Whose Crime Is It Anyway? Gender, Race, and Petty Theft in Guatemala, 1770–1900

On the periphery of the Spanish colonial world, the Kingdom of Guatemala was a crossroads of trade, an intersection of culture, and a seat of administrative power for the region stretching from Chiapas to Costa Rica.  It would seem logical that society would be typical to other colonial cities such as Mexico City or Lima; at the heart of El Reino de Guatemala, for many centuries of colonial rule at Santiago de los Caballeros, or modern-day Antigua, after the earthquakes of the 1770s, moved to what is now today’s Guatemala City.  However, what has been the norm of a victimized and relatively passive female population in the criminal record of the core areas of the Spanish colonial world, with the exception of moral or religious crimes, is turned upside-down for Guatemala.  Surveying the available court cases from the half century leading to independence clearly demonstrates a society with a female population active in the local economy, with women of all racial and ethnic compositions and ages, single, widowed, and married, involved in petty theft of textiles and others being abused by the system of forced textile production (repartimiento de generos) and fighting back.  Analysis of these documents defies the standard generalization of women in core areas of empire and requires reconceptualizing Guatemala’s women as active agents in local economy and society.  It also presents a unique window of information on a society in flux from both geological and socio-political changes.