Abstract

VACCARONI, María Agustina. Policemen as witnesses: Police agents, territory and judicial practices (Buenos Aires city and surroundings, decades of 1810 and 1820). Folia [online]. 2021, n.42, pp.7-28. ISSN 0325-8238.  http://dx.doi.org/10.30972/fhn.0424677.

Interest and concern for greater territorial control encouraged, from the late 18th century and on, the organization of new territorial divisions in Buenos Aires, which were accompanied by the appointment of specific agents dedicated to their surveillance. The built up of police configurations such as the Intendencia de Policía or the Police Department in the 1810s and 1820s respectively, updated the link between territory and police. The knowledge that agents such as alcaldes de barrio, tenientes de alcalde, and police commissioners acquired on the spaces through which the residents and neighbors circulated placed them in the position of witnesses in judicial processes. They dominated information and were acquainted with places, movements and behaviors of the accused, thus colaborated in their identification. The approach to this problem in the city of Buenos Aires and its surroundings in the decades that followed the May Revolution demanded an investigation of various judicial files which we combine with the exploration of superior police daily orders and other documents produced by the government.

Keywords : Police; Territory; Judicial practices; Witnesses..