| Summary: | By reviewing the myths of witchcraft and sorcery, this paper analyzes the actors and social practices in a frontier town, the last bulwark before total wilderness, in the Northern state of Coahuila, Mexico. The author studies the process of Inquisition during 1748-1751, a period when people were accused of and tried for diabolic activities. The trials reveal a tendency to explain the game of human passions within an unknown reality —characterized by an apparent lack of logic and formal canons— through supernatural activities and satanic pacts atributed to women, regardless of social class. In this context, moral —and political— authorities tried to stop promiscuity, and their actions were seen as a need and determination to control a very fluid social structure, i.e., to establish norms for the regulation of moral standards and collective values.
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