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“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

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that he had employed to first arrange the original land transaction in order to secure a verdict<br />

against Carvalho. Guarch did so at a moment of maximum leverage because Almeida no<br />

doubt recognized that Guarch could walk away from the commercial contract given<br />

Ribeiro’s defection. Put differently, Guarch indicated that legal protection from Almeida<br />

and others across the border in various local fora was a precondition for continuing<br />

commercial relationships. Guarch maintained his merchant business by carefully exploiting<br />

his leverage within reciprocal relationships like the one with Almeida to protect his legal<br />

rights.<br />

When Oribe defeated Rivera and seized control of the Uruguayan borderlands in<br />

1843, these reciprocal ties across the border again proved vital to maintaining Guarch’s and<br />

Picant’s trading operations. We have already seen how Guarch shifted his overland<br />

commerce to the Uruguay River in order to maintain his connections with the Brazilians.<br />

Guarch further used these trading relationships to bolster his faction’s political position by<br />

supporting the correntino opposition to Rosas. When the Farrapos conflict ended in 1845,<br />

Guarch and Picant took advantage of the stability across the border to seek assistance from<br />

prominent Brazilians to recover debts for commercial transactions back in the Estado<br />

Oriental. In 1846, Picant wrote to Joaquim dos Santos Prado Lima, a local rancher and<br />

former police chief under the Farrapos in Alegrete. Prado Lima now served as Alegrete’s<br />

juiz municipal. In his letter, Picant requested help in recovering nearly 5,000 patacones from<br />

Eduardo Fernandez. Fernandez was another Uruguayan merchant engaged in overland<br />

transactions with Brazilian ranchers during the Farrapos War. According to Picant,<br />

Fernandez had received more than 7,000 head of cattle from him in connection with his<br />

commercial dealings with the Farrapos. After Oribe’s victory, however, Fernandez refused<br />

to make payment. This refusal perhaps reflected the fact that Fernadez’s own commercial<br />


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