“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

continued ability of a landowner’s chosen faction to control the courts. Monstrous and
illegal proceedings lurked behind the local factional struggles over borderlands legalities.
The conflicts between Prado Lima and Teixeira reflected the centrality of personal
standing within the community to the vindication of legal rights. As we have seen, however,
the intensely local nature of borderlands legalities operated alongside chains of reciprocal
connections that stitched the contested region together. Given the integrated nature of the
borderlands, local clashes to manifest reciprocal allegiances, declare personal status and
define substantive rights readily flowed across putative national boundaries. As the 1850s
progressed, the property rights of Brazilian ranchers across the border in Uruguay became
embroiled in struggles to control the administration of justice in Alegrete and throughout the
Brazilian campanha. These factional clashes over the definition of property rights would once
again propel the long-standing sovereign frictions over the borderlands forward.
Borderlands Legalities Across Borders
As the sustained assault on Prado Lima’s property claims revealed, dictating the
boundaries of private law rights offered an important source of political power for factions
controlling courthouses in the borderlands. Yet while Prado Lima struggled in Alegrete to
retain “his” lands in that forum, he equally worked to disentangle the rights of his
commercial associates and factional allies across the border. In 1847, Prado Lima intervened
in an ongoing dispute over Agustín Guarch’s estate. Eventually letters from Prado Lima, Sá
Brito and Manuel Dória da Luz found their way to the courts in Montevideo. The evidence
permitted Guarch’s widow and her colorado allies to secure title to her deceased husband’s
properties. 139
139 D. Luis Miraglia por Doña Augustina Guarch y D. Julian Subsiela sobre liquidación y arreglo de
cuentas.
214