“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ... “MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
figures ensured that state cores played an important, but never exclusive role in these local negotiations. State legal norms would continue to clash with traditional hierarchies rooted in concepts like vecindad and reciprocity. In a way, the story of the Río de la Plata borderlands in the 19 th century is also a mirror image of the region’s history in the 20 th . The export economies of the 20 th century’s first decades enhanced the power of the state, but also fueled the creation of massive popular sectors in coastal capitals throughout the Río de la Plata. Eventually, the collapse of outward-looking economic models in the Great Depression created a renewed crisis of legitimacy. Populist leaders like Juan Perón and Getúlio Vargas worked to broaden the authority of the state even further. These leaders ushered in an era of increasing state control over the economy. They equally utilized new tools of mass culture and communication in an effort to overcome regional heterogeneity and fashion unifying national ideologies. Throughout the region, however, efforts to mobilize mass societies in the service of the nation equally polarized them. Eventually, one state after another in the Río de la Plata slipped back into the vortex of revolutionary violence. The national governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay would all eventually turn to oppressive military regimes to secure order in the face of popular opposition. The power of the state over its citizens and territory had never appeared so extensive. Yet the Río de la Plata eventually reemerged from the darkness of dictatorships. New forms of solidarity that again transcended national boundaries played an important role in the painful transition to democracy. The “new social movements” that stressed human rights, gender equality and ethnic identities reached across borders in an effort to reshape national processes and identities on a regional and even global scale. Governments throughout the region also embraced liberal reforms that dramatically opened up their 368
economies to the forces of global capitalism. These processes reached their zenith with the creation of Mercosur, a customs union that sought to recreate the integration of the old cross-border commercial relationships that defined the Río de la Plata borderlands throughout much of the 19 th century. The forces of globalization, however, do not imply a uniform flattening of identities. Rather, it has given rise to alternative solidarities that are often unbound by geographic constraints. As Arjun Appadurai observed, globalization can also paradoxically serve as a powerful “localizing process.” 5 Appadurai argues that global processes can create room for distinct local appropriations of “the materials of modernity.” Local traditions, imaginations and understandings continually refashion products and images targeted to a global audience. Moreover, the world’s increasing interconnectedness paradoxically breeds “local” communities that stretch across space. The local itself becomes redefined around self- forming communities of shared identities and beliefs. Caught in the middle, the nation-state seems under almost constant assault from above and below. Appadurai concludes that the “[n]ation-state, as units in a complex interactive system, are not very likely to be the long- term arbiters of the relationship between globality and modernity.” 6 Evidence of the growing weakness of the nation-state and national identities seems everywhere. In the Mexican borderlands, drug cartels have erected an illicit economy and a violent form of governance. In the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, outlet malls attract Brazilian shoppers and, according to the United States government at least, international terrorist organizations have found refuge. International corporations have grown increasingly powerful and correspondingly more difficult for national governments to 5 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: The Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 17. 6 Ibid., 19. 369
- Page 327 and 328: splintered into “traditional” a
- Page 329 and 330: country’s ranching elites. In res
- Page 331 and 332: these absurd and unwarranted charge
- Page 333 and 334: protect “the development of those
- Page 335 and 336: police forces to better protect cat
- Page 337 and 338: conspiracies, the steady stream of
- Page 339 and 340: matter was overblown and that repor
- Page 341 and 342: CHAPTER 8 NEGOTIATING NATIONS ALTHO
- Page 343 and 344: Local Legal Practices and National
- Page 345 and 346: pointed link between the “honor
- Page 347 and 348: personal interests, Guarch’s fact
- Page 349 and 350: Guarch first sought to tip the scal
- Page 351 and 352: following the order designated by t
- Page 353 and 354: history in 1877. 24 Salto’s first
- Page 355 and 356: twenty-five peso fine. 29 Leal prom
- Page 357 and 358: serves?” 36 He continued: “Does
- Page 359 and 360: abuses “no doubt flowed from the
- Page 361 and 362: political allegiances. Within the f
- Page 363 and 364: Operating within this relationship,
- Page 365 and 366: By the dawn of the 1880s, national
- Page 367 and 368: ejected this evidence, however, fin
- Page 369 and 370: with his son-in-law Alexander da Cr
- Page 371 and 372: not only to affirm these local find
- Page 373 and 374: olster the positions of important l
- Page 375 and 376: CONCLUSION IN 1887, THE GREAT URUGU
- Page 377: elationships and secure local court
- Page 381 and 382: ARGENTINA ARCHIVES CONSULTED BIBLIO
- Page 383 and 384: PUBLISHED PRIMARY AND SECONDARY MAT
- Page 385 and 386: Cárcano, Ramón J. Guerra del Para
- Page 387 and 388: Flores, Mariana Flores da Cunha Tho
- Page 389 and 390: Lasso, Marixa. Myths of Harmony: Ra
- Page 391 and 392: Piccolo, Helga I. L. "A Política R
- Page 393 and 394: Schultz, Kirsten. Tropical Versaill
figures ensured that state cores played an important, but never exclusive role in these local<br />
negotiations. State legal norms would continue to clash with traditional hierarchies rooted in<br />
concepts like vecindad and reciprocity.<br />
In a way, the story of the Río de la Plata borderlands in the 19 th century is also a<br />
mirror image of the region’s history in the 20 th . The export economies of the 20 th century’s<br />
first decades enhanced the power of the state, but also fueled the creation of massive<br />
popular sectors in coastal capitals throughout the Río de la Plata. Eventually, the collapse of<br />
outward-looking economic models in the Great Depression created a renewed crisis of<br />
legitimacy. Populist leaders like Juan Perón and Getúlio Vargas worked to broaden the<br />
authority of the state even further. These leaders ushered in an era of increasing state<br />
control over the economy. They equally utilized new tools of mass culture and<br />
communication in an effort to overcome regional heterogeneity and fashion unifying<br />
national ideologies. Throughout the region, however, efforts to mobilize mass societies in<br />
the service of the nation equally polarized them. Eventually, one state after another in the<br />
Río de la Plata slipped back into the vortex of revolutionary violence. The national<br />
governments of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay would all eventually turn to oppressive<br />
military regimes to secure order in the face of popular opposition. The power of the state<br />
over its citizens and territory had never appeared so extensive.<br />
Yet the Río de la Plata eventually reemerged from the darkness of dictatorships.<br />
New forms of solidarity that again transcended national boundaries played an important role<br />
in the painful transition to democracy. The “new social movements” that stressed human<br />
rights, gender equality and ethnic identities reached across borders in an effort to reshape<br />
national processes and identities on a regional and even global scale. Governments<br />
throughout the region also embraced liberal reforms that dramatically opened up their<br />
368 <br />
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