“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ... “MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
Bartolomé Mitre’s unitarist forces in Buenos Aires and Urquiza’s federalist confederation in the interior threatened to spill across Uruguay’s borders. Building upon the reformist concerns over its own sovereignty, Berro embarked on a concerted campaign to “nationalize” the northern borderlands to ensure order and preclude sovereign conflicts behind its borders from touching off a new round of international warfare. 71 Reflecting the government’s concerns regarding its sovereign authority over its own territory flowing from the slave cases, a central portion of the Berro government’s strategy focused on reigning in Brazilian labor practices flaunting Uruguayan manumission laws. One area of particular concern was the Brazilian usage of peonage contracts to ensure that slaves still under their control in Uruguay remained effectively in bondage. The contracts required Brazilian slaves essentially to work for a number of years, typically twenty-five, in order to indemnify their masters for their manumission. For Brazilian landowners confronting abolition, such contracts effectively served as a proxy for continued slavery by ensuring the fixed labor supply they needed. 72 They further represented a mechanism by which Brazilian masters could extend elements of imperial sovereignty across the borderlands using mechanisms of private law. Masters typically drafted the documents across the border in Brazil in highly coercive and informal proceedings. They then had the documents notarized in the presence of Uruguayan officials, effectively obtaining judicial approval for their continued use of the labor of their now “former” slaves. Arguing that these peonage contracts were an affront to Uruguayan sovereignty, the Berro government worked to restrict their practice. The government limited the length of the contracts to seven years and imposed a number of restrictions on their registration with 71 Barrán, Apogeo y Crisis, 80. 72 Borucki, Chagas, and Stalla, Esclavitud y Trabajo, 138-47. 288
Uruguayan notaries. These included requirements that former slaves’ declarations had to be taken independently of their masters to guard against undue coercion. 73 The efforts to reform peonage contracts aimed directly at consolidating Uruguayan control over the borderlands by demanding that Brazilian ranchers fully respect national laws. In this sense, they again revealed how conflicts over slave citizenship in the borderlands combined with broader concerns over sovereignty and order to promote a campaign to harden the boundaries around citizenship. If Uruguayan authorities permitted elements of imperial private law to nullify internal definitions of legal rights and citizenship, national sovereignty would be little more than a chimera. Deepening Conflicts Reformers like Poyo, Lamas and Berro recognized that the combination of weak legal institutions and factional conflicts threatened national sovereignty. They struggled for the authority to determine and police the boundaries of the political community, itself, as well as the rights and obligations governing it. Working through state institutions like the courts, slaves connected their own freedom to these broader concerns over sovereignty and order. They developed collective legal strategies to blunt attempts by their purported Brazilian masters to extend slave laws across the borderlands. They called upon the state to protect the legal and social rights associated with Uruguayan national identity. In doing so, they demanded more crystalline sovereign boundaries to separate them from the slave system in Brazil. In this manner, definitions of citizenship and social rights blended with efforts to clarify national boundaries and impose order within their geographic extent. Through their micro-level actions, slaves worked to propel these disparate aspects of 73 Ibid., 141-43. 289
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Bartolomé Mitre’s unitarist forces in Buenos Aires and Urquiza’s federalist confederation in<br />
the interior threatened to spill across Uruguay’s borders. Building upon the reformist<br />
concerns over its own sovereignty, Berro embarked on a concerted campaign to<br />
“nationalize” the northern borderlands to ensure order and preclude sovereign conflicts<br />
behind its borders from touching off a new round of international warfare. 71<br />
Reflecting the government’s concerns regarding its sovereign authority over its own<br />
territory flowing from the slave cases, a central portion of the Berro government’s strategy<br />
focused on reigning in Brazilian labor practices flaunting Uruguayan manumission laws.<br />
One area of particular concern was the Brazilian usage of peonage contracts to ensure that<br />
slaves still under their control in Uruguay remained effectively in bondage. The contracts<br />
required Brazilian slaves essentially to work for a number of years, typically twenty-five, in<br />
order to indemnify their masters for their manumission. For Brazilian landowners<br />
confronting abolition, such contracts effectively served as a proxy for continued slavery by<br />
ensuring the fixed labor supply they needed. 72 They further represented a mechanism by<br />
which Brazilian masters could extend elements of imperial sovereignty across the<br />
borderlands using mechanisms of private law. Masters typically drafted the documents<br />
across the border in Brazil in highly coercive and informal proceedings. They then had the<br />
documents notarized in the presence of Uruguayan officials, effectively obtaining judicial<br />
approval for their continued use of the labor of their now “former” slaves.<br />
Arguing that these peonage contracts were an affront to Uruguayan sovereignty, the<br />
Berro government worked to restrict their practice. The government limited the length of<br />
the contracts to seven years and imposed a number of restrictions on their registration with<br />
<br />
71 Barrán, Apogeo y Crisis, 80.<br />
72 Borucki, Chagas, and Stalla, Esclavitud y Trabajo, 138-47.<br />
288 <br />
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