Enlightenment of Society Examining the enlightenment, it can be seen that it was a force for change in the way that societies thought about equality toward individuals. As the ideas of justice, deterrence, and individual rights evolved during the Enlightenment, so did the application of capital punishment. It became a tool to help reform individuals instead of punishing them, and capital executions became a private practice. It also evolved from being an arbitrary punishment against minorities, to a consistent and steady punishment for anyone who broke the law, eventually morphing into the punishment system of today. As history has progressed, a complete difference has been seen in regards to the rights of the minorities and the poor in the courts of law. The stark difference in the courts opinion toward minorities can be seen if you compare the way that they were tried during the colonization of Mexico with the way that they were treated in English society after the Enlightenment. As Martinez talks about in her essay, blacks were heavily discriminated against. This social tension carried over into the High Courts of Spanish society, which caused them to be extremely biased against the blacks. The courts bias can be easily observed in the Translated Documents from New Spain, in which the courts, under the façade of a trial, punish a group of blacks simply to make an example of them. The effect of the deterrence was undermined by the fact that these punishments were often inconsistent. These punishments were especially cruel, as Martinez describes when she says, “They were being paraded on horseback, shamed before the residents of the vice-regal capital, before all were summarily hanged in front of a large crowd in the [1]central plaza facing the church and palace. The bodies of some of the victims remained suspended in the air through the next