“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ... “MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...
Beneath the chaos sweeping across the borderlands, however, a new order was in fact slowly reemerging on the ground. The same forces producing factional conflicts and cross-border violence were linking the Río de la Plata’s economy together through commerce. These trading ties, particularly along the Uruguay, created increasingly dense webs of cross-border connections as merchants and landowners sought to expand economic opportunities and shield themselves from the ebb and flow of military campaigns. As commercial relationships developed across borders, borderlands inhabitants equally molded institutional structures and legal practices together to cope with the twin realities of cross- border trade and violence. They particularly turned to familiar local institutions and identities that had remained present, although latent, within the multiple layers of imperial sovereignty that characterized the colonial period. These notions of local autonomy and rights had risen to the surface during Artigas’ revolutionary moment. Borderlands elites worked to combine aspects of local autonomy from Artigas’ original state project with their desire to protect the existing social order. In the absence of imperial laws, borderlands inhabitants turned to local legal practices in order to regulate their emerging trading relationships. The various strands of reciprocity and reputation they deployed became the bedrock for borderlands legalities. This chapter explores the emergence of borderlands legalities in the Río de la Plata’s contested periphery in response to the crisis of order sweeping the region. It looks at the efforts of traders and landowners in the borderlands to forge cross-border relationships to facilitate commerce. In lieu of a state-centered legal order, these borderlands traders relied on their personal reputations to develop ties across the region. These connections in turn supported reciprocal relationships designed to protect assets and claims across borders at important nodes along trading routes. The end result was a flexible system that could 62
operate throughout the borderlands and between states to protect commercial sinews and vindicate legal rights. This peripheral order not only permitted traders and landowners in the borderlands to survive the political turmoil around them, but also enabled the creation of vast new forms of personal wealth for men like Justo José Urquiza. Urquiza in particular used his growing economic status and his military acumen to expand his political power, providing a counterweight to state-centered projects flowing from the coastal capitals beyond the borderlands. After looking at the strategies employed by borderlands traders to create commercial chains, this chapter then drops down to the local level to examine the legal practices and institutions that played a critical role in sustaining them. Local legal norms and trading relationships complimented each other. While personal reputation, reciprocal ties and political connections proved vital to cross-border commerce, the declaration and enforcement of these relationships occurred in local courtrooms throughout the region. To prevail in these diverse local fora, litigants assembled the testimony of prominent local elites. The testimony of honorable vecinos in support of a judicial claim simultaneously accomplished two things. First, it provided the main source of evidence to support individual legal rights. The frequent absence of written records in particular made local knowledge critical to delineating property rights and disentangling commercial claims within trading communities. Second, it publicly expressed the system of personal allegiances rooted in reputation and reciprocity that formed the basis for commercial relationships throughout the borderlands. Within this framework, litigation became about much more than the mere recovery of property or money. It served as a key moment in which borderlands traders and landowners, as well as their local allies, could make the often-tacit connections and understandings sustaining their commercial and political associations explicit to the broader 63
- Page 21 and 22: and geographic conceptions. Extendi
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- Page 25 and 26: that has greatly expanded the space
- Page 27 and 28: along rivertine trading corridors.
- Page 29 and 30: strains articulated by men like Art
- Page 31 and 32: Bringing the courts back into the s
- Page 33 and 34: of borderlands leaders to negotiate
- Page 35 and 36: Removing the old colonial order, ho
- Page 37 and 38: the city remained a sparsely popula
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- Page 41 and 42: Imperial Collapse and Fragmentation
- Page 43 and 44: ivers, deserts and a few vagrant an
- Page 45 and 46: defend its possessions, peninsular
- Page 47 and 48: They requested that the Junta appoi
- Page 49 and 50: manufactured products for the Andea
- Page 51 and 52: The Paraguayan government proposed
- Page 53 and 54: Montevideo in January of 1811, he i
- Page 55 and 56: Ríos. From there, he continued to
- Page 57 and 58: easoning. 25 They had rejected the
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- Page 65 and 66: economy. By 1822, the powerful merc
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- Page 69 and 70: Pedro abdicated the throne in 1831,
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- Page 75 and 76: and staple exports instead of the o
- Page 77 and 78: Ríos in particular witnessed a dra
- Page 79 and 80: goods as far north as the cities of
- Page 81 and 82: simmering struggles. By 1840, local
- Page 83 and 84: merchants, traders and landowners.
- Page 85 and 86: earning the faction’s colorado ti
- Page 87 and 88: Guarch’s deal with Carvalho revea
- Page 89 and 90: web of reciprocal relationships tha
- Page 91 and 92: the border in Brazil. In this way,
- Page 93 and 94: In short, over the course of a deca
- Page 95 and 96: that he had employed to first arran
- Page 97 and 98: opposite direction from Porto Alegr
- Page 99 and 100: Pinto sought to have the property d
- Page 101 and 102: dealings with Vázquez and the Carv
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- Page 109 and 110: With his money now in limbo and his
- Page 111 and 112: honorable merchant. His associates
- Page 113 and 114: meant more than establishing a docu
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- Page 117 and 118: complex laws “that they only unde
- Page 119 and 120: were considered suspect, particular
- Page 121 and 122: status. Public recognition of one
Beneath the chaos sweeping across the borderlands, however, a new order was in<br />
fact slowly reemerging on the ground. The same forces producing factional conflicts and<br />
cross-border violence were linking the Río de la Plata’s economy together through<br />
commerce. These trading ties, particularly along the Uruguay, created increasingly dense<br />
webs of cross-border connections as merchants and landowners sought to expand economic<br />
opportunities and shield themselves from the ebb and flow of military campaigns. As<br />
commercial relationships developed across borders, borderlands inhabitants equally molded<br />
institutional structures and legal practices together to cope with the twin realities of cross-<br />
border trade and violence. They particularly turned to familiar local institutions and<br />
identities that had remained present, although latent, within the multiple layers of imperial<br />
sovereignty that characterized the colonial period. These notions of local autonomy and<br />
rights had risen to the surface during Artigas’ revolutionary moment. Borderlands elites<br />
worked to combine aspects of local autonomy from Artigas’ original state project with their<br />
desire to protect the existing social order. In the absence of imperial laws, borderlands<br />
inhabitants turned to local legal practices in order to regulate their emerging trading<br />
relationships. The various strands of reciprocity and reputation they deployed became the<br />
bedrock for borderlands legalities.<br />
This chapter explores the emergence of borderlands legalities in the Río de la Plata’s<br />
contested periphery in response to the crisis of order sweeping the region. It looks at the<br />
efforts of traders and landowners in the borderlands to forge cross-border relationships to<br />
facilitate commerce. In lieu of a state-centered legal order, these borderlands traders relied<br />
on their personal reputations to develop ties across the region. These connections in turn<br />
supported reciprocal relationships designed to protect assets and claims across borders at<br />
important nodes along trading routes. The end result was a flexible system that could<br />
62 <br />
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