Crime and Punishment in pre-Hispanic Nahua City-States Tenochtitlan and Texcoco

Abstract

Abstract The article focuses on the delinquency existing in pre-Hispanic Tenochtitlan and Texcoco as a particular type of human behavior, having many concrete forms that the wider society perceived (and condemned) through certain concepts and that it sought to both prevent and suppress. The first part of the article deals with the reflections and forms of delinquency existing in Tenochtitlan and Texcoco. In the second part of the article the mechanisms of prevention and repression of delinquency are examined. Although the pre- Hispanic society existing in Tenochtitlan and Texcoco can be considered as a so-called shame culture, in the conclusion of the article it is suggested that it could be a shame culture, which over time has changed, to a certain extent, to a so-called guilt culture.