"This book will change how we view the long nineteenth century in Latin America, as it allows the reader to weave into the same cloth the two strands that ran through, respectively, the liberal state and postcolonial society, namely, the drive to form citizens and the desire to maintain status hierarchies."--Teresita Martinez-Vergne, author of "Shaping the Discourse on Space: Charity and Its Wards in Nineteenth-Century San Juan, Puerto Rico"

Acknowledgments viiIntroduction: Transformations in Honor, Status, and Law over the Long Nineteenth Century / Lara Putnam, Sarah C. Chambers, and Sueann Caulfield 1I. Liberalism, Status, and CitizenshipPrivate crimes, public order: honor, gender, and the law in early republican Peru / Sarah C. Chambers 27Community service, liberal law, and local custom in indigenous villages: Oaxaca, 1750–1850 / Peter Guardino 50The “spirit” of Bolivian law: citizenship, patriarchy, and infamy / Rossanna Barragan 66Interpreting Machado de Assis: paternalism, slavery, and the free womb law / Sidney Chalhoub 87Slavery, liberalism, and civil law: definitions of status and citizenship in the elaboration of the Brazilian civil code (1855–1916) / Keila Grinberg 109Trading insults: honor, violence, and the gendered culture of commerce in Cochabamba, Boliva, 1870s–1950s / Laura Gotkowitz 131Sex and standing in the streets of Port Limon, Costa Rica, 1890–1910 / Lara Putnam 155Slandering citizens: insults, class, and social legitimacy in Rio de Janeiro’s criminal courts / Brodwyn Fischer 176Courtroom tales of sex and honor: rapto and rape in late nineteenth-century Puerto Rico / Eileen J. Findlay 201The changing politics of freedom and virginity in Rio de Janeiro, 1920–1940 / Sueann Caulfield 223III. The Policing of Public SpaceThe plena’s dissonant melodies: leisure, racial policing, and nation in Puerto Rico, 1900–1930s / Jose Amador de Jesus 249Prostitutes and the law: the uses of court cases over pandering in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the twentieth century / Cristianna Schettini Pereira 271The stigmas of dishonor: criminal records, civil rights, and forensic identification in Rio de Janeiro, 1903–1940 / Olivia Maria Gomes da Cunha 295Contributors 317Index 321