“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

of legal rights. They did so even as the borderlands slowly became “bordered lands.” 78
After four years of embarking on aggressive legal and political reforms in Uruguay, Lorenzo
Latorre expressed his fatigue and deep frustration in seeing the real limits peripheral
authorities had placed on his measures. Leaving office in 1880, he declared: “upon retiring
to private life, I am so disheartened as to believe that our country is ungovernable.” 79
Manoel Ferreira Bica, the old Brazilian rancher and staunch colorado ally, in many
ways embodied the types of peripheral figures Latorre ultimately found so difficult to
control. He moved between jurisdictions. He drew upon local connections that
transcended national boundaries and identities in order to preserve his commercial
operations and good name. Even after he permanently settled in Salto after the Paraguayan
War, he remained keenly aware of his personal standing in the town. In doing so, he
expressed the persistence of older forms of borderlands legalities even as the nation around
him developed the trappings of modern state authority and institutions. When Bica
appeared at the criminal trial of one of his ranch hands in 1871, he flew into a rage when the
judge in the case demanded that he post a bond to ensure his peon would not flee the
jurisdiction. Upon hearing the request, Bica had “raised his cane into the air and said to the
judge that he was a shit [carajo] and those present were thieves used to robbing the poor, and
that he had come to smash [the judge’s] head to teach him how to treat an honorable
vecino.” 80
78 Adelman, "From Borderlands to Borders."
79 Abadie, Coronel Lorenzo Latorre, 169.
80 Emilio E. Thivenet denuncia contra Manuel F. Vica, AGN-SJ. Salto. Penales. s/n (1871).
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