“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

By the dawn of the 1880s, national judges like Berro had established their place
within the legal and political system in Salto. They heralded a shift in which national
authorities became participants in the struggles to define the content of borderlands
legalities. In the process, they also began to transform the borderlands legal order into one
bound much more explicitly by national borders. Throughout the 1880s, the economic and
political center of gravity in the Uruguayan interior shifted inexorably away from cross-
border connections and towards Montevideo. The advent of cold storage further oriented
the interior ranching economy towards the export of beef products to Europe instead of
Brazil. Exports flowed out of stockyards in Montevideo and along the lower Uruguay.
Immigrants streamed into Montevideo and its surrounding hinterlands. The Brazilian
ranching community’s influence in Uruguay’s national politics correspondingly declined.
These processes culminated in the final triumph of national authorities over rebellious blanco
ranchers in the short-lived 1897 revolution led by Aparicio Saravia.
Through it all, however, Salto’s courts remained a refuge for important aspects of
borderland legalities. Notions of vecindad, personal reputation and local factional associations
continued to define the town’s legal politics. In this sense, many of the elements of
borderlands legalities that would have been familiar to litigants a half century earlier
persisted. Even as states appeared to consolidate their hold on putative national territories
through modern armies, administrative reforms, codes and a professional judiciary, these
elements continued to be warped by the persistence of local legal politics. The courts
remained active spaces where older peripheral legal norms could find room within emerging
national sovereignties and continue to define the meaning of the law for Salto’s residents.
Reputation and Leadership of the Liberal Party in Rio Grande do Sul
355