“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

een well-founded now that Falcon had brought suit against Raffo. 17 The letter then struck
a conciliatory tone. Guimaraens welcomed a national intervention if it “would clarify what is
or is not the law, providing for us a legal precedent going forward so as to avoid an infinite
number of questions that can arise.” Despite stressing to national officials his desire to
cooperate in any investigation, Guimaraens concluded by lamenting that the matter could
not have been handled locally. He wrote:
[W]e [the JEA] regret that our colleague D. Agustín Guarch did not, before directing
himself to Your Excellency, make a motion before this Corporation along the same
lines, since we like him have no interest in mind other than the welfare, progress and
improvement of this department, seeking within the Law that means to realize
them. 18
Implicit in Guimaraens’ letter was the idea that this was a local matter “between vecinos.”
The national government should intercede only to preserve order and promote clarity.
Guimaraens accepted that the national government had a legitimate role to play. However,
he also emphasized careful discretion in exercising it. In this sense, he echoed the growing
consensus of local elites throughout the borderlands concerning the terms of their
relationship with central authorities. National officials could not simply be ignored or
rejected out of hand, but neither should they be given free reign to intercede in important
local questions of property rights and personal prestige. 19
In a separate letter, Bernabé Mendoza, the alcalde ordinario presiding over the Falcon
case, made Guimaraens’ implicit limits on the authority of the central government to
intervene directly in local legal questions explicit. Mendoza argued that he could “not
authorize the intervention [proposed by Guarch and the JEA] because these proceedings are
17 Francisco Guimaraens, Juan Castro y Emilio E. Thevenet al Sor. Ministro de Gobierno Dr. D.
Saturnino Alvarez, AGN. Sección Administrativa. Salto: Junta Económico-Administrativa
(September 24, 1874), 1.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
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