“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

The continual conflicts between rival sovereigns over the borderlands erected
powerful barriers to the consolidation of a new regime. Equally important, the memories of
the popular rebellions against distant and seemingly illegitimate authorities bolstered
federalist opposition to successive porteño-dominated governments. The Río de la Plata
borderlands were not merely the “middle ground” between rival Spanish and Portuguese
states. They were a place where the very definition of what it meant to belong to a
centralized state was subject to debate. Artigas encapsulated a sovereign vision in the
borderlands that completely rejected outside rule. The region was defined not only by
conflicts between rival state projects emanating from the old imperial cores, but also the
desire to create an autonomous local order. These layers of conflicts ensured that the
process of state formation and legal development would be particularly fraught. The
borderlands became a bleeding ground where no one power could hold sway. The old
colonial order had been broken, but erecting something new in its place remained, after
twenty years of warfare in the borderlands, a distant dream.
Colonial Frictions
Imperial conflicts evolved slowly and unevenly over the course of three centuries.
Development in the Río de la Plata basin remained almost non-existent throughout the 16 th
century outside of the Paraguayan missions. The Jesuit territories established a strong,
though at times problematic, presence for the Spanish Crown. The missions also attracted
Portuguese raiders, known as bandeirantes, seeking to capture indigenous laborers and sell
them into slavery in central Brazil. Throughout the 17 th and early 18 th centuries, these raids
on the Jesuit reductions represented the central front in the imperial skirmishes between the
Iberian powers over the region. Away from the missions, however, settlement lagged.
Although Spanish migrants had founded, abandoned and then reestablished Buenos Aires,
26