“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

and shifting political circumstances that merchants, landowners and others faced in a context
of widespread military violence. In short, local courts provided an ideal institutional venue
in which peripheral inhabitants could publicly express and defend the legalities underpinning
their cross-border political and commercial ties. In this way, cross-border commercial
connections bolstered ideologies of local autonomy and identity, ensuring their survival in
the borderlands.
An excellent example of how litigants could seek to use local legal institutions to
protect the rights and reputations at the heart of borderlands legalities occurred in late 1848.
A ship traveling up the Uruguay River from Montevideo to Uruguaiana docked in Concordia
in order to portage goods around the river’s twin saltos. Gregorio Blanes, a Uruguayan
merchant from Salto, immediately appeared before the local alcalde ordinario to request that
officials embargo some 500 patacones in the possession of Francisco Vidiella, a Brazilian
merchant. 64 Blanes alleged that the debt stemmed from a series of transactions between
himself and another merchant, Francisco Barú, “who had emigrated from this province and
currently is in Uruguaiana.” Blanes stated that “being the declarant a creditor of said Señor
Barú . . . he humbly requests that Your Mercy make D. Francisco Vidiella deposit with a
responsible person the stated quantity of 500 patacones.” He then offered the written
testimony of three vecinos of “known reputation and probity” in support of his claims to the
money in question. 65 Based on the evidence from the prominent local merchants before
him, the alcalde ordinario granted the embargo pending the outcome of the litigation between
the two men. 66
64 Expediente seguido por D. Gregorio Blanes c. D. Francisco Vidiella, AGPER. Hacienda.
Serie IX, Subserie E, Civiles. Carpeta 6, s/n (1849), 1-2bis.
65 Ibid., 2-2bis.
66 Ibid., 5bis.
98