“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

epublic. 26 Berro’s calls for a uniform, national system of law that dispensed with exceptions
for foreigners would emerge again and again in the coming decades. 27
By the late 1840s, these nationalist sentiments and economic necessities compelled
Oribe to risk angering the powerful Brazilian landowners in the borderlands. Mirroring the
imperial policies that had triggered the Farrapos war, Oribe first demanded tax payments for
the export of cattle into Rio Grande do Sul. Frontier commanders in the northern
borderlands like Diego Lamas immediately took steps to prosecute what was now
contraband trade across the border. Unable to stem the flow of cattle, Oribe then
prohibited their export entirely in 1848. 28
Much as the imperial government had done a decade earlier, Oribe’s measures aimed
to consolidate his government’s authority over economic resources in the borderlands by
seeking to enforce national divisions. They provoked a similar response from the aggrieved
Brazilians throughout the western campanha. Prominent local elites began to organize large-
scale raids into the Estado Oriental to seize cattle. These “californias,” in reference to the
ongoing gold rush in the United States, embodied borderlands legalities premised on cross-
border reciprocities and local reputations. At the most basic level, the raids violently
manifested the rejection of the imposition of artificial national boundaries on what was an
integrated economic space. Protecting property across the border through the california raids
26 Ibid., 124.
27 For a discussion of the role of the Brazilian presence in propelling Uruguayan legal
reforms forward, see Benton, "The Laws of This Country.", Susana Bleil de Souza and
Fabrício Prado, "Las Representaciones del Brasil en el Discurso de Los Constructores de la
Identidad Uruguaya en el Siglo XIX," in Fronteras, Indígenas y Migrantes en América del Sur, ed.
Hector Hugo Trinchero (Córdoba, ARG: Centro de Estudios Avanzados, 2002).
28 Barrán, Apogeo y Crisis, 33-34.
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