“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

end political violence in the interior, factional conflicts to control local courthouses
throughout the borderlands were intensifying.
Lawyers, Judges and Factional Legal Politics in Alegrete, Brazil
In January of 1853, a prominent local merchant in Alegrete, Manoel de Freitas Valle,
appeared before the district court in the town to complain of judicial misconduct and
electoral violence directed against him. He testified that following the end of the Farrapos
Rebellion in 1845, Alegrete had returned to “constitutional life, producing peaceful elections
without the presence of any disputes [devergencia] between the most prominent men of the
town.” 15 Freitas Valle claimed, however, that two years later “divisions had already
appeared” as a result of the creation of a faction led by Joaquim do Santos Prado Lima.
According to Freitas Valle, Prado Lima’s “opposition” had triumphed in the 1847 elections.
He testified that by 1849, there were even more conflicts, but again Prado Lima and his allies
retained control in the town. He now claimed that Prado Lima’s faction was using the
courts against him in order to prevent him from serving on the electoral board overseeing
the 1852 elections. He alleged they had orchestrated his arrest based on false charge that he
had conspired to murder another merchant. 16
As Freitas Valle’s story suggests, efforts to reduce political tensions throughout the
Brazilian borderlands through the creation of elite coalitions increasingly collided with sharp
local struggles over reputation and rights swirling around courthouses. Rather than political
ideology, efforts to use local courts to control the complex relationships of reciprocity and
15 Manoel de Freitas Valle c. José Vaz Alves de Castro Amaral, Juiz Municipal, APRGS.
Alegrete. Cartório Civil e Crime. Ações Ordinárias, Maço 79, No. 2760 (1853).
16 Ibid., 336-336bis.
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