Crimes de fronteira : a criminalidade na fronteira meridional do Brasil (1845-1889)

Abstract

Since border zones at the same time establish a limits and a contact, they are naturally paradoxical regions, concerting instability, conflict and integration, especially during the 19th century, when States constantly tried to demarcate their boundaries, at the same time as their own functioning was connected to the action of the local power networks that often crossed political limits. In this manner, these border spaces offered margins of action and negotiation to the subjects who acted through transfrontier social and family networks, combining the diversification of economic activities and using the gaps existing between the juxtaposed sovereignties in order to maintain themselves and reproduce within this complex space. For this purpose, the border situation was an element to be taken into account in these strategies, and was managed by the social actors according to the given contexts.The present work, thus, intends to demonstrate the strategic validity of the border in the field of crime, analyzing criminal practices that occurred in this space. These crimes were mainly smuggling, stealing and runaway slaves, cattle stealing, desertion and crimes in general, in which the criminal escaped across the border, i.e., situations in which the subject used the border strategically, with the intention of becoming immune by placing themselves under another jurisdiction and/or using in their favor the gaps between the different laws of the sovereignties juxtaposed at the border.