Muerte a los que matan sin tener derecho a ello. Relato de un proceso criminal en los límites de Nueva España

There is a common idea that the administration of justice in most of New Spain, in addition to slow and outdated, had judges generally incompetent and ignorant of the law. This paper attempts to show that this has to be put into context and not always fits the reality; there were provinces where judges employed texts of primary legislation and not just common sense and manuals for apprentices. The criminal case exposed in the following pages is an example of it, as well as the technical relations between local and central justice administrations in New Spain.