“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

Buenos Aires refused to offer any assistance to the uprisings, the revolution in the Banda
fizzled out. By the end of 1823, the Brazilian empire again appeared to be in control of its
southern borderlands. The uprisings, however, had revealed a deep and turbulent well of
resistance to Brazilian dominance just beneath the calm surface. Significant segments of the
opposition remained just across the Uruguay River in Entre Ríos awaiting a new opportunity
to challenge Brazilian control over the Cisplatine. Renewed warfare in the borderlands
appeared imminent. 38
Across the Río de la Plata estuary in Buenos Aires, the remnants of the old merchant
communities and their new military allies emerged from the chaotic defeats at the end of the
revolutionary decade more determined than ever to reassert their authority. Porteño elites
wanted to establish the political and financial basis for a new system of national sovereignty.
Bernardo Rivadavia was at the center of this movement to forge a national entity in place of
the old viceroyalty. A former diplomat and peripheral figure during the initial revolutionary
decade, Rivadavia emerged in the 1820s as the dominant voice in the unitarist political
faction in Buenos Aires. Drawing heavily on the works of Jeremy Bentham, whom the
Argentine leader had met during his diplomatic stint in England, Rivadavia called for the
numerous provincial assemblies throughout the old viceroyalty to join together into a
“unified” national system. Rather than colonial privileges, Rivadavia and his allies called for
the new nation to be governed by the consent of the people. This entailed broadening
suffrage rights by extending them beyond merchant elites in the capital and into the
countryside for the first time. Once established, the new government would enact clear,
38 Street, Artigas and the Emancipation of Uruguay, 336-39.
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