“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ... “MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
in order to understand the social products spawned by sovereign frictions. 4 This dissertation argues that the violent fraying of the colonial order and the vacuum of authority left in the wake of revolutions paved the way for the peripheral legal and political order that emerged. As control over the Río de la Plata’s borderlands rapidly shifted from one power to another, peripheral inhabitants developed flexible institutions to maneuver and even prosper. The most salient feature of this alternative order in fact was that it developed in the absence of and in at least partial opposition to state-centered law. Instead, it drew upon shared conceptions of local autonomy and justice, blending them with cross-border relationships rooted in patronage and factional connections to provide the juridical underpinnings for a system uniquely suited to the demands of the region’s contested ground. Like the borderlands, it was a system that could operate between states as much as within them. While this dissertation conceptualizes violence as the progenitor of alternative legalities, it also sees the existence of alternative legalities as the trigger for renewed violence. As state cores recovered from revolutionary chaos and began to extend their authority and institutions out into the borderlands, they encountered vigorous defenders of rival, peripheral legal relationships premised on the absence of centralized power and laws. In resisting state control, borderlands inhabitants also exploited rival state projects, using the tensions between each to preserve legal relationships that sustained their power and place in peripheral societies. Ultimately, would-be state framers had to contort centralized models in order to reconcile peripheral legalities with national authority, ensuring that traces of these former practices and relationships found their way into seemingly consolidated state structures. 4 Silvio Rogério Duncan Baretta and John Markoff, "Civilization and Barbarism: Cattle Frontiers in Latin America," Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 (1978): 590. 4
By moving between stories of law and violence in this way, this dissertation weaves together histories of an extremely contested space with narratives of an underlying order. By doing so, this dissertation can reframe the long-term reordering of the Río de la Plata into a state system as a dynamic and dialectic process in which regional peripheries played a critical role. It argues that the borderlands’ experience of seemingly intractable conflict and the legal structures and practices it developed profoundly shaped each other. They equally influenced the eventual contours of the region’s states that slowly arose to govern them. It is a story that is revealed only from the periphery inwards. It can be told only by giving equal weight to the Río de la Plata borderlands’ geographies and the borderlands legalities the region’s inhabitants fashioned for themselves there. Borderlands Geographies Rivers have always defined the Río de la Plata basin. The region’s river system drains a vast portion of the South American continent that stretches from the Bolivian highlands across the swamps of the Pantanal to the coastal mountains of southeastern Brazil. The Paraná and Paraguay rivers occupy the western half of the Río de la Plata basin, joining together near the city of Corrientes. Stretching more than a mile across at various points, these rivers open the center of the continent to navigation by ocean-going vessels for hundreds of miles. To the east and closer to the heart of this dissertation’s story, the Uruguay River drains a much smaller, but still significant portion of Brazil’s Atlantic highlands. More rocky and shallow than the lower Paraná, the Uruguay also possessed several significant fall barriers. These rocky shoals, situated between the towns of Itaqui and São Borja in Brazil, and above the town of Salto in Uruguay, necessitated extensive portages except during the high waters of the rainy season. The two rivers converge into the Río de la Plata estuary, the largest in the world. The muddy freshwater outflows from this massive 5
- Page 1 and 2: “MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDING
- Page 3 and 4: ABSTRACT This dissertation explores
- Page 5 and 6: TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iii ACKN
- Page 7 and 8: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Like the wandering
- Page 9 and 10: Upon returning to the United States
- Page 11 and 12: INTRODUCTION IN EARLY 1828, A FRENC
- Page 13: Juan Manuel de Rosas and Facundo Qu
- Page 17 and 18: in the continental interior. They d
- Page 19 and 20: the fluid character of borderlands
- Page 21 and 22: and geographic conceptions. Extendi
- Page 23 and 24: local legal norms and practices in
- Page 25 and 26: that has greatly expanded the space
- Page 27 and 28: along rivertine trading corridors.
- Page 29 and 30: strains articulated by men like Art
- Page 31 and 32: Bringing the courts back into the s
- Page 33 and 34: of borderlands leaders to negotiate
- Page 35 and 36: Removing the old colonial order, ho
- Page 37 and 38: the city remained a sparsely popula
- Page 39 and 40: smugglers and other imperial outlaw
- Page 41 and 42: Imperial Collapse and Fragmentation
- Page 43 and 44: ivers, deserts and a few vagrant an
- Page 45 and 46: defend its possessions, peninsular
- Page 47 and 48: They requested that the Junta appoi
- Page 49 and 50: manufactured products for the Andea
- Page 51 and 52: The Paraguayan government proposed
- Page 53 and 54: Montevideo in January of 1811, he i
- Page 55 and 56: Ríos. From there, he continued to
- Page 57 and 58: easoning. 25 They had rejected the
- Page 59 and 60: military headquarters along the ban
- Page 61 and 62: sovereignty rooted in borderlands p
- Page 63 and 64: Artigas’ defeat did not spell the
By moving between stories of law and violence in this way, this dissertation weaves<br />
together histories of an extremely contested space with narratives of an underlying order. By<br />
doing so, this dissertation can reframe the long-term reordering of the Río de la Plata into a<br />
state system as a dynamic and dialectic process in which regional peripheries played a critical<br />
role. It argues that the borderlands’ experience of seemingly intractable conflict and the legal<br />
structures and practices it developed profoundly shaped each other. They equally influenced<br />
the eventual contours of the region’s states that slowly arose to govern them. It is a story<br />
that is revealed only from the periphery inwards. It can be told only by giving equal weight<br />
to the Río de la Plata borderlands’ geographies and the borderlands legalities the region’s<br />
inhabitants fashioned for themselves there.<br />
Borderlands Geographies<br />
Rivers have always defined the Río de la Plata basin. The region’s river system drains<br />
a vast portion of the South American continent that stretches from the Bolivian highlands<br />
across the swamps of the Pantanal to the coastal mountains of southeastern Brazil. The<br />
Paraná and Paraguay rivers occupy the western half of the Río de la Plata basin, joining<br />
together near the city of Corrientes. Stretching more than a mile across at various points,<br />
these rivers open the center of the continent to navigation by ocean-going vessels for<br />
hundreds of miles. To the east and closer to the heart of this dissertation’s story, the<br />
Uruguay River drains a much smaller, but still significant portion of Brazil’s Atlantic<br />
highlands. More rocky and shallow than the lower Paraná, the Uruguay also possessed<br />
several significant fall barriers. These rocky shoals, situated between the towns of Itaqui and<br />
São Borja in Brazil, and above the town of Salto in Uruguay, necessitated extensive portages<br />
except during the high waters of the rainy season. The two rivers converge into the Río de<br />
la Plata estuary, the largest in the world. The muddy freshwater outflows from this massive<br />
5 <br />
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