20 In the reality of colonial Chile, the existence of codes of honor different from those of the elite has remained unnoticed for historiography up until a few years ago, and there is still no systematic study that – dialoguing with documentary registers – shows the diversity of its representations and practices, an issue we are currently working on for our doctoral thesis. Up to the moment, the only works exclusively destined to analyze honor in Chilean colonial society, besides those previously mentioned of our own authorship, have been "El concepto de honor en Chile colonial" and "Mujeres de Chill?luchan por su honra", by Retamal vila. In the first, the analysis is centered on the fundaments of power and social prestige of the aristocrats of the 16th and 17th centuries, recording a change in the "concept of honor" for the 18th century derived from the penetration of "new people" in the nucleus of the elite. Likewise, the author accepts the possibility that this notion "went through" the integrants of the "emerging middle group" and even some Indians, especially caciques. In the second article, the importance of female sexual purity is addressed in the conformation of the Hispanic Creole honor. See Julio Retamal vila, "El concepto de honor en Chile colonial", Estudios Coloniales II, Universidad Andr?Bello, Santiago, 2002, 41-56;
