INVESTIGADORES
PALACIO Juan Manuel Roberto
capítulos de libros
Título:
Judges, Lawyers, and Farmers: Uses of Justice and the Circulation of Law in Rural Buenos Aires, 1900-1940
Autor/es:
PALACIO, JUAN MANUEL
Libro:
Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late Colonial Times
Editorial:
Duke University Press
Referencias:
Lugar: Durham & London; Año: 2001; p. 83 - 112
Resumen:
The agrarian history of the Pampean region in the modern period has been written in terms of large landowners and prosperous tenants. The relative absence of violent social conflicts in Argentine rural history, compared with the rest of Latin America, has reinforced this perspective. In this paper, I seek to revise this model by focusing on the workings of law and justice in a rural district located in the most important wheat-growing area of Argentina, the county of Coronel Dorrego, in Southern Buenos Aires province. The paper establishes first, that the precariousness and instability of the conditions of wheat farming in the Pampean region produced multiple everyday conflicts. This study also argues that most of these conflicts were contained by the gradual development of a strong "judicial culture" forged by the everyday practices of the region´s inhabitants over time. Two elements proved decisive in the evolution of this judicial culture: a clear administration of justice by the Judges of the Peace (Jueces de Paz) and the key role rural lawyers played in spreading the law and defining judiciary procedures. Mundane disputes over issues like loans, tenancy and labor contracts were the most common expression of social conflict in the region and were the domain of the Judge of the Peace. Insofar as the court was able to contain them effectively, the resolution of small-scale litigation helped prevent the development of larger conflicts. The Pampean region rarely exploded in agrarian revolt. On the contrary, social and economic frictions were articulated and defused within the formal parameters of the legal framework mediated by the local courts.