“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

obtain justice within the confines of the city and the remaining limits of imperial
jurisdiction. 2
The accusations that Ferrer and Berro traded suggest the variety of challenges that
the massive violence spawned by two decades of revolutionary upheavals posed for the Río
de la Plata’s inhabitants. Notions of national identity, political boundaries and private law
rights became inextricably intertwined with the ebb and flow of repeated military campaigns.
These conflicts appeared especially acute outside of the small port-cities of Montevideo and
Buenos Aires. Ferrer’s sarcastic analogy between the countryside beyond the city’s walls and
distant caliphates typified the deep divisions between coastal capitals and their hinterlands.
For Ferrer and others in these outposts, divisions between city and country corresponded
neatly with boundaries between law and lawlessness. The besieged merchants and politicians
that gazed out into the borderlands from behind the ramparts felt certain that what little
notion of law remained in the embattled region surely ended at the gates of their small
trading communities scattered along the Río de la Plata’s coasts.
But how did the inhabitants of Río de la Plata’s vast rivertine networks and
grasslands beyond these ports view their situation? How did they grapple with the crisis of
order spawned by revolutionary violence? What solutions did they arrive at to resolve
seemingly intractable conflicts over sovereignty? For Ferrer and many contemporary
intellectuals, the answer was to descend into anarchy. The Argentine author Domingo
Sarmiento powerfully encapsulated this view in his famous duality of “civilization” and
“barbarism.” 3 For Sarmiento, the periphery was a spawning ground for despotic rulers like
2 Ibid., 31-31bis.
3 Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo o Civilización y Barbarie en las Pampas Argentinas
(Buenos Aires: Biblioteca La Nación, 1999).
2