Mexico during the nineteenth century reveal both community and state perspectives about contemporary notions of gender, motherhood, and honor. This paper argues that while there was an increase in both denunciations and convictions for these crimes in the nineteenth century, women's peers acted as reluctant participants in their incrimination. Both local and higher court justices convicted women more frequently for abortion and infanticide than they had done in the colonial era, but nonetheless sentenced them with considerable leniency. Some of the explanation for their leniency lay in court officials' view that indigenous women, who constituted a considerable percentage of the defendants, were too “rustic” or “ignorant” to be held responsible for their actions. The cases also reveal, however, that courts and communities shared the view that any means–including committing violent crimes or hiding pregnancies–justified the ends of protecting plebeian women's reputation of sexual honor.