“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

powerful figures like Urquiza, depended upon establishing local connections to bolster their
commercial enterprises. At the same time as they forged commercial relationships, they
developed ties to local vecino elites that could provide the necessary testimony, evidence and
prestige to support them. Obtaining this testimony then fed back into their commercial
systems by publicly manifesting not only an individual’s personal character, but also
emphasizing the reciprocal relationships between partners that made trade possible. In
short, traditional notions of local standing and citizenship like vecindad and cross-border
trading relationships complemented each other, producing a peripheral order that operated
alongside the political violence sweeping the region.
Conclusion
Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, traders faced conditions of extreme political
instability and violence. Yet, they could equally recognize the Río de la Plata basin’s
economic potential as it oriented itself towards the export of agricultural staples to the
Atlantic World. The challenge was to develop mechanisms to secure trade and protect legal
rights in the absence of consolidated nation-states. The personal and factional connections
forged by merchants and landowners as they moved across borders and along trading routes
addressed this problem. These relationships provided a solution that could be
simultaneously rooted in local notions of citizenship and status like vecindad and carried
across boundaries to a number of fora wherever political vagaries and commercial
opportunities required.
Concepts like vecindad provided a juridical mechanism familiar to theorists like
Chaves and merchants like Guarch that embodied localized justice, reciprocity and personal
reputation. They used these concepts as flexible platforms upon which to link together
strategic nodes to establish cross-border economic relationships adapted to political and
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