“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

complete bad faith, hurries to remove every class of cattle in his possession.” 6 Sosa likely
had a point. The court in Cerro Largo certainly had labored to interpret his contractual
agreements in a manner designed to protect Tavarez’s rights to move cattle across the
border. Local leaders had penned briefs accusing him of violence and implicitly impugning
his personal reputation. Sosa probably understood the balance of forces against him. He
brought his judicial action away from Cerro Largo’s courts in Montevideo to better his own
chances of victory.
Tavarez’s political allies out in the borderlands responded aggressively to Sosa’s
attempts to shift the case to Montevideo. They did so in a typical borderlands fashion by
drawing upon webs of local connections. They secured a guarantee from Hilario Amaro de
Silveira, another prominent Brazilian rancher in the region, to compensate Sosa for any cattle
he might obtain through his legal action in Montevideo. 7 Amaro’s intervention again
reflected the local politics of reciprocity and reputation at the heart of borderlands legalities.
By guaranteeing the deposit, Amaro positioned himself to protect order in the countryside
and preserve Tavarez’s cross-border trading arrangements. He further could use his
prominent local position to blunt any outside interference in the local judicial decision. In
short, Tavarez’s problem accorded Amaro the opportunity to manifest his role as a critical
figure in maintaining borderlands commercial relationships. By obtaining such a guarantee
from Amaro, Tavarez could also publicly manifest his own personal standing in the
community by summoning a prominent guarantor of his character. Like in so many other
commercial disputes in the borderlands, the case for Tavarez and Amaro was about defining
each one’s place within their respective trading and political worlds.
6 Ibid., 17bis.
7 Ibid, 140bis.
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