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“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

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Borderlands inhabitants in the early 1860s moved through a region in which local<br />

factions doggedly fought over the allocation of property rights. These local struggles in turn<br />

converged with persistent sovereign frictions. To prevail, merchants and landowners<br />

reached out to political allies throughout the borderlands to sustain their personal<br />

reputations and properties. Powerful figures like Canabarro, Bica and Mitre equally sought<br />

to use local divisions over control of borderlands courtrooms and private law rights to<br />

enhance their authority and build support for their sovereign visions. The result was that<br />

even mundane decisions over property boundaries could trigger conflicts throughout the<br />

borderlands as powerful rivals jostled to secure allies in their incessant factional and<br />

sovereign clashes.<br />

As these conflicts among elites grew progressively sharper, subaltern groups<br />

throughout the Río de la Plata also began to exploit elite divisions to win their own legal<br />

rights. Brazilian slaves proved especially adroit at utilizing elite divisions around the<br />

courthouse and over sovereignty to improve their standing. Their strategic use of elements<br />

of borderlands legalities to win their freedom, however, added further fuel to the escalating<br />

political fires in the borderlands. The next chapter turns to these the interconnected<br />

struggles over slavery, sovereignty and citizenship as they pushed the Río de la Plata<br />

borderlands ever closer towards renewed warfare.<br />


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