“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

of warfare in the borderlands further shaped these strategies. It required constant
attentiveness to changing conditions as rival nations fought to control the borderlands. As
slaves struggled to restrict the juridical reach of the Brazilian slave system, more elite
residents along the frontier like Cándido Azambuja and Agustín Sañudo worked to maintain
cross-border commercial ties while preserving their own rights and legal privileges through
factional and familial alliances.
In the end, the individual assertions of citizenship by fugitive slaves and the national
reform projects they provoked could not be separated from the destabilization and violence
they sought to exploit, respond to and often unwittingly engendered. Cross-border
commercial relationships and political ties meant that asserting or strengthening frontier
divisions often led inextricably to violent collisions between networks that could benefit or
be harmed by such actions. The strategic choices made by slaves deepened these conflicts
and laid bare the tensions around sovereign divisions. These debates over the meaning of
the border served as a continuous source of fuel for factional brushfires. By the mid-1860s,
the persistent clashes between state-centered sovereign models and borderlands legalities had
once again reached a breaking point. A few weeks after Pastor Tejo’s dismissal from his
counselor post in Salto, the Brazilian government acted. Imperial forces crossed the border
to attack the blanco government. The Triple Alliance or Paraguayan War had begun.
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