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Gloria's Story: Adulterous Concubinage and the Law in Twentieth-Century Guatemala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

John W. Wertheimer
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Extract

Gloria Peralta and Julio Díaz (not their real names) started living together, sort of, early in 1963, in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. She was single. He was married to another woman. He was thirty-six. She was fourteen. In Gloria's words, she and Julio “lived together maritally” for several years and produced two children. But Julio neither divorced nor left his wife. Instead, he split time between the household containing his wife and three children and the one containing his concubine (Gloria) and two children.

Type
Forum: The Promise and Perils of Family Law
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Summer 2006 , pp. 375 - 421
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Copyright © the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 2006

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References

1. The names of this essay's principal subjects have been changed in order to protect privacy. Information in this paragraph comes from Proceso de Gloria maría Peralta Valderrama, Proceso No. 44, 854, ramo Penal, Juzgado Segundo de Primera Instancia, Quetzaltenango, iniciada 12 de septiembre de 1968, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango. hereafter cited as “Proceso de Gloria Peralta.” my thanks to the late Carlos morales of the Palacio de Justicia for helping me to find this document.

2. Matthew C. Gutmann affirms the centrality of adulterous concubinage to popular understandings of “macho” and “machismo” in Latin America during the period under study. For instance, Gutmann quotes prominent mexican writer Carlos monsiváis's discussion of standard mid-twentieth-century conceptions of what it meant to be “macho”: “I have four women [viejas]-that is being very macho.” Gutmann, Matthew C., The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 229Google Scholar. monsiváis's original word was viejas, or “old ladies.” Gutmann translated this in the english version of his book as “wives.” The translation that I offer here-women-seems more accurate, give the absence of a tradition of plural marriange in mexico. Gutmann's analysis makes clear that stereotypes do not capture the range, variability, and complexity of “macho” and “machismo.” It also suggests that “macho's” meanings have changed since Gloria and Julio's day. See also Lancaster, Roger N., Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

3. When it comes to the history of adulterous concubinage in Latin America, scholars have done a much better job with the colonial period than with the national period. In particular, historians of colonial concubinage have emphasized: the role of the Catholic Church; the gender, racial, and imperial hierarchies that marked relations between european men and indigenous and African women; and the mestizaje (race-mixing) that resulted. For discussions of colonial concubinage and the Catholic Church, see Cline, Sarah, “The Spiritual Conquest reexamined: Baptism and Christian marriage in early Sixteenth-Century mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 7.3 (1993): 453–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenleaf, Richard E., “Persistence of Native Values: The Inquisition and the Indians of Colonial mexico,” The Americas 50.3 (January 1994): 351–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dueñas, Guiomar, “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono: La fluidez de la vida familiar Santafereña, 1750-1810,” Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura [Colombia] 23 (1996): 33–48Google Scholar; Londoño, Fernando Torres, “El concubinato y la iglesia en el Brasil colonial,” Cristianismo y Sociedad 27, 3a época, no. 102 (1989): 7–32Google Scholar. Regarding gender, racial, and imperial hierarchies, see rodríguez, Pablo, Seducción, amancebamiento y abandono en la colonia (Bogotá, Colombia: Fundación Simón y Lola Guberek, 1991)Google Scholar; Nazzari, Muriel, “Concubinage in Colonial Brazil: The Inequalities of race, Class, and Gender,” Journal of Family History 21.2 (1996): 107–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nazzari, Muriel, “Casamento e Concubinato no Brasil Colonia: o examplo de Jose Antonio Sa Silva,” Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa Histórica [Brazil] 16 (1999): 21–29Google Scholar; Hyam, Ronald, “Empire and Sexual Opportunity,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History [Great Britain] 14.2 (1986): 34–90Google Scholar; Thompson, Alvin, “Dutch Society in Guyana in the eighteenth Century,” Journal of Caribbean History [Barbados] 20.2 (1985-1986): 169–91Google Scholar; and Stern, Steve J., The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 82, 86-91, 101, 133–34Google Scholar. For works on colonial concubinage and mestizaje, see Sanz, Eufemio Lorenzo, “el mestizaje en hispanoamérica,” Cuadernos de Investigación Histórica [Spain] 4 (1980): 17–29Google Scholar; Calvo, Thomas, “Concubinato y mestizaje en el medio urbano: el caso de Guadalajara en el siglo XVII,” Revista de Indias [Spain] 44.173 (1984): 203–12Google Scholar; Ardanaz, Daisy Rípodas, El matrimonio en Indias: realidad social y regulación juridical (Buenos Aires: Fundación para la educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura, 1977), 364–70Google Scholar; and Uchmany, Eva Alexandra, “El mestizaje en el siglo XVI novohispano,” Historia Mexicana [méxico] 37.1 (1987): 29–48Google Scholar.

4. Rogers, Humberto Pinto, El concubinato y sus efectos jurídicos (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Nascimento, 1942), iGoogle Scholar. See also Borgonovo, Oscar, El concubinato en la legislación y en la jurisprudencia (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial hammurabi, 1980)Google Scholar. Other studies of modern Latin America that employ the broader “out-of-wedlock-cohabitation” definition of “concubinage” include the following: Flavio Galván rivera, El concubinato en el vigente derecho mexicano; Vega, , “Causas del concubinato en América Central,” 424–40Google Scholar; Bossert, Gustavo A., Régimen jurídico del concubinato, 3a edición actualizada y ampliada (Buenos Aires: Editorial Artrea, 1990)Google Scholar; Sanchez-Cordero, A., “Cohabitation without marriage in mexico,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 29.2 (Spring 1981): 279–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sordo, Maria Del Mar Herrerías, Concubinage in Present-Day Mexico, trans. Berler, Beatrice (San Antonio, Texas: Burke Publishing Co., 1999)Google Scholar; and Gutiérrez, Blanca DeLeón regil, “La unión de hecho en su aspecto social” (Thesis. Departamento de Servicio Social, Universidad Rafael Landívar de Quetzaltenango, 1970)Google Scholar. Scholarship on Puerto rico does tend to distinguish between out-of-wedlock cohabitation generally and adulterous concubinage (which they call “Queridato”) particularly, perhaps because the latter remains illegal there. See Rosario, Belén Barbosa de, “Consideraciones en torno al concubinato, las comunas y el derecho de la familia,” Revista Jurídica de la Universidad de Puerto Rico 42.3 (1973): 345–424, esp. 350-52Google Scholar; and Montalvo, Julio Rubén Padilla, “El matrimonio no formalizado en Puerto rico,” Revista de Derecho Puertorriqueño 38 (1999): 355–83Google Scholar.

5. “Let us note with utter precision,” writes Flavio Galván rivera in a typical study of Latin American concubinage, “that by ‘concubinage’ we do not mean adulterous relationships [emphasis added].” Rivera, Flavio Galván, El concubinato en el vigente derecho mexicano (Mexico, D.F.: Editorial Porrúa, 2003), 6Google Scholar. Similarly, Nerio Perera Planas defines concubinage as: “A union between a man and a woman who have no legal impediments to marrying each other, who live privately and publicly as if married, in a permanent way.” Planas, Nerio Perera, El concubinato (Maracay, Venezuela: Editorial Aragua, 1983), 23Google Scholar. Scholars define “concubinage” this way “notwithstanding the popular usage of the term ‘concubine’ to refer to the female lover of a married man.” Vega, Juan Ramón, “Causas del concubinato en América Central,” Estudios Centro Americanos 25 (1970): 426Google Scholar.

6. Contrast this situation with that of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Japan and China, where the persistence of legal control created a substantial paper trail for scholars to pursue. Hiroshi, Asako, “The Legal Status of Concubines in meiji Japan,” Waseda Journal of Asian Studies [Japan] 19 (1997): 1–13Google Scholar; Tran, Lisa, “Monogamy and Concubinage under modern Chinese Law, 1912-1953” (Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 2005)Google Scholar. Another useful contrast is that between adulterous concubinage and “uniones de hecho” in Guatemala. Since the middle of the twentieth century, unmarried Guatemalan couples have had the legal option of registering themselves as a “union in fact,” despite being unmarried. Although very, very few couples exercised this option (other than surviving inheritance-seekers after the deaths of their co-habitants), legal scholarship on “uniones de hecho” has proliferated. In contrast, adulterous concubinage, though far more common, has remained below the scholarly radar screen. For a sample of Guatemalan legal scholarship on “uniones de hecho,” see DeLeón regil Gutiérrez, “La unión de hecho en su aspecto social”; Barrientos, Neftali Rivera, “La union de hecho, un acto del estado en protección de la familia y su insuficiente legislación en Guatemala” (Thesis. Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Solciales de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala, 1990)Google Scholar.

7. Putnam, Lara, The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 10Google Scholar.

8. For examples and further discussions of these trends, see Salvatore, Ricardo D., Aguirre, Julio, and Joseph, Gilbert M., eds., Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late Colonial Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunefeldt, Christine, Liberalism in the Bedroom: Quarreling Spouses in Nineteenth-Century Lima (University Park: The Penn State University Press, 2000), 4–5Google Scholar; Putnam, , The Company They Kept, 9–13Google Scholar; Blum, Ann S., “Public Welfare and Child Circulation, mexico City, 1877 to 1925,” Journal of Family History 23.3 (July 1998): 240–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Molyneux, Maxine, “Twentieth-Century State Formations in Latin America,” in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, ed. Dore, Elizabeth and Molyneaux, Maxine (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Historians have typically emphasized the “Emancipatory Effects” of legal reform in Latin America since Independence. For more on this historiographical point, see Dore, Elizabeth, “one Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Gender and the State in the Long Nineteenth Century,” in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State, 4–5Google Scholar. The present study also disagrees with those who see essential continuity between the “marital and sexual patterns” of the colonial period and those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Smith, Carol A., “Race-Class-Gender Ideology in Guatemala: modern and Anti-modern Forms,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37.4 (October 1995): 732CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. The legal actions of those initiating cases were driven by individual motivations, but reflected-and helped to shape-wider social processes. For additional discussion of such matters, see Caulfield, Sueann, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 14Google Scholar; Hunefeldt, , Liberalism in the Bedroom, 5Google Scholar; Joseph's, Gilbert M. “;Preface” to Crime and Punishment in Latin America, ed. Salvatore, et al., ix–xxiGoogle Scholar; and Gotkowitz, Laura, “Trading Insults: honor, Violence, and the Gendered Culture of Commerce in Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1870s-1950s,” Hispanic American Historical Review 83.1 (2003): 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Grandin, Greg, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. VII Censo de Población, 1964 (Guatemala: Dirección General de estadística, 1971), tomo I, 53, Cuadro XIIGoogle Scholar.

13. For a record of the rapid population growth demonstrated by Quetzaltenango and Guatemala's other cities during the mid-twentieth century, see VII Censo de población, 1964, Tomo I, 62-62, Cuadro XV, “Población total y tasa media anual de crecimiento geométrico intercensal según municipio, censos 1950 y 1964.” rates of literacy and shoelessness suggest why rural migrants were attracted to Quetzaltenango and other Guatemalan cities. As of the mid-1960s, literacy rates were twice as high in Quetzaltenango as in the country as a whole; shoeless rates were only half as much. See Ibid, Tomo II, Tabulación 12, 449; and tomo II, Cuadro XXXIV, 114 [the city of Quetzaltenango's 75 percent literacy rate was about twice as high as the national average]. For shoelessness, see Ibid., tomo II, Tabulación 20, 804; and tomo II, Tabulación 21.

14. Registro de matrimonios, tomo 16, p. 303, certificado no. 363, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

15. The 1950 census, taken ten years prior to Julio and Cristina's marriage, reported the following numbers for Guatemalan adults: 19 percent married, 37.2 percent single, 38.5 percent “united” with a member of the opposite sex, but not formally married. By the 1964 census, a few years after Julio and Cristina's wedding, Guatemalan marriages were more common than they had been, but still not commonplace: 25.4 percent married, 34.8 percent single, 34.4 percent “free unions.” The 1950 Guatemalan census numbers come from Vega, “Causas del concubinato en América Central,” 426. The 1964 census numbers appear in Cuadro II, 1.3, “Población de 14 años y más, por estado civil, Censo de 1964,” Anuario Estadístico 1970 (Dirección General de estadística, ministerio de economía, república de Guatemala, 1970), 29Google Scholar.

16. See the birth record of marcos Alejandro Díaz Soto, 29 December 1960, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 67, p. 483, no. 961, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango.

17. These figures probably underestimate the feminization of the twenty-year-old population of the city of Quetzaltenango, since they represent the urban populations of all cities in the Department of Quetzaltenango, including both the city of Quetzaltenango and several smaller municipalities. In the latter category, demand for domestic labor was probably less pronounced than in the city of Quetzaltenango itself. See VII Censo de Población, 1964, tomo I, 184, Cuadro 2-1.

18. Guatemalan, wives “mostly come from the same … class background as the men they marry.”Google ScholarSmith, , “race-Class-Gender Ideology in Guatemala,” 735Google Scholar.

19. Registro de Nacimientos, tomo 70, p. 9, no. 14, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango.

20. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta.” Although this document is not paginated, the quoted words appear at the fiftieth page of the copy in the author's possession.

21. According to the 1950 census, 4 percent of fourteen-year-old Guatemalan women were either formally married (0.6 percent) or informally “united” to men; by the time of the 1964 census, that figure had dropped to 3.3 percent (with 0.6 percent married). VII Censo de Población, 1964 (Guatemala: Dirección General de estadística, 1971), tomo I, Cuadro XXI, 81Google Scholar.

22. If parents were not available to give their consent, guardians could do so. If guardians were unavailable, judges could do so. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1933, Artículos 86, 95, and 95. Nineteenth-century minimum marriage ages, with parental consent, were even lower: twelve years for girls, fourteen for boys. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1877, Art. 120, sec. 1.

23. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1933, Art. 93, sec. 1.

24. Ibid., Art. 95, sec. 6.

25. Ibid., sec. 3. Women who gave birth during the waiting period did not have to wait the full three-hundred days. If the marriage broke up due to the husband's impotence, the wife could remarry immediately.

26. Ibid., Art. 123, sec. 1; Art. 124, sec. 1. Interestingly, infidelity ceased to be a legitimate cause of divorce if the wronged spouse consented to it in advance or if the married couple continued to cohabit once the wronged spouse learned of the infidelity. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1933, Art. 126.

27. According to the 1964 census, Guatemala's rapidly growing “non-Catholic Christian” population accounted for about 9 percent of the population, up from just 3 percent in 1950. Evangelical Protestantism would continue to grow robustly in Guatemala in subsequent years. VII Censo de población, 1964 (Guatemala: Dirección General de estadística, 1971), tomo II, 136Google Scholar, Cuadro LV, “Porcentaje de la población total según religión, 1940, 1950, 1964.”

28. Cuadro II-1.3, “Población de 14 años y más, por estado civil, Censo de 1964,” Anuario Estadistico 1970 (Dirección General de estadística, ministerio de economía, república de Guatemala, 1970)Google Scholar.

29. Cristina was not the first woman to come to the same conclusion. For a discussion of the notable tendency of betrayed Guatemalan wives to stay with disloyal husbands, see Zur, Judith N., Violent Memories: Mayan War Widows in Guatemala (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 58Google Scholar. For a discussion of the same phenomenon in late colonial Colombia, see Dueñas, , “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono,” 38Google Scholar.

30. The birth of another baby to Julio and Cristina after the beginning of Julio's relationship with Gloria-indeed, after the birth of Julio and Gloria's first child-demonstrates the continuation of Julio and Cristina's marriage. Birth certificate of Juan David Díaz Soto, born 1 Feb. 1965, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, p. 833, no. 660, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango.

31. See Castañeda, Carmen, “La formación de la pareja y el matrimonio,” in Familias Novohispanas: Siglos XVI al XIX (México, D.F.: El Colegio de méxico, 1991), 81Google Scholar.

32. “Cuadro XXI. Población masculina de 14 años y más, por estado civil, según grupos quinquenales de edad, censos 1950 y 1964,” and “Cuardo XXII. Población feminina de 14 años y más, por estado civil, según grupos quinquenales de edad, censos 1950 y 1964,” VII Censo de Población, 1964 (Guatemala: Dirección General de estadística, 1971), 80–81Google Scholar. Adult men accounted for 50.39 percent of the total adult population reported in the 1964 census. (The 1964 census counted 1,227,427 men ages fourteen and over and 1,208,618 women ages fourteen and over.) Nonetheless, women outnumbered men in four out of the five “civil status” categories. Women predominated in married, united, widowed, and divorced. men predominated only in the “single” category. All other post-World War II Guatemalan censuses replicate this pattern of imbalance. Consistently, men led women in the “single” category and trailed women in all others. Adulterous concubinage helps to explain this consistent pattern of imbalance. The Guatemalan census used the “canvasser” method of data collection, whereby paid census workers went door-to-door asking questions of residents, rather than the “householder method” of data collection, whereby residents fill out pre-distributed forms. The “canvasser” method, though more labor-intensive and expensive, was deemed better suited to developing counties such as Guatemala, where illiteracy rates were high. See González, René Arturo orellana, “Estudio sobre apectos técnicos del Censo de Población” (Thesis. Universidad Autónoma de San Carlos de Guatemala, Facultad de Ciencias económicas, 1950), 54–56Google Scholar.

33. Ibid. The author has changed the street names in order to protect the privacy of his subjects. The true addresses are in the author's possession. For confirmation of Julio's two street addresses, see the birth certificates of his first four children, two of which he had with Cristina, and two of which he had with Gloria. All four birth certificates are available at the registro Civil in downtown Quetzaltenango. The certificates are filed as follows: registro de Nacimientos, tomo 67, p. 483, no. 961; registro de Nacimientos, tomo 70, p. 9, no. 14; registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, p. 518, no. 31; registro de Nacimientos, tomo 82, p. 30, no. 56.

34. Birth certificate of Juan David Díaz Soto, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, p. 833, no. 660, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango. For an analysis of the conflict that typically marks relations between concubines and wives of the same man, see Smith, , “race-Class-Gender Ideology in Guatemala,” 736Google Scholar.

35. For historical precedent for such thoughts, see Durñas, , “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono,” 39Google Scholar.

36. Smith, , “race-Class-Gender Ideology in Guatemala,” 723–49Google Scholar; Durñas, , “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono,” 35–36Google Scholar; and Vega, , “Causas del concubinato en América Central,” 426Google Scholar.

37. Juicio oral de alimentos contra Julio Pedro Pablo Díaz, iniciado por Gloria maría Peralta, Juicio No. 857, Juzgado de Familia, ramo de Familia, Departmento de Quetzaltenango, Iniciado el 8 de marzo de 1967, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. hereafter cited as “Juicio contra Julio Díaz.”

38. Hsieh, Pao-hua, “Female hierarchy in Customary Practice: The Status of Concubines in Seventeenth-Century China,” Funü Shi Yanjui [Taiwan] 5 (1997): 55–114Google Scholar. Concubines also may have enjoyed “greater social and sexual freedom” than elite married women did. See Smith, , “Race-Class-Gender Ideology in Guatemala,” 737Google Scholar. on the limited employment opportunities available to Guatemalan women, see Bossen, Laurel, “Wives and Servants: Women in middle-Class households, Guatemala City,” in Urban Life: Readings in Urban Anthropology, ed. Gmelch, George and Zenner, Walter P. (New York: St. martin's Press, 1980), 200Google Scholar.

39. For the official record of Gloria maría Peralta's birth on march 27, 1948, see registro de Nacimientos, tomo 52B, p. 669, no. 1859, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Interestingly, one study of late colonial Spanish America found that men tried for adulterous concubinage were most commonly between the ages of thirty and forty. Durñas, , “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono,” 36Google Scholar.

40. Christine hunefeldt quotes troubling testimony to this effect from a betrayed wife in nineteenth-century Peru: “he [my husband] has money to pay for his concubine's room,” the wife complained, but “[i]f I ask him for money to buy food, he hits me and tells me he hasn't anything.” Hunefeldt, , Liberalism in the Bedroom, 284Google Scholar.

41. Durñas, , “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono,” 38Google Scholar.

42. Código Penal de la república de Guatemala (1936), Art. 329. Again, although rape cannot be ruled out, there is no evidence that it occurred.

43. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 51.

44. Código Penal de la república de Guatemala (1936), Art. 331.

45. men in pre-hispanic mesoamerica could legally have multiple wives simultaneously. Plural marriage was widespread among the region's elite and not unknown among its popular classes. Some indigenous nobles allegedly had as many as two hundred wives. Mirow, M. C., Latin American Law: A History of Private Law and Institutions in Spanish America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 57Google Scholar. Information in this paragraph also comes from mcCaa, Robert, “Marriageways in mexico and Spain, 1500-1900,” Continuity and Change 9.1 (1994): 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muriel, Josefina, “La Transmisión Cultural en la familia Criolla Novohispana,” in Familias novohispanas, siglos XVI al XIX, ed. Aizpuru, Pilar Gonzalbo (México, D.F.: El Colegio de méxico, 1991), 111Google Scholar; Cline, , “The Spiritual Conquest reexamined,” 473Google Scholar; and Sordo, Herrerías, Concubinage in Present-Day Mexico, 13–14Google Scholar. This situation was not unique to mesoamerica. At the dawn of the colonial period, in what is today ecuador, for instance, indigenous “nobles and favored commoners had several secondary wives.” Salomon, Frank, “Indian Women of early Colonial Quito as Seen through Their Testaments,” The Americas 44.3 (January 1988): 327CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Robert mcCaa relates pre-hispanic polygyny to the deficit of men that resulted from the era's warfare and slavery. mcCaa, , “marriageways in mexico and Spain,” 14Google Scholar.

46. Polygyny in pre-Conquest Spain related in part to centuries of Islamic-moorish in- fluence there. Concubinage in medieval Spain went by the legal name Barraganía, a term derived jointly from Arabic and Spanish. Gutierrez, Regil, “La union de hecho en su aspecto social,” 8Google Scholar; Sordo, Herrerías, Concubinage in Present-Day Mexico, 7–8Google Scholar. Although Spanish barraganía had formally disappeared by the time of Columbus's voyages, concubinage and illegitimacy remained far more common in Spain than in contemporary France, england, or Germany. McCaa, , “marriageways in mexico and Spain,” 18, 11Google Scholar.

47. Many conquistadores left wives in Spain and took American concubines. Some native chieftains offered young women to the Spanish, hoping to strengthen political alliances. Spanish men, who outnumbered Spanish women in the Americas throughout the colonial period, routinely coupled with native women. These couplings were often out of wedlock, frequently involved more than one woman per man, and occasionally resulted from theft or the use of force. Some of the male Spanish colonists who did bring wives with them from Spain also maintained native concubines on the side. McCaa, , “marriageways in mexico and Spain,” 11, 21–22Google Scholar; Smith, , “race-Class-Gender Ideology in Guatemala,” 723–49Google Scholar; Salomon, , “Indian Women of early Colonial Quito,” 325–26Google Scholar; Ardanaz, Rípodas, El Matrimonio en Indias, 364–70Google Scholar; Sordo, Herrerías, Concubinage in Present-Day Mexico, 16Google Scholar; and Cook, Alexandra Parma and Cook, Noble David, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

48. Having recently “Re-Conquered” Spain by expelling muslims and Jews, Spanish Catholics hoped to continue Christianity's spread in the Americas. Indeed, “saving souls” through conversion was a key legal justification for their imperial actions. members of the Catholic clergy, as part of their broader evangelizing mission, sought to institute monogamous, permanent, sacramental marriage. They pressured indigenous men to shed all wives but one. They also turned the fearsome prosecutorial powers of the Inquisition against concubinage. Their assault on polygamy and concubinage prompted some indigenous dissidents to urge maintenance of these traditional domestic arrangements as a form of political defiance. Greenleaf, , “Persistence of Native Values,” 353–54Google Scholar. The clergy's emphasis on “sacramental” marriage under the Church's auspices was especially pronounced following the Council of Trent in 1563. See Rivera, Galván, El Concubinato en el vigente derecho mexicano, 18–19Google Scholar; Castañeda, , “La formación de la pareja y el matrimonio,” 73–90Google Scholar. For more on Spanish colonial marriage law, see Cline, , “The Spiritual Conquest reexamined,” 473Google Scholar; Calvo, Thomas, “Matrimonio, iglesia y sociedad en el occidente de méxico: Zamora (Siglo XVII a XIX),” in Familias novohispanas, siglos XVI al XIX, ed. Aizpuru, Pilar Gonzalbo (México, D.F.: El Colegio de méxico, 1991), 101–8Google Scholar; Sordo, Herrerías, Concubinage in Present-Day Mexico, 16–17Google Scholar; McCaa, , “marriageways in mexico and Spain,” 22Google Scholar; Margadant, Guillermo F., “La familia en el derecho novohispano,” in Familias Novohispanas, ed. Aizpuru, Pilar Gonzalbo, 33–34Google Scholar; and Muriel, , “La transmisión cultural en la familia criolla novohispana,” 109–22Google Scholar. For a specific example of the Inquisition's role in regulating marriages in colonial Latin America, see Boyer, Richard, “Juan Vázquez, muleteer of Seventeenth-Century mexico,” The Americas 37.4 (April 1981): 421–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the latter phases of Spanish colonialism, royal officials challenged the Church's role as the top arbiter of family relations in Spanish America. Family infractions, including adulterous concubinage, accounted for ever-increasing proportions of the royal courts' criminal dockets. Seed, Patricia, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. one underlying objective of Spanish colonial family law was the discouragement of race mixing. Mirow, , Latin American Law, 57–58Google Scholar.

49. Adulterous concubinage was apparently the most commonly prosecuted family-related criminal offense in late colonial Bogotá. See Durñas, , “Adulterios, Amancebamientos, Divorcios y Abandono,” 35–36Google Scholar.

50. McCaa, , “Marriageways in mexico and Spain,” 14, 18, 22, 27, 31Google Scholar; Cline, , “The Spiritual Conquest reexamined,”473, 479Google Scholar; Sordo, Herrerías, Concubinage in Present-Day Mexico, 19Google Scholar; Dueñas, , “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono,” 39Google Scholar; Calvo, , “Concubinato y mestizaje en el medio urbano,” 203–12Google Scholar; Mirow, , Latin American Law, 56–57Google Scholar. For a detailed look at the legal treatment of marriage in one corner of Spain's American empire, see Kluger, Viviana, Escenas de la vida conyugal: los conflicts matrimoniales en la sociedad virreinal rioplatense (Buenos Aires: Editorial Quorum, 2003), 144–45Google Scholar. Kluger finds that, although the law regarding marital fidelity was applied somewhat differently to husbands and wives, respectively, with husbands enjoying more latitude, nonetheless “the obligation of marital fidelity was one of those that was demanded of both spouses. husband and wife were on an equal footing in both secular and canon law….” Ibid., 144. For more on the “surprising degree of freedom and openness” that marked marital and other intimate relations in parts of Spanish America, even “under the shadow of the Inquisition,” see Cook, and Cook, , Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance, xiiiGoogle Scholar. See also Boyer, Richard, Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Community in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New mexico Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Stern, , The Secret History of GenderGoogle Scholar.

51. After Guatemala achieved independence in the 1820s, liberals hoped to modernize the fledgling republic by doing away with colonial law. They proposed a new system of law based principally on legal codes that U.S. jurist edward Livingston drafted for the state of Louisiana in the 1820s. The new codes would have reduced the Catholic Church's legal influence over marriage and other facets of Guatemalan life. Conservatives were not pleased. They wrested power away from liberals in an 1838 coup, re-established Catholicism as the state religion, revoked liberal legal reforms, and adopted a modified form of the old colonial law. See muñoz, Jorge Luján, “Del derecho colonial al derecho nacional: el caso de Guatemala,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinameikas 38 (2001): 85–107Google Scholar; Rodríguez, Mario, The Livingston Codes in the Guatemalan Crisis of 1837-1838 (New Orleans: Middle American research Institute, Tulane University, 1955)Google Scholar. Note that, in the absence of a strong central government, local authorities took the lead in implementing marriage law during the early decades of Central American independence from Spain. Dore, Elizabeth, “Property, households and Public regulation of Domestic Life: Diriomo, Nicaragua, 1840-1900,” Journal of Latin American Studies 29 (1997): 591CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala (1877), Art. 120, sec. 6Google Scholar.

53. Ibid., Art. 282.

54. Ibid., Art. 286.

55. The secularization of family law was something of a world-wide trend in the second half of the nineteenth century. See Hunefeldt, , Liberalism in the Bedroom, 85Google Scholar.

56. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala (1877)Google Scholar, Art. 119.

57. Ibid., xviii; Arts. 144-47; 458-62.

58. Dore, , “one Step Forward,” 17Google Scholar. See also Dore, , “Property, households and Public regulation of Domestic Life,” 598Google Scholar. For more on secularization and family law elsewhere in Latin America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, see Mirow, , Latin American Law, 147–49Google Scholar.

59. For a discussion of how liberal-era state growth affected even a previously isolated local community, see Schmolz-Haberlein, Michaela, “Continuity and Change in a Guatemalan Indian Community: San Cristóbal-Verapaz, 1870-1940,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 76.2 (05, 1996): 227–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. On late nineteenth-century liberalism's intense interest in family preservation, see Blum, , “Public Welfare and Child Circulation.”Google Scholar

61. For similar thoughts from the colonial period, see Dueñas, , “Adulterios, amancebamientos, divorcios y abandono,” 39–40Google Scholar.

62. Díaz, Arlene J., “Women, order, and Progress in Guzmán Blanco's Venezuela, 1870- 1888,” in Crime and Punishment in Latin America, ed. Salvatore, Ricardo D., Aguirre, Julio, and Joseph, Gilbert M. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 56–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; García, Alberto Saladino, “La función social de las mujeres entre los liberals latinoamericanos,” Siglo XIX [Mexico], 1.2 (1986): 175–87Google Scholar; Hunefeldt, , Liberalism in the Bedroom, 14Google Scholar; Dore, , “one Step Forward,” 15Google Scholar; and Salvatore, , Crime and Punishment in Latin America, 23Google Scholar.

63. Note that liberal-era adultery reforms were even more blatantly sexist in some other Latin American nations. See Dore, , “one Step Forward,” 17, 22–23Google Scholar.

64. Código Penal de la República de Guatemala (1973), Art. 235Google Scholar. In the original 1877 Code, adultery carried a “Correctional Reclusion” grade of “medium to maximum”; concubinage, in contrast, carried a “correctional reclusion” grade of “minimum to medium.” Código Penal de la república de Guatemala (1877), Arts. 282, 286.

65. Código Penal de La Republica de Guatemala, 1877, Art. 283.

66. Ibid., Art. 284.

67. See, for Example, Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1877, Art. 150: “husbands should protect their wives and wives should obey their husbands.”

68. Código Penal de la República de Guatemala (1936), Arts. 324, 328Google Scholar.

69. “Registro de Procesos Penales,” Juzgado Primero de Primera Instancia, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Between oct. 1929 and march 1930, no adultery or concubinage cases appeared among the 179 cases counted. Among the 431 criminal cases observed in the docket books between April 1938 and April 1943, three were for adultery and none was for concubinage. one adultery case and no concubinage cases appeared among the 245 cases counted between 5 January 1949 and 24 march 1949. Twelve adultery prosecutions and no concubinage prosecutions appeared in a 458-case sample taken between 2 July 1949 and 30 Dec. 1949. The final sample in this series extends from 3 Aug. 1959 to 31 December 1959 and contains eight adultery prosecutions and a single concubinage prosecution among 1192 total prosecutions. In total, among 2,505 criminal cases counted, twenty-four (about 1 percent) were for adultery and one (about. 04 percent) were for concubinage.

70. Las Siete Partidas, vol. 4, Family, Commerce, and the Sea: The Worlds of Women and Merchants, trans. Scott, Samuel Parsons, ed. Burns, Robert I. S.J., (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 948Google Scholar.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid. Spanish lawmakers had additional justifications for privileging “legitimate” children. “God loves, assists, and endows” such children “with strength and power to conquer the enemies of his religion.” Those un-persuaded by these theological declarations may (or may not) have been swayed by the claim that followed: “legitimate” children were “more choice and strong, for the reason that they are not liable to suffer shame on account of their mothers.” Ibid.

74. Ibid., 953.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid.

77. Spanish law divided illegitimate children into seven categories. At the head of this list were “natural” children-those whose parents were unmarried but faced no legal impediments to marriage. “;Natural” children were the elite of the illegitimates. Then came a rogues' gallery of illegitimacy: products of adultery; products of concubinage; products of “direct-line-of-descent” incest; products of “transversal” incest; clerics' children; and prostitutes' children. Inheritance restrictions were particularly stiff for children whose parents were not only unmarried to each other, but legally barred from marrying each other. Children of adulterous concubinage fell into this severely disadvantaged category. Las Siete Partidas 4:953; Margadant, , “La familia en el derecho novohispano,” 47–51Google Scholar; Brañas, Alfonso, “Estatuto de las unions de hecho,” Revista de la facultad de ciencias jurídicas y sociales de Guatemala 4.1 (1948): 27Google Scholar; Twinam, Ann, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 220-22, 231, 277Google Scholar. Note that a legal process existed whereby some illegitimate children could be “legitimated.” See Twinam, , Public Lives.Google Scholar

78. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala (1877), §XII, “hijos ilejítimos,” xiGoogle Scholar.

79. Ibid.

80. Ibid., Arts. 200-236.

81. Ibid., Arts. 969-82.

82. Ibid., Art. 229.

83. Ibid., Art. 235. In practice, “filiation” suits rarely succeeded in compelling fathers to recognize paternity. See Escobar, César Eduardo Alburez, El derecho y los tribunales privativos de familia en la legislación guatemalteca (Thesis. Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales de la Universidad de San Carlos, 1964), 42Google Scholar.

84. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala (1877), xi–xii, and Articles 200-236, 243, and 969-82. For a discussion of the 1877 Code's weakening of legitimacy distinctions and strengthening of paternity designations, seeGoogle ScholarBrañas, , “Estatuto de las unions de hecho,” 27–28Google Scholar.

85. Decreto Guvernativo No. 591, discussed in Fernández, Gladys Dorita Rodríguez, “La union de hecho y su declaración judicial” (Thesis. Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1981), 7Google Scholar.

86. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala (1933), Art. 993Google Scholar. See also Art. 163: “When it comes to maternal rights and obligations, no difference exists between children born in wedlock and those born out of wedlock.”

87. Díez, Francisco Javier Gómez, “La iglesia católica en Guatemala frente a la década revolucionaria,” Hispania Sacra 51 (1999): 297–332CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Handy, Jim, “‘The most Precious Fruit of the revolution’: The Guatemalan Agrarian reform, 1952-54,” Hispanic American Historical Review 68.4 (1988): 678–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Díaz, Francisco Javier Gómez, “La política Guatemalteca en los orígenes de la ‘década revolucionaria’: La Asamblea Constituyente de 1945,” Revista de Indias 55.203 (1995): 127–47Google Scholar.

88. Constitución de la república de Guatemala, decretada por la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente el 11 de marzo de 1945, Art. 76.

89. officials who failed to comply with this order faced six months in prison. Decreto Numero 86, Guatemala, El Congreso de la República de, Recopilación de Leyes, tomo 64 (1945-1946), 458Google Scholar.

90. See the Constitution of 1956, Art. 90; the Civil Code of 1964, Art. 395, the Constitution of 1965, Art. 86; and the Constitution of 1985, Art. 50. Brañas, Alfonso, Manual de derecho civil (Guatemala: Editorial Estudiantil Fenix, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1998), 218Google Scholar.

91. Zarate, Verónica Lucrecia Ajxup, “Derecho de familia: principios que lo fundamentan” (Thesis. Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, Facultades de Quetzaltenango, Universidad rafael Landívar, 1998), 17Google Scholar.

92. registro de Nacimientos, tomo 45, p. 542, no. 1250, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

93. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala de 1964, Art. 210. Judicial declarations of paternity were possible, though rare. Ibid.

94. Ibid., Art. 4. For evidence of the importance of paternal recognition and surnames in Guatemalan culture, see Herrera, Luz Alicia, “Testimonies of Guatemalan Women,” Latin American Perspectives 7.2/3 (1980): 163 [“Not until my son was three years old did I manage to convince his father to recognize him. I did it because children need to carry their father's name”]CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. For a discussion of the social discrimination suffered by paternally “unrecognized” children in Guatemala, see Turicios, Ursula mariana montegro Velasco de, “La paternidad: necesidad de su reconocimiento legal” (Thesis. Departamento de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, Facultades de Quetzaltenango de la Universidad rafael Landívar, 1999), 49–53Google Scholar.

96. official name changes were possible, though somewhat complicated. See Código Civil de la República de Guatemala de 1964, Arts. 5-6. official name changes appear in the margins of the name-changer's birth certificate. Gloria's birth certificate contains no record of an official name change. registro de Nacimientos, tomo 52B, p. 669, no. 1859, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

97. A perfect example is the “Proceso de Gloria maría Peralta Valderrama.”

98. Revealingly, Gloria and Julio disagreed about what Gloria's true name was. When Julio issued a criminal complaint against Gloria for leaving him and “abandoning” their minor children, he used her official (and less respectable) name, “Gloria maría Peralta.” At first, officials followed suit. When Gloria herself was taken into custody, however, she insisted upon the more respectable, though technically inaccurate, “Gloria maría Peralta Valderrama.” The double-surname version carried the day. Gloria's case file refers to her as Peralta Valderrama. “Proceso de Gloria maría Peralta Valderrama.”

99. Birth certificates can be found as follows: Gloria Julia Díaz Peralta, born oct. 28, 1964, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, p. 518, no. 31, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango; Julio omar Díaz Peralta, born oct. 9, 1966, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 82, p. 30, no. 56, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango; Gloria maría Peralta, born march 27, 1948, registro de Nacimientos, Tome 52B, p. 669, no. 1859, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

100. Many Latin American states started offering free midwifery in the 1930s, due to the combined effects of eugenics, feminism, and state growth. Molyneux, , “Twentieth-Century State Formations in Latin America,” 49Google Scholar.

101. These numbers come from a survey of births in Quetzaltenango in January 1965, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, pp. 716-816, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Among two hundred total births surveyed, ninety-seven took place in a private home, ninety-three took place in the hospital General del occidente, and ten took place in private facilities.

102. registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, pp. 716-920, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango. Among seventy-five paternally unrecognized children born in Quetzaltenango during January and February 1965, sixty (80 percent) were born in the General hospital, while only fifteen (20 percent) were born at home. Babies born to single mothers with no father listed represented about 20 percent of all children born at this time.

103. Gloria and Julio's two children's births are documented in the Quetzaltenango Civil registry as follows: Gloria Julia Díaz Peralta, born 28 oct. 1964, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, p. 518, no. 31, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango; Julio omar Díaz Peralta, born 9 oct. 1966, registro de Nacimientos, tomo 82, p. 30, no. 56, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango.

104. Pedro Castillo[?], Juzgdo municipal de Coatepeque, Departamento de Quetzaltenango, 5 de diciembre de 1929, to Señor Juez de Primera Instancia Territorial; Juzgado Primero de Primera Instancia, Quetzaltenango, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. This case was tried under Código Penal de la República de Guatemala, 1889, Art. 455, sec. 1. In a similar vein, in the río de la Plata region of Spain's colonial empire, there were women who went to court to accuse their husbands of infidelity and to request court orders forcing their husbands to cease their extra-marital relations and return to married life with their wives. See Kluger, Viviana, “El proyecto familiar en litigio. espacios femininos y contiendas conyugales en el virreinato de río de la Plata, 1776-1810,” in História, género y familia en iberoamérica (siglos XVI al XX), ed. Mendoza, Dora Dávila (Caracas: Fundación Konrad Adenaeur, 2004), 225Google Scholar.

105. Studies of this sort are rarer than they should be. As Ann Varley has noted, scholars of gender and family history in Latin America are quick to notice legislation but slow to investigate its courtroom application. Varley, Ann, “Women and the home in Mexican Family Law,” in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State, 241Google Scholar. my data are cases listed in a Quetzaltenango criminal court's docket books: registros de Procesos Penales, Juzgado Primero de Primera Instancia, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. exceptionally uneven availability of these docket books frustrated my attempt to compile a perfectly consistent sample series. Nonetheless, I was able to access docket books that fell into roughly ten-year intervals: oct. 1929 to march 1930 (180 cases), April 1938 to April 1943 (431 cases), 5 January 1949 to 24 march 1949 (245 cases), 2 July 1949 to 30 Dec. 1949 (458 cases), 3 Aug. 1959 to 31 Dec. 1959 (1192 cases), 20 Jan. 1969 to 30 Dec. 1969 (942 cases), 10 may 1971 to 17 Aug. 1971 (342 cases), June 1985 to Jan. 1987 (318 cases). I separated the crimes listed in these docket books into several categories: property crimes (e.g., Robbery), financial crimes (e.g., Embezzlement), violent crimes (e.g., homicide), sexual violence (e.g., rape), miscellaneous (e.g., falsification of documents), and family crimes. Family crimes included: adultery, concubinage, acting against the security of the family, denial of economic support, infanticide, parricide, abandonment of minor children, subtraction of minor children, abandonment of the household, and illegal marriage. I then measured the trends over time that these numbers revealed. Full statistical data are in my possession and are available upon request. my sincerest thanks go to the following workers of the Juzgado Primero de Primera Instancia in Quetzaltenango for helping me to find and make sense of this material: Josué Bayron Armando Anlev Soberanis, Walter Stuardo Anlev Soberanis, Yohana magaly enríquez Jocol de herrera, Allan Amilkar estrada morales, reyna Laura López Barrios, Pedro Antonio Pérez López, Lucía Catalina Poniciano Andrade, Patricia rodríguez de Vainz, marcia Dolores Salazar rivera, and Lily Sam Solorzano.

106. The 1929-1959 sample totaled 2506 criminal cases, of which forty-nine were obviously family-related. The 1969-1989 sample totaled 1867 criminal cases, of which seventynine were obviously family-related.

107. For evidence that male-initiated accusations of adultery were similarly prevalent in the ecclesiastical courts of nineteenth-century Peru, see Hunefeldt, , Liberalism in the Bedroom, 303, 353Google Scholar.

108. Guatemala did adopt a new Criminal Code in 1973, but its adultery provisions (Arts. 232-34) were fundamentally the same as those contained in every Criminal Code since 1877.

109. Judith N. Zur believes that domestic violence against women increased in Guatemala in the second half of the twentieth century. See Zur, , Violent Memories, 58Google Scholar. Similarly, matthew Gutmann notes a “probable rise in domestic violence of men against women” in one working-class neighborhood in mexico City during the latter decades of the twentieth century. Gutmann, , The Meanings of Macho, 244Google Scholar. Understandably, given the research complications involved in the topic, neither scholar backs these suspicions with hard data.

110. See Scott, and Burns, , Las Siete Partidas, vol. 4, Title XIXGoogle Scholar; and Código Civil de Guatemala (1877), Art. 237-57Google Scholar.

111. Scott, and Burns, , Las Siete Partidas, vol. 4, 973–74Google Scholar; and Código Civil de Guatemala, 1877, Art. 244.

112. Decreto del Congreso número 147, Art. 324-A (1945). Those who could prove penury could escape punishment. The 1973 penal code adopted this measure but changed the sentence from one year to “six months to two years” in prison. The 1973 code also specified that this sentence would increase by a third if the accused employed fraudulent means in order to avoid his or her family-support obligations. Codigo Penal de la República de Guatemala (1973), Arts. 242-43Google Scholar. For more on this crime, see Pons, Elva Esperanza Castillo Monro Y de, “La excepción de la punición en el delito de negación de asistencia económica” (Thesis. Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala, 1981)Google Scholar.

113. registros de Procesos Penales, Juzgado Primero de Primera Instancia, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

114. “Guatemala: memory of Silence,” report of the Guatemalan Commission for historical Clarification (Ceh), http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/prologue.html, accessed 24 march 2005.

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116. Men in these years appeared as criminal defendants in cases involving infanticide, parricide, adultery, abandonment of the home, concubinage, and subtraction of minors.

117. One family-court judge estimates that long-term adulterous concubinage accounts for about 20 percent of the “denial of economic support” cases initiated against married men. oral interview with Judge Pilar eugenia Pérez morales, Quetzaltenango, 5 Aug. 2004. more study of these issues is warranted.

118. For further discussion of the tendency of Latin American states during the twentieth century to play “an increasingly significant role in the ordering of social … life” while at the same time becoming “less authoritarian and less patriarchal,” see Molyneux, , “Twentieth- Century State Formations in Latin America,” 36–37Google Scholar.

119. Instituto Interamericano del Niño, XI congreso panamericano del niño, Bogotá, Colombia, 1959 (Montevideo, Uruguay: Impresa LIGU, 1959)Google Scholar.

120. For discussion of the broader “maternalist-feminist” movement in the Americas, see Guy, Donna J., “The Politics of Pan-American Cooperation: maternalist Feminism and the Child rights movement, 1913-1960,” Gender & History 10.3 (1998): 449–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Molyneux, , “Twentieth-Century State Formations in Latin America,” 49Google Scholar.

121. Recinos, Blanca Estela Acevedo Leonardo de, “La familia. Tutela jurídico-penal” (Thesis. Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala, 1965), 12, 17–18Google Scholar. In response to this concern, Guatemala's 1945 Constitution became the nation's first to declare formally that the government had an obligation to protect the family. “The family, motherhood, and marriage,” the Constitution stated, “Shall have the protection of the state.” Constitution of the republic of Guatemala (1945), Art. 72. A new constitution in 1956 retained its predecessor's pledge of state protection for families, but dropped its explicit commitment to protect “Marriage.” Constitution of the republic of Guatemala (1956), Art. 87; Acevedo, , “La familia,” 23–24Google Scholar. Some observers identified the criminal law as one area in which the state could do more to aid Guatemalan families. These observers demanded, as a 1960s treatise phrased it, the “Juridico-Penal guardianship of families.” Such guardianship would do more than benefit the single mothers and destitute children who were the principal victims of family breakdown. It would benefit all Guatemalans, , since “Defects in family life go a long way toward explaining our ever-worsening problems” with delinquency and crimeGoogle Scholar. Preventing family disintegration today would prevent social problems tomorrow. Acevedo, , “La familia,” 13, 46–47Google Scholar. In this spirit, Guatemala, in 1945, made it a crime to deny family members the economic support that the civil law demanded. Decreto del Congreso número 147, Art. 324-A (1945).

122. Congresos panamericanos del niño, ordenación sistemática de sus recomendaciones, 1916-1963 (Montevideo, Uruguay: Impresora Liga, 1965), 252Google Scholar.

123. For the Eleventh Pan-American Child Congress, see XI congreso panamericano del Niño (1959), 54Google Scholar. For the Twelfth Child Congress, see Ordenación sistemática de sus recomendaciones (1965), 251Google Scholar.

124. Castillo, Oscar Barrios, El juez de familia (Thesis, 1943)Google Scholar, discussed in Escobar, César Eduardo Alburez, El derecho y los tribunales privativos de familia en la legislación guatemalteca (Thesis. Facultad de Ciencias Juridicas y Sociales de la Universidad de San Carlos, 1964), 49Google Scholar.

125. Alburez, , El derecho y los tribunales privativos de familia (1964), 46–48.Google Scholar

126. Ibid, 48-49.

127. Family Court Act of 1964 (“Ley de Tribunales de Familia,” Decreto Ley No. 206, Guatemala, 1964), Arts. 1-2. The membership of the “Comision de estudio Sobre Legislación de Protección a la Familia” appears on page thirteen of a pamphlet entitled “Ley de Tribunales de Familia” that the Secretary of Information published in 1964 to publicize the new measure.

128. “Ley de Tribunales de Familia,” Decreto Ley No. 206 (Guatemala, 1964), Art. 15Google Scholar.

129. Ibid., Arts. 3-7.

130. Ibid., Arts. 8-9.

131. Ibid., Art. 1.

132. Ibid., 1. Quotation from Guatemalan Supreme Court President romeo Augusto de León.

133. “Negación de Asistencia Económica” cases accounted for 122 of 1281 criminal cases heard in 1984 in Quetzaltenango's Juzgado Primero de Primera Instancia criminal court.

134. This quotation comes from Supreme Court President romeo Augusto de León, in his formal acceptance of the new law, quoted on page one of “Ley de Tribunales de Familia,” Decreto Ley No. 206 (Guatemala, 1964)Google Scholar.

135. The new courts' commitment to encouraging estranged partners to reconcile appears in Art. 11 of “Ley de Tribunales de Familia,” Decreto Ley No. 206 (Guatemala, 1964)Google Scholar. Instances of verbal, psychological, or physical spousal abuse might possibly have been filed in family court as cases of “Violencia Intrafamiliar.” If sufficiently severe (e.g., sufficient to leave visible markings), physical spousal abuse could also be tried in criminal courts under the crime of “lesions.” my thanks to Quetzaltenango lawyer mercedes Argueta for discussing this point with me. mercedes Argueta to John Wertheimer, 25 october 2004, e-mail correspondence.

136. Peralta v. Díaz, Ramo de Familia, Departamento de Quetzaltenango, Juicio no. 857, iniciado el 8 de marzo de 1967, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango. hereafter Peralta v. Díaz (1967)Google Scholar.

137. Peralta v. Díaz.

138. “Ley de Tribunales de Familia,” Decreto Ley No. 206 (Guatemala, 1964), Art. 11Google Scholar.

139. XI congreso panamericano del niño (1959)Google Scholar.

140. Julio rafael Yaquian otero, “el delito de abandono de familia o incumplimiento de los deberes de asistencia familiar” (Thesis. Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala, 1954), 11. This same Guatemalan legal scholar estimated that “[t]he number of [Guatemalan] children who have been abandoned by their parents is enormous, perhaps bigger than the number of orphans.” For an early Guatemalan law regarding familial abandonment, see Código Penal de la República de Guatemala, 1877, Art. 331.

141. None of the 610 Pre-World War II criminal cases that the author sampled in a Quetzaltenango court involved charges of “abandono de niños menores” or “abandono hogar.” Among the 3762 criminal cases sampled between 1949 and 1989 were seven prosecutions for either “abandono de niños menores” or “abandono hogar.” Five of the seven criminal suspects in these cases were women. registros de Procesos, Juzgado Primero de Primera Instancia, Palacio de Justicia, Quetzaltenango.

142. Guy, Donna J., “Parents before the Tribunals: The Legal Construction of Patriarchy in Argentina,” in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State, 176–77Google Scholar; Dore, “one Step Forward,” 12Google Scholar.

143. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1877, Art. 286.

144. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1933, Arts. 191, 183-84.

145. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1964, Arts. 252-53, 255, 261.

146. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 1.

147. Ibid., 1-2.

148. If the child's life was lost or threatened as a result of the abandonment, the sentence increased substantially. Código Penal de la República de Guatemala, 1936, Art. 373.

149. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 9-10, 25.

150. For more on the code of masculine honor and social class, see Hunefeldt, , Liberalism in the Bedroom, 7Google Scholar.

151. The phrase “golpe traidor” was immortalized in a popular mid-twentieth-century mexican “ranchera” song of the same name. In the song, written by roberto López Garza and well known to Guatemalans of Julio's era, the betrayed male singer warns the woman who has left him for another man: “For what you did to me, you shall be punished, I swear, by God!” Julio appears to have acted in that spirit. Although the singer's marital status in “Golpe traidor” is unclear, Another Ranchera from the same Era, Jesús martínez's “El Abandonado” (the abandoned one), suggests that, at least according to the code of masculinity inscribed in the day's popular culture, even married, adulterous males were indeed justified in feeling indignant when their lovers left them. For more on the code of honor as it relates to the male response to unfaithful women, see Piccato, Pablo, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussion of these themes in a later historical era, see Gutmann, , The Meanings of MachoGoogle Scholar.

152. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 4, 12, 4, 31.

153. Sergio osorio Carias, el Teniente Coronel de la Policía Nacional, to Señor Juez 20. de 1ra. Instancia, 5 oct. 1968, in “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 15.

154. Julio Pedro Pablo Díaz, motion of 4 oct. 1968, “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 17; Lic. hugo González C. al Señor Jefe del Departmento de la Policía Judicial, Guatemala, 4 oct. 1968, in “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 23.

155. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 49-51.

156. Ibid., 50.

157. Ibid.

158. Ibid., 93.

159. Ibid., 50.

160. Ibid., 50-51.

161. Ibid., 49-51, 93-95.

162. The testimony of a local church pastor may well have been decisive. Gloria claimed that this man, on the afternoon of August 17, had witnessed Gloria and Julio's alleged agreement to transfer custody of the children from mother to father. The pastor indeed admitted knowing Gloria and Julio and being aware of their domestic difficulties. After Gloria and the children moved out, he testified, he invited both her and Julio to join him for a “spiritual reconciliation” session. It worked, the pastor thought. Gloria agreed to move back home within twenty-four hours. Unfortunately for Gloria, the pastor claimed to be unaware of any arrangement regarding an exchange of child custody, since he believed that the couple was reuniting. A week later, the pastor heard that Gloria had left town and abandoned her two children. This testimony hurt Gloria's chances. The reconciliation session that the pastor organized demonstrates that the legal system was not alone in seeking to buttress relationships of adulterous concubinage. rather, the formal law-as expressed by the Family Court Act of 1964-was in tune with informal acts of community members, in this case the pastor. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 110-11.

163. “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 113-19, 129-30.

164. Salvatore, et al., eds., Crime and Punishment in Latin America, 13Google Scholar.

165. On the class dimensions of concubinage, see Smith, , “race-Class-Gender Ideology in Guatemala,” 723–49Google Scholar.

166. Guatemalan Constitutional Court, expediente 936-95, decision of mar. 7, 1996. The court ruled that the existing laws governing adultery and concubinage violated the 1985 Constitution's Article 4: “In Guatemala all human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights. men and women, whatever their marital status, have equal rights and responsibilities.”

167. Decreto 38-95 (1995), reforma al Art. 4 del Código Civil decreto ley 106. my thanks to Quetzaltenango attorney mercedes Argueta for this citation.

168. VII Censo de Población, 1964 (Guatemala: Dirección General de estadística, 1971), 80–81Google Scholar; “Cuadro 8. Población de 12 años y más de edad, según sexo y estado conyugal actual. Censos 1981, 1994, y 2002,” Características de la población de los locales de habitación censados (República de Guatemala, Instituto Nacional de estadística, Censos Nacionales XI de Población y VI de habitación, 2003), 23Google Scholar.

169. Julia's marriage is noted in the margins of her birth certificate, available in the registro de Nacimientos, tomo 77, p. 518, número 31, registro Civil, Quetzaltenango. Julia's full name was Gloria Julia Díaz Peralta, but she went by Julia, . “Proceso de Gloria Peralta,” 9Google Scholar. The statement that Gloria approved of her daughter's wedding is based on Guatemalan marriage law, which required Gloria to authorize her daughter's wedding, since Julia was not yet eighteen years of age. Parents of children under eighteen years of age had to give their consent before their children could wed. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1964, Arts. 81-82. recall that the Guatemalan Civil Code gave unmarried mothers preference over unmarried fathers in terms of parental authority. Código Civil de la República de Guatemala, 1964, Arts. 252-53, 255, 261.