“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

management form for Brazilian politics.” 62 Within the imperial political structure, however,
a host of centrifugal forces aligned against the centralizing pull of the executive branch.
Most prominently, the provincial legislature, along with the provincial vice-president that
served in the president’s (often-frequent) absence, worked to check executive initiatives and
preserve local autonomy. In Rio Grande do Sul, the legislature served as the focal point for
the “regional reaction” against imperial officials. It acted as a site where regional elites could
articulate their own political power and negotiate the conditions of their continued loyalty to
the empire. 63
The broader structural conflicts between the provincial president and legislature
came to a head in 1859. President Ângelo Muniz da Silva Ferraz’s close relationship with the
provincial conservative party led a group of liberals to reject the old Liga and Contra-Liga
coalitions. They fashioned a new, exclusively liberal party. They named the new entity the
Partido Liberal Histórico (Historic Liberal Party or later simply the Liberal Party) in order to
assert its place as the “authentic” heir to the liberal revolutionary tradition. The new party’s
first test was in the 1860 elections. These tensions between the conservative Ferraz and the
Liberals equally played out in Alegrete’s local political divisions. With the Ribeiros
progressively more associated with the executive branch of the provincial government
through the judiciary, Canabarro sought to further stoke the political tensions between the
provincial legislature and the president to assist his efforts to secure his own faction’s power
in the comarca. The frontier commander quickly allied himself with the Liberals, using his
influence in the borderlands to support their slate of candidates in the areas under his
62 Ibid., 142.
63 Ibid., 144.
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