“Causa Criminal contra Felipe Calvo por haber quiso forzar a María Agustina González- 1779”.
Document number: 34-1-10-21
“Causa Criminal against Felipe Calvo for having wanted to force himself on María Agustina González – 1779”.
This document belongs to the Juzgado del Crimen Fund, which contains documentation from the colonial period to the beginning of the 20th century – specifically from 1723 to 1927, although the largest volume is exhausted in 1902. This Fund is one of the richest for the investigation of living conditions, social structures and the functioning of the judicial apparatus.
This particular file is entitled “Causa criminal contra Felipe Calvo por haber quiso forzar (in today’s terms, rape) a María Agustina González” (Criminal case against Felipe Calvo for having wanted to force (in today’s terms, rape) María Agustina González). Throughout the case, which is exhaustively detailed, the 16-year-old victim, her neighbour and even a friend of the perpetrator testify against the latter.
In her account, the victim tells how she was taken by Calvo to a ravine, where she struggled so much with the aggressor that he was unable to achieve his goal. In this situation, the aggressor tied her to a post, naked, and beat her under threat of her not telling what had happened.
After some time, Calvo decided to flee the ravine with María Agustina González, and took her to a neighbour’s empty house. There they find them, and both the neighbour and her servant are concerned about the state of María Agustina, who is badly beaten and bloodied.
Although Calvo declared that the two were living in illicit friendship – that is, that they were lovers – in the face of all the declarations against him, he was sentenced to eight years in exile in the Falkland Islands or wherever the Viceroy dictated.
AUTHOR OF THE TEXT
Lucía Arisnavarreta and Florencia Lloret
NAME OF IBERARCHIVES PROJECT
Documents may be consulted in person at the Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires, 588 49th Street, 2nd floor, city of La Plata, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
