“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

is to say, they began to link ideals of local status and rights to more state-centered sovereign
frameworks. As we will see in more detail in the last chapter, this provided a foundation for
negotiations between peripheral and coastal elites over the terms of their relationship.
Borderlands courts would also provide one of the principal venues in which they worked out
the terms of the compromise.
The relationship between interior elites and Montevideo reemerged as an important
political issue in the borderlands press, as well. A lengthy article in Salto’s El Progreso
newspaper in January of 1876 openly discussed the need to reconstitute the fragmented
Uruguayan state and its local identities in order to preserve both property and the status of
property owners. 52 The article began by contrasting the work of the Rural Association,
“composed of a group of enlightened vecinos of different nationalities” and “true apostles for
the public good” with those men that “have been working like a virus to corrupt the social
body.” This latter group had fostered “political passions in a struggle with no quarter.” As a
result, Uruguay continued to lack a government with sufficient strength to foster “the
conservation and development of material interests.” Given this reality, the article called for
a new “patriotism” that could overcome the “political frenzy” that had so damaged the
nation’s wealth. The touchstone of this new patriotism was an “adhesion to the land” and to
“social solidarity” at the local level in order to form “a strong and happy town [pueblo]
through the free coexistence of individuals.” To make sure this felicitous result came to
pass, however, it was necessary “to strengthen the prestige and power of the necessary
authorities.” This meant ensuring that the “Superior Government” possessed the tools to
52 El Progreso, Año II, n. 7 (January 11, 1876), 1.
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