“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

Converging Conflicts
By the early 1860s, the various sovereign conflicts percolating around the Río de la
Plata began to converge with the endemic local clashes over personal reputations and private
law rights. Within the system of borderlands legalities, establishing authority meant entering
into the dense webs of local and cross-border relationships. As we saw in the previous
sections, these connections were necessary not only secure legal rights, but also played an
important role in forging the basis for broader provincial and national projects. The struggle
to control local legal relationships and cross-border reciprocal connections began to set the
stage for much broader conflicts in the northern Uruguayan borderlands.
Like their Brazilian and Uruguayan counterparts, merchants and landowners in the
Argentine Littoral were tightly linked to both local allies and trading partners across the
borderlands. Mitre and Urquiza repeatedly clashed in Corrientes in particular as they jostled
to establish local allegiances. They engendered not only localized disputes, but also conflicts
along integrated chains of reciprocal connections. Consider the example of Miguel Gelabert.
Gelabert was a merchant based in the correntino borderlands around the town of Mercedes.
In 1857, Gelabert and his commercial partner, Pedro Madariaga, discovered some two
ounces of gold had been stolen from a safe in their offices. The juez de crimen in Mercedes,
Miguel Abendaño, was slow to respond. Abendaño requested that the merchants wait until
additional officials arrived to conduct the investigation. After some six days, the men
complained about the judge’s inaction in the matter. Abendaño then publicly accused
Gelabert and Madariaga “of being the thieves of [their] own Capital.” 195 The judge publicly
threatened to arrest the men if they continued to pursue the matter.
195 AGPC. Fondo Mantilla. Archivo Valdéz, v. 18, Pedro Madariaga y Miguel Victorin
Gelabert al Sor. D. Gregorio Valdés (January 24, 1857).
240