“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

Chaves’ homens bons – with longstanding connections to the local forum, merchants and
landowners could publicly manifest and reinforce their personal reputation and connections.
In this way, they enhanced their local status and with it the possibilities for further
commerce. As a result, local courtrooms became critical arenas of struggle over the
disparate elements of alternative borderlands legalities underpinning both factional politics
and cross-border trade.
The importance of publicly manifesting the webs of connections sustaining personal
reputations and trading networks to obtain justice in local fora often led to substantial
efforts to track down and obtain testimony from dozens of diverse witnesses. For example,
the Brazilian attorney, Mathias Teixeira de Almeida, and Joaquim dos Santos Prado Lima, his
political rival in Alegrete, went to great lengths to secure a series of prominent witnesses to
support their respective property claims. As we will see in more detail in chapters four and
five, both Teixeira and Prado Lima produced dozens of local witnesses to support their
respective property rights, with the local court specifically highlighting the “age, wealth and
character” of Prado Lima’s witnesses in ruling in his favor. 87
In assigning weight to this testimonial evidence, courts also frequently cited the
amount of time a given witness had resided in a particular forum. Courts rested decisions on
the testimony of “antiguos vecinos” on a number of occasions. 88 Conversely, recent arrivals
87 Doña Francisca Oliveira Lisboa c. Joaquim dos Santos Prado Lima, APRGS. Alegrete.
Cartíorio Civil e Crime. Ações Ordinários, Maço 36, No. 851 (1855), 24bis.
88 See, e.g., Expediente promovido por Don Joaquin Antonio Nuñez, como apoderado de Doña
Franctia Lascano, apelando de la sentencia del Juzgado de Paz de esta sección, que obtuvo en su fabor Don
Antonio Martines, sobre el mejor derecho de possesión á un terreno, AGN-SJ. Salto. Letrados Civiles,
No. 8 (1850), 11bis. The court declared that a decision of the juez de paz concerning the
ownership of a particular tract of land was erroneous because it contradicted the “antiguos
vecinos of known probity.” Other examples from Salto include Don Francisco Caballero c. Don
Joaquin Noqueira sobre propiedad de una charca, AGN. Salto. Letrados Civiles, No. 15 (1870), 10
(land ownership established through the testimony of “antiguos vecinos”); Don Francisco
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