This is a book about infamy in Mexico and, at the same time, about the infamy of Mexico: by exploring various criminal expressions in the country for much of the twentieth century, Pablo Piccato realizes how crimes were prosecuted in the courts, in public opinion and in literature, but also explains how the fame of our violent nation was born. If the link between crime, truth and justice is a premise of modern society, these pages show how the certainty that criminals can be punished once the authority finds out the facts, determines guilt and resarses victims, is broken forever. Based on the Borgian idea that infamy is a "surface of images", the author shows how Mexican society developed criminal literacy: the ability to know, prosecute and punish criminal acts, sometimes outside the judicial sphere. The reader will attend a crowded room where a jury issues his sentence, browse the pages of the red note and detective magazines, become acquainted with famous assassins, and be terrified of bumping into the gunmen who embodied the darker face of the post-revolutionary regime. Piccato also uses literature to understand the meaning that authors and readers gave to the murder, already in popular accounts, already in the narrative practiced by writers such as Rodolfo Usigli o Rafael Bernal. Such are the strands of this bitter story national infamy.