“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

judgment declaring their rival’s survey claim unlawful worked to undermine the reputation of
their representatives in the boundary dispute. With their underlying claims based on an
unlawful measurement and supported by the testimony of dishonorable men, the winning
faction could effectively cut off their rival’s access to justice.
The clashes around Salto’s courthouse again revealed the intertwined nature of law
and violence in the borderlands. Conflicts over personal reputation constituted a central
front in defining commercial relationships and local political power. Viewing this turbulent
borderlands world, Bernardo Berro and others correctly perceived that national identities
were weak in the borderlands. However, they erred in assuming that the absence of states
meant the absence of law. The prolonged struggles between blancos and colorados over
personal reputations and legal rights again revealed the centrality of law to the inhabitants in
the Uruguayan borderlands. These were not lawless spaces inhabited by rural caudillos.
Instead, it was the presence of alternative legalities that propelled factional conflicts forward
and ensured the persistence of peripheral political divisions.
Conclusion
Throughout the early 1850s, elites in the borderlands formed a number of political
coalitions designed to suppress factional conflicts and overcome the pervasive violence that
had swept the region. In Rio Grande do Sul, these efforts occurred mainly through the
promotion of elite personalist politics. In the embattled Uruguayan Republic, coastal elites
strived to control their rural hinterlands by extending national laws into the interior. In each
case, reformers sought to establish a framework for new states to govern their peripheries.
Despite these efforts, struggles to define legal rights, personal reputations and factional
associations continued to swirl around courthouses. These conflicts over borderlands
199