Inside Behavior or Why Space Mattered in Colonial and Early National Mexico

In 1846, María del Carmen Méndez, a caretaker in a Puebla tenement, told some children who were playing in the building’s common internal patio that their play was too raucous and unsuitable because it reflected badly on the building owner’s honor. Essentially, she explained to them that theirs was not “inside behavior” and thus they were not welcome in the shared spaces of the building. Her judgment was the product of a long history dating back to both Spanish and indigenous cultural elements that instilled spaces with moral qualities. Consequently, the built environment in which people lived was not only coded with culturally specific messages but as a spatial context it also became an actor in their lives. J. Carter Wood suggests the notion of “geographies of violence.”  He proposes that the spatial contexts in which people lived could both produce and construct violence—that is to say, violence was molded into certain forms by the setting but in addition that there was also a connection made by those involved to the basic tenets of that culture. In this paper, using documents from Mexican criminal court cases, I will explore the interaction between space, violence, and behavior. I will show how spaces acted not just as a setting for the actions of Mexicans but also mediated and shaped their conduct.