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Article: Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871. (Reviews).
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- September 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Containing the Poor: The Mexico City Poor House, 1774-1871. By Silvia Marina Arrom (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. xii plus 398 pp. $59.95/cloth $19.95/paper).
Two landmark policy statements on poverty frame Silvia Arrom's study of the Mexico City Poor House. The first, a viceregal decree of 1774, criminalized begging in the colonial capital and mandated the arrest of beggars and their detention and rehabilitation in the Poor House, established for that purpose. Almost a century later in 1871, the government of Benito Juarez issued a new penal code that relegalized begging, thus ending a long experiment in eliminating mendicity by confinement. Meanwhile, ...