“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

allies, colorados drew upon the relationships forged through these interactions to secure
support for their faction.
By the early 1860s, conflicts over questions of private law rights in the northern
Uruguayan borderlands had become endemic. Across the Uruguay River in the Argentine
Confederation’s provinces, similar local clashes over personal reputations, reciprocal
connections and private law rights began to intersect with debates over sovereignty. Along
the Argentine Littoral in particular, the long-standing tensions between peripheral leaders
like Urquiza and porteño elites were again escalating. Like in the Uruguayan borderlands, both
sides sought local allies – this time in their struggles to forge broader national projects. The
next section explores these national aspirations.
Borderlands Legalities and National Aspirations
As the conflicts in the northern Uruguayan and Brazilian borderlands intensified
over cross-border property rights and factional associations throughout the 1850s, the
persistent tensions concerning the relationship between Buenos Aires and the interior
provinces were also reemerging in Argentina. As we saw in the previous chapter, Rosas’
defeat in 1852 had failed to resolve the deeply rooted disagreements between Urquiza’s
federalist coalition and elites in Buenos Aires. The fault lines between the old viceregal
capital and its putative peripheral hinterlands continued to preclude the formation of a
workable national system. These clashes over the sovereign construction of the Argentine
state would continue to define the country’s political life for the next two decades.
For Urquiza and his allies in the Argentine Littoral, the solution to these prickly
questions over sovereignty was to create a loose coalition of equal provinces. They also
envisioned a new national government explicitly designed to counterbalance the economic
and political power of Buenos Aires. Urquiza would play a key role in facilitating the
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