“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

conceded that Pedro had been baptized in Uruguay, but continued to claim that he was born
in Brazil and properly a slave. He then asked for a delay in the proceeding so that he could
produce additional evidence to establish his claim. With Cándido seemingly off-balance, a
judicial finding that Pedro was a free Uruguayan citizen seemed imminent.
Yet as Pedro’s family worked to erect boundaries around his nationality to protect
him from slavery, Cándido also drew upon his reciprocal relationships with Uruguayan
officials. These borderlands associations provided a mechanism to extend his property
claims across the border to reach his putative slave. Cándido did this by presenting a letter
from João Xavier de Azambuja, indicating that he had sold Pedro to his son, Geronimo, in
1847. Azambuja admitted that the two had not registered the original sale. Rather, they had
only used a “private document” which “had been lost.” 23 But now that the slave had fled his
son’s custody, he offered up the letter as proof of his son’s property rights over Pedro. The
letter, written in full awareness of the ongoing litigation, seemed to offer fairly weak
evidence of actual ownership. The fact that the Azambujas’ petition was to Diego Lamas
also indicated that the documents would not be sufficient to support their claims. Recall
that during the Guerra Grande, Lamas had fought against the incursions of Brazilian ranchers
into the Estado Oriental. He had also consistently demanded respect for Uruguayan laws
from Brazilian officials. In short, Lamas appeared to be a stalwart supporter of blanco efforts
to forge Uruguayan sovereignty over its northern borderlands.
At the same time, however, Lamas also utilized cross-border reciprocal relationships
with a number of Brazilians to facilitate his commercial operations. He then used these
connections to augment his standing in Salto and other jurisdictions. This is to say, like the
Azambujas and others, Lamas was well versed in the system of borderlands legalities that
23 Información relativa al negro Pedro, reclamando como esclavo, 4bis.
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