La intervención del Departamento de Policía de Buenos Aires en la Guerra del Brasil: Tutela, organización institucional y castigo (1825-1828)

Abstract

In this paper we inquire about the role that the Buenos Aires Police Department, created in 1821, and its agents had in the War with Brazil that involved the territories on both sides of the Río de la Plata between 1825 and 1828. We explore three modes of intervention of the Department: the tutelary function, associated with the control of loyalties of Portuguese and Brazilians in Buenos Aires before and during the conflict; the political and institutional function, linked to the activity of the Department to organize police stations in the Banda Oriental; and the penal function, which was deployed by various commissioners around Buenos Aires in the regulation and control of the forced labor of Portuguese prisoners. In order to examine these problems, we use unpublished documentation preserved in the police collection of the General Archive of the Nation of Argentina. We complement our analysis with published sources from the Banda Oriental, such as regulations, legislative collections, press and session diaries. Contributions of global history, as well as social history of the police and justice, and social labour history are paramount to review a problem that has not been considered part of the war conflict.

Keywords

• Buenos Aires
• police
• Banda Oriental
• Brazilian war
• 1820s