“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

labor discipline to the list of volatile political disputes swirling around borderlands
courtrooms.
This chapter delves into the citizenship claims of persons of color like Pedro in the
northern Uruguayan borderlands. The first section provides a brief background on the
borderlands slave system. It looks at the history of slave resistance in the context of the
region’s pervasive military conflicts. The demands of the Guerra Grande ultimately led to
Uruguayan manumission. It equally prompted Brazilian efforts to nullify its impact on their
cross-border ranching operations through a variety of mechanisms designed to preserve
labor discipline. The second section then explores how slaves responded to attempts by
Brazilian masters like Cándido to reenslave them by developing collective strategies to
construct their Uruguayan citizenship. The third section then links these local conflicts over
the citizenship of persons of color in the borderlands to broader debates over national
sovereignty. It looks at how Uruguayan legal reformers responded to disputes over “slave
citizenship” by attempting to solidify respect for national identities and laws. Yet, in doing
so, the conflicts around citizenship spilled out of borderlands courtrooms. The final section
examines how competing political factions played upon tensions over national identities to
link their local struggles to rival state projects. In doing so, they further accelerated the
region’s march towards war.
Slave Law and Borderlands Conflicts
For Brazilian masters in the 1850s, slaves were critical and increasingly valuable
assets. In a region characterized by chronic labor shortages, slave labor formed the bedrock
of the riograndense ranching economy. 4 Although vital, slave labor was equally problematic
4 The scholarship concerning the importance of slave labor in the Río de la Plata
borderlands has undergone a substantial revision in recent years. Traditional interpretations
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