Role Of Honor In Colonial Latin America

Honour in Colonial Latin America and the Courts’ Role for Justice
Honour was a principle that members of colonial society protected fiercely but whether one’s bloodline automatically inherited respect was debatable. The diverse society of ten required the judicial system to settle when these interests collided. During the colonial period, the defining characteristic of Latin American society was its highly stratified society. The rights afforded to the different social classes differed greatly depending on which class they belong. Those with pure Spanish blood were the elites of the society. Beneath them on the social hierarchy lay the plebians, people with mixed racial backgrounds including creoles and mulattoes. Next were the “indios” (indigenous

A question arises whether they felt “coerced” to use the court system because the judicial system was the only avenue, other than violence, in trying to right perceived wrongs. A careful examination of “Scandal at the Church: José de Alfaro Accuses Doña Theresa Bravo and Others of Insulting and Beating His Castiza Wife, Josefa Cadena (Mexico, 1782),” illustrates the surprising role of an elite court system as an equalizer within a socially-stratified society. More specifically to this case, the court acted as a vehicle to restore honour in an attack from an upper class society member to someone in a class lower. The chapter chronicled a criminal proceeding initiated by the plaintiff because of the injury and insult inflicted upon his wife by the defendant and her family. The physical injuries inflicted on José de

In this specific case, the role of the court served the purpose of restoring honour for a family whose name had been shamed through an altercation that was both physical and verbal. In this court case, a lower-class man took a higher- class family to court for a crime that had been committed against him. Considering the extensive social inequalities in Colonial Mexico during this time period, it seems out of place that a lower-class man would dare to take a higher-class family to court. Petitioning the court was not usually the first avenue used to try to settle insults or slanders and “in many instances women of both the upper and lower classes did not hesitate to use violence to correct an insulting remark . . .