“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

orderlands world. Local courts became important arenas in which the practices
underpinning borderlands legalities could be reasserted. In Alegrete and Salto, it was not the
absence of law, but the pervasive need to control it that propelled factional violence forward.
The Continuing Search for Order
With the end of two decades of intense military conflicts, the Río de la Plata’s
inhabitants could once again envision creating a new political order. In Argentina, debates
over old sovereign questions emerged almost immediately in the wake of Rosas’ departure
for England. Here, tensions between the rivertine interior and Buenos Aires resurfaced in
sharp debates over a new constitution for the Argentine provinces. Following his victory at
Caseros, Urquiza had swept into Buenos Aires and imposed federalist control over the port.
Gathering victorious provincial delegates together in nearby San Nicolás, he received interim
national authority over the Argentine Confederation’s military, commercial and diplomatic
affairs. Urquiza intended to use his new powers to break from Rosas by establishing a more
permanent constitutional government. When he departed Buenos Aires for a constitutional
convention in Santa Fe, however, Buenos Aires almost immediately rose in protest against
the “despotic” nature of entrerriano leader’s broad authority. By the end of 1852, Buenos
Aires had seceded from Urquiza’s confederation. The rupture set the stage for a decade of
renewed conflict throughout Argentina concerning the relationship between the interior and
Buenos Aires. 1
Even after the initial rumblings in Buenos Aires against Urquiza and his federalist
allies in the interior, constitutional drafters continued their efforts to forge a basis for a new
national government. Legal theorists like Juan Alberdi seized the constitutional gathering to
1 James R. Scobie, La Lucha por la Consolidación de la Nacionalidad Argentina, 1852-1862,
2d ed. (Buenos Aires: Librería Hachette, 1979).
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