For legal historians, spousal murders are significant not only for what they reveal about social and family history, in particular the hidden history of day-to-day gender relations, but also for the ways in which conflicts, crimes, and punishments play out.
In his new publication Fatal Love, Professor Victor Uribe-Uran 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.
Faculty Website: https://law.fiu.edu/faculty/directory/victor-m-uribe-uran/