top of page
Alfonso Quiroz Cuarón
Alfonso Quiroz Cuarón

Author: Brenda Edith Cetina Juárez

Degree in criminology

December 16, 2021

Alfonso Quiroz Cuarón was born on February 9, 1910 in Jiménez, Chihuahua , who was the second of the marriage's children and the first male child; He was born at the time of the Mexican Revolution, which is why corpses hanging in the trees was something daily for him, and at night the shots and battle cries were common. His father was the head of the railway station in Chihuahua and his mother a housewife, as was the custom of the time, had married very young.

During these times the visits of officers of both armies were frequent, with the aim of taking the women from the houses. Later, his father was reassigned to the capital city of the state: Ciudad Juárez and soon after, his father was promoted to the city of Tampico, where at age 14 he lost his mother to cancer and on November 3, In 1925, when Cuarón was 15 years old, his father who worked in the administrative offices of the Tampico railway was assassinated, a fact that he himself described as a coward, since his father's murderer attacked him from behind with a series of shots that They killed instantly, while he (his father) was in his office, this fact undoubtedly marked Alfonso's life and profession, because at the age of 15 he had lost both parents, one a year before the other .

According to Freud, the most sensitive stages in a child are between 3 and 5 years of age, early stages in human lives, as well as mentioning that the death of the father is a very sensitive event in the life of a child, therefore that losing both parents in a very short period of time is not only a sensible fact to deal with, but also facts that leave their mark on being. Therefore, attending a funeral procession and looking at his mother's still fresh grave to bury his father, necessarily had to leave traces and marks on Alfonso's personality and character, in addition to providing him with emotional imbalances. During the trial of his father's murderer, he discovered that they had to carry out a necropsy on his father and personality studies were carried out on the murderer, this event provokes in Cuarón the need and curiosity to understand autopsies and the offender's personality studies (Garmabella, 1985).
That is why, over time, he arrived at the forensic medical service as a waiter of the then Federal District in 1929, where he also learned forensic psychiatry and in 1930 as a practitioner, and in what was really of interest to him: legal medicine. Little by little, his level and category, as well as his experience and knowledge, increased. In the years 1932 and 1933, criminology was born in Mexico, or as it was called the criminological clinic at that time, as a result of the insistence of many doctors who worked with the inmates in Lecumberri, such as: Gómez Robleda, González Enríquez, Matilde Rodríguez Cabo among others.

In 1934, Alfonso faced the dilemma of receiving professionally in 2 careers as a doctor or as a criminologist, his subconscious, as he very aptly describes it, dictated him to “the path of criminology”, which he also argued: “in the first ( doctor), it would be one of many, but in the second (criminology) there was the opportunity that over time, be the first ”.
Quiroz Cuarón worked on many famous cases of the time, as in the case of the murderer of León Trotsky: Ramón Mercader, as well as with Goyo Cárdenas, the murderer of women, Enrico Sampietro, among many other cases, and also some lesser known cases.
In the world of criminology, Quiroz Cuarón is called: the first criminologist in Mexico, that is; He is the first to legally hold the title of criminologist issued by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her life was not easy and for most of us almost impossible to imagine, yet it is the same life that has inspired others to make a difference and social change.


Bibliography
García, DF (sf). Legal. Retrieved on September 11, 2021, from https://revistas-colaboracion.juridicas.unam.mx/index.php/rev-facultad-derecho-mx/article/viewFile/27201/24548
Garmabella, JR (1985). Dr. Alfonso Quiroz Cuarón. His best criminology cases. CDMX: Diana.

bottom of page