“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

fed back into broader political disputes. In particular, the very centrality of the law to
defining factional power, personal reputations and reciprocal ties led to increasingly sharp
local struggles. These clashes in turn radiated through the networks of commercial and
political associations stitching the tightly integrated borderlands together. As the 1850s
progressed, therefore, the loose coalitions of elites envisioned by reformers progressively
ceded ground to more sharply defined factional assemblages. These entities centered on
powerful figures like David Canabarro, among others, who organized allies to control
courtrooms throughout the borderlands. The peripheral solutions to the problem of order
in the previous decades now began to lay the foundation for new rounds of sovereign
conflicts.
This chapter explores how borderlands legalities produced increased political
tensions and factional rivalries. It does so by dropping down to the local level and looking at
the relationship between litigation and sharpening factional disputes over the course of the
1850s. It maps the conflicts in and around courthouses in two strategic fora in the Brazilian
and Uruguayan borderlands. The first, Alegrete, Brazil, witnessed a decade-long conflict to
control the administration of justice in the town. These factional clashes involved legal
proceedings, elections and pervasive violence. This chapter examines how the prolonged
struggle to control Alegrete’s courthouse propelled the creation of much more sharply
defined political coalitions. The second section explores renewed conflicts between the old
blanco and colorado parties in Salto, Uruguay around issues of personal reputation and political
power. Here, litigation over juicios de imprenta, a particularly public proceeding held in the
town’s theater, provided much of the impetus for local struggles to control borderlands
legalities. In each forum, litigation remained a critical moment in which local rivals could
publicly express their commercial and political associations and define their place within the
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