Murder in Mérida, 1792: Violence, Factions, and the Law

Murder in Mérida, 1792: Violence, Factions, and the Law
ISBN-10
0826359620
ISBN-13
9780826359629
Category
History
Pages
256
Language
English
Published
2018-06-01
Publisher
University of New Mexico Press
Author
Mark W. Lentz

Description

During the summer of 1792, a man wearing the rough garb of a vaquero stepped out of the night shadows of Mérida, Yucatan, and murdered the province’s top royal official, don Lucas de Gálvez. This book recounts the mystery of the Gálvez murder and its resolution, an event that captured contemporaries’ imaginations throughout the Hispanic world and caused consternation on the part of authorities in both Mexico and Madrid. In this work Lentz further provides a readable introduction to the Bourbon Reforms as well as new insights on late colonial Yucatecan society through the vast depictions of the cross-section of Yucatecan people questioned during the decade it took to uncover the assassin’s identity. These suspects and witnesses, from all walks of life, reveal the interconnected layers found in colonial Yucatecan society and the social networks of Mérida’s urban underclass as well as their unexpected ties to the creole elites and rural Mayas that have previously been unexplored.

Similar books