by Nathan Stone The most terrible things are quickly learned, And beauty will cost us our lives. -Silvio Rodríguez A romero is a pilgrim, comrade. I guess we are all pilgrims, to some degree, though some pilgrimages seem to go on forever, while others end abruptly. When Pope John Paul II came to Chile in […]
Crime/Law
The Defiant Heretic: The Scandal of Justa Mendez
By Haley Schroer On August 7, 1604, Dr. Martos de Bohorquez, prosecutor for the Mexican Inquisition, demanded that Justa Mendez face justice for scandalizing Mexico City society. In addition to seizure and arrest, Bohorquez stipulated that the captive be placed in a secret prison and punished as someone who had committed a serious crime. Authorities […]
In Defense of the Crime Story
By Diego A. Godoy Judicial records usually provide the empirical grist underpinning historical studies of crime, but journalism is the lifeblood of the field. The efforts of reporters, editors, photographers and illustrators have allowed researchers to resurrect bygone crimes, often in forensic detail. In the more recent Latin American past, for instance, the intrepid sleuthing […]
You’re Teaching WHAT?
Cross-posted from Chris Rose’s blog, where he regularly tells us Important and Useful Things and makes us laugh along the way. In addition to his many other accomplishments, Chris is the brains and motor behind our podcast 15 Minute History. by Christopher Rose Ladies and Gentleman, I give you … Terrorism and Extremist Movements. Ta-Da!The reaction […]
Historians on Marriage and Sexuality in the United States
by Alexander Taft In June 2015, by a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court of the United States resolved decades of debate by declaring marriage a fundamental right regardless of sexual orientation. The Obergefell v. Hodges decision changed the landscape of American marriage law, but what was this landscape in the first place? […]
Rodolfo Valentín González Pérez: An unusual disappearance
by Nathan Stone They weren’t all the same. We know of at least one soldier who had a conscience. There were several, actually. Most were weighty figures, captains and colonels who refused to follow orders. Some of them quit or went into exile. Others died. But I’m talking about conscripts, the powerless boys who were […]
Hatton Sumners and the Retirement of Supreme Court Justices
We are especially pleased to post this essay by a long-time supporter of the UT Austin Department of History. Josiah M. Daniel III, of counsel at the international law firm Vinson & Elkins, LLP, received his J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law in 1978 and his master’s degree in History from UT in 1986. In […]
Secrecy and Bureaucratic Distancing: Tracing Complaints through the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive
By Vasken Markarian On June 1982, two pages of official letter sized paper marked by the symbol of the Ministry of Finance made their way across a network of various bureaucratic desks of the National Police of Guatemala. A rural farmer and grandfather from Uspantán in El Quiché, Julio Ortiz (this is a pseudonym for […]
From Postcard to Picasso: Nakedness on Display
By Philippa Levine Francois Edmond Fortier (1862-1928) made a very good living working as a photographer in the French West African colony of Senegal. Fortier grew up in eastern France, close to the German border, and by 1899 was living in Senegal where he set up a photographic studio. In the early 1900s he travelled […]
Magna Carta and Anglo-American Constitutionalism
Magna Carta has often been hailed as a statement of fundamental law, the basis of the English constitution, a defense of individual liberty, the establishment of the rule of law, and even the foundation of English democracy. Actually, it was none of these.