“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

“complete proof of oriental nationality.” 68 Failing to respect these legal declarations
constituted a fundamental assault on Uruguayan sovereignty and the principle of the rule of
law. Lamas continued:
The man that presents [a certificate of citizenship] has become oriental; and as
Brazilians have the liberty to naturalize themselves as orientales, one cannot
fail to recognize, contradict or nullify that act without attacking the
constitutional liberty of such men [and] without attacking the law [derecho] of
the nation that recognizes it and admits him as its son. 69
Brazilian complaints that such certificates were issued without the requisite legal proof were
of no import. Rather, Lamas argued that respect for national sovereignty demanded
absolute adherence to the counselor infrastructure each nation had mutually established in
the borderlands.
Such respect was also fundamental to ensuring order. Lamas argued that it was in
the mutual interest of both the Brazilian empire and the Uruguayan Republic to delineate
juridical boundaries and sovereign divisions clearly in order to avoid continual conflicts that
produced the borderlands caudillos that plagued both countries. He wrote: “What the
Republic does not want, what the imperial government does not want, is confusion,
contradiction, abuses and violence . . .” 70 By recognizing the sovereign acts of counselor
officials issuing certificates of citizenship, authorities in the borderlands could reduce the
confusion around citizenship claims and correspondingly diminish the opportunities for
conflict over its content.
By the early 1860s, renewed warfare across the border in Argentina made these
efforts to clarify sovereign boundaries even more pressing. As we saw in the previous
chapter, Bernardo Berro’s government warily looked on as the protracted war between
68
Ibid.: 208 (emphasis in original).
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.: 212.
287