Based on the analysis of judicial files, this work explores the representations linked to the idea of motherhood, understood as a historical and cultural construction, placed under legal, moral and social suspicion, against the perpetration of certain forms of transgression, violence and criminality. Female, within the framework of a society with border, multicultural and ethnic characteristics, late incorporation into the national state and its institutions, namely, the department of Temuco between 1890 and 1935