“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

Conclusion
In 1828, the exhausted powers sued for peace in the borderlands. With English
assistance, they negotiated a compromise through which the Banda Oriental became the
independent Uruguayan Republic. The creation of this new “buffer” state, however, did not
signal the consolidation of state authority over the borderlands. Rather, it marked the
inability of any one power in the region to control the contested grounds between them
permanently. After nearly two decades of war, deep political divisions remained throughout
the Río de la Plata over fundamental questions of sovereignty. The 1828 peace had created a
new state, but the northern Uruguayan borderlands, devastated by decades of military
violence, social revolutions and political turmoil, remained stateless.
Revolutions and independence had washed away the old colonial order, but had
failed to produce new national entities to take its place. Two decades of violence had
produced a deep crisis for elites in coastal capitals and for the inhabitants of the borderlands.
As the third decade following the May revolution in Buenos Aires dawned, the crisis of
order sweeping across the borderlands in the wake of the revolutions overthrowing colonial
governments remained unresolved. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, violent conflicts to
control the borderlands would continue. However, beneath the surface of the constant
struggles, a new order born out of the shared traditions of local autonomy and justice was in
fact emerging. These structures would powerfully shape the evolution of the Río de la
Plata’s contested ground over the coming decades. We now turn to these peripheral
solutions to the problem of order engendered by the vortex of revolution.
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