Garza covers six important criminal cases in late nineteenth century Mexico City that occurred under Porfirio Diaz. The book analyzes these crimes in the context of Porfirian Mexico and the turmoil that ensued in post-colonial society that was trying to modernize as a nation. The Mexican elites were very intimidated by the large and ever-growing underclass, thus they used these crimes that were committed by lower class, poor Mexicans as a tactic to build a social and economic barrier between the classes. These cases helped forge the “Imagined Underworld” as Garza unpacks the real motives of the elites, their failures, and how they created this myth of the underworld of crime in lower class Mexican society. This main argument is corroborated
