Victor M. Uribe-Uran
Fatal Love: Spousal Killers, Law, and Punishment in
the Late Colonial Spanish Atlantic
Stanford University Press,Redwood City, CA.,2015,456 pp.
ISBN:978-0804794633
One night in December 1800, in the distant mission outpost of San
Antonio in northern Mexico, Eulalia Californio and her lover Primo plotted the
murder of her abusive husband. While the victim was sleeping, Prio and his
brother tied a rope around Juan Californio’s neck. One of them sat on his body
while the other pulled on the rope and the woman, grabbing her husband by the
legs, pulled in the opposite direction. After Juan Californio suffocated,
Eulalia ran to the mission and reported that her husband had choked while
chewing tobacco. Suspicious, the mission priests reported the crime to the
authorities in charge of the nearest presidio.
For historians, spousal murders are significant for what they reveal
about social and family history, in particular the hidden history of day-to-day
gender relations, conflicts, crimes, and punishments. Fatal Love
examines this phenomenon in the late colonial Spanish Atlantic, focusing on
incidents occurring in New Spain (colonial Mexico), New Granada (colonial
Colombia), and Spain from the 1740s to the 1820s. In the more than 200 cases
consulted, it considers not only the social features of the murders, but also
the legal discourses and judicial practices guiding the historical treatment of
spousal murders, helping us understand the historical intersection of domestic
violence, private and state/church patriarchy, and the law.
Victor M. Uribe-Uran is Associate Professor of History and of Law at
Florida International University. He is the author of Honorable Lives:
Lawyers, Family, and Politics in Colombia, 1780–1850 and the editor of State
and Society in Spanish America during the Age of Revolution.
