Tattoos, Body Territories in Late 19th Century Mexico

Abstract

This article presents the intellectual and technical heritage of anthropological practice in medical and legal identification of tattoos in Mexico in the late nineteenth century. While criminological practice developed institutional level in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, mainly corresponding to the signage registration protocols, a section of this record can be detected in the medical and anthropometric observation, and the description of the bodies of detainees in the late nineteenth century. These practices were introduced by doctors that belong to various medical sections of prisons in Mexico. The study of the body and its particular signs introduces us to a sensitive look anthropology and to anthropology of the body representation. Tattoos are fundamental elements used to establish the first records of criminal identification, and their study emerges as a device of iconographic comparison used by the pioneers of modern criminology.