["That strange mark of the most famous bandits": tattooing in Colombia in the first half of the twentieth century].

Abstract

This article focuses the history of tattoos in Colombia in the first half of the twentieth century, analyzing the rationalization of several police and medical-legal stigmas in local debates that characterized tattoos as a diagnostic element of crime and disease. With these readings, we will observe general aspects of the process of appropriation of tattoos as an artistic practice, including their social and visual contexts of production, the characteristics of tattoo artists and tattooed people, and the tattooing techniques performed. Thus, tattoos can be seen both as an input for surveillance strategies and as an expression of the subaltern and criminalized groups of the beginning of the century.