Crime, Emotions, and Law: The Role of Liberal Reforms in Female Homicide Cases in Yucatán During the 19th Century

This paper examines the shift in discourses about emotions surrounding gender violence before and after Mexico adopted the Penal Code in 1871. In the early 19th century defenders of men who killed women articulated that their clients’ emotions had blinded them, absolving their responsibility. The primary influence behind this argument came from medical debates about emotions. In Mexico, physicians conducted experiments on sensitivity and reported in their medical journals, including Medicina científica, that emotions were a measurable phenomenon that exerted a physical influence. Such arguments often led to acquittals or lenient convictions, as evidenced by dozens of homicide trials found in the Archivo del Estado de Yucatán. Partly as a response to this, jurists crafted a Penal Code that established a new Emotional Regime. My main argument is that, although the written law created a legal grammar around emotions, debates about passions diminished dramatically in Yucatán. By establishing criteria and standardizing the conceptualization of emotions, the Penal Code reduced the emotional justifications for gender-based violence.

No historian has examined the emotional implications of this shift in criminal justice in Latin America. We know little about whether the liberal code brought changes to domestic violence, and we lack understanding of its impact on gender-based emotional violence during this legal transition. The findings of this conference add nuance to Elizabeth Dore’s general perspective, according to which liberalism represented a step backward for women’s rights in Latin America. By comparing the justifications for emotional violence before and after the Penal Code, this study demonstrates that Dore’s argument does not withstand generalization: the situation for women was not better in all judicial contexts prior to the advent of liberal reforms, nor did it deteriorate afterward.