“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

side sought to dictate the distribution of private law rights on both sides of the border. For
the Ribeiros, the loss of an important political ally like Bica posed a substantial problem.
They had failed to protect an important ally’s property in the Estado Oriental. Such a
reversal threatened to undermine their political power and personal reputations back in
Brazil. Much like Miguel Gelabert had suffered economically based on a perceived inability
to obtain justice in Mercedes, the judicial defeat of a prominent ally in the Estado Oriental
equally threatened the Ribeiros’ claims to be able to dispense justice and protect the legal
rights of their factional allies. Once again, the shock waves from a single legal reversal could
radiate across the borderlands and produce renewed conflicts in a variety of strategic
locations.
With his honor in question across the border in the Estado Oriental, Bica had to
work to restore his own personal prestige in Corrientes. Bica settled in the correntino
department of Monte Caseros. The department was situated in Corrientes’ southern and
eastern borderlands along the west bank of the Uruguay River. Here, both Mitre and
Urquiza were engaged throughout the 1850s in a struggle to influence the local departmental
commanders in their ongoing conflicts with the distant provincial government in the city of
Corrientes. Urquiza quickly moved to establish a relationship with the exiled Brazilian
rancher. The two men entered into a commercial partnership in 1855. Bica agreed to supply
Urquiza’s vast saladero with cattle from his correntino ranch. Urquiza’s commercial ties to the
Brazilian rancher also provided a political ally in his own struggles to control the correntino
borderlands. The two men began forging a reciprocal relationship that could be deployed in
the province’s intensifying political conflicts. 216
216 Macchi, Urquiza: el Saladerista, 31-32.
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