“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

power necessarily would derive their authority from the law rather than from brute force. In
Lamas’ telling, it was up to the country’s “natural leaders” – by which he meant the elites in
the capital – to put aside their differences and establish a legal basis upon which a new class
of official could arise in the interior. 12
These new efforts to establish a unified national government that could govern the
tumultuous republic ultimately bore fruit with the election of Gabriel Pereira to the
presidency in 1856. Upon assuming office, Pereira declared that “whoever rules, half of the
pueblo oriental cannot and must not remain in eternal tutelage to the other.” 13 Pereira took
immediate steps to end factional divisions. He outlawed any public meetings that might take
on factional overtones. He further worked to build a base of support both in Montevideo
and in the countryside for his new, non-factional government. At the same time, Pereira
confronted the interior caudillos. In 1858, he defeated an uprising led by the colorado general
César Díaz. Pereira ordered the defeated caudillo and his followers shot following their
capture after the battle of Quinteros. 14
With the government’s resounding victory, the countryside was, for the moment,
pacified. Further, the old political divisions in the capital receded as various factions unified
behind Pereira’s triumphant government. In 1860, Pereira became the first Uruguayan
president since Rivera’s initial government in the 1830s to complete a full term in office.
The fusionist program appeared to be slowly consolidating national authority over the
troubled republic. Yet factional divisions did not disappear in Uruguay or across the border
in Rio Grande do Sul. Rather, even as fusionists placed their faith in the power of the law to
12 Ibid., 77-78.
13 Barrán, Apogeo y Crisis, 61.
14 Ibid.
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