Various versions, one fact: narraciones theft in Valparaiso before the courts, in the late nineteenth century

Abstract

This article sets forth an approach to understand the phenomenon of thievery, from the point of view of its protagonists: victims and victimizers. Through a random sample of judicial proceedings on the grounds of theft and robbery, this article attempts an approximation of those voices, paying special attention to the game of intentionalities that is practiced in the instances of court trials. These discourses point to a characterization of the litigants, and to a caricature of the facts.