Institutions, as a web of long-term contracts, usually do not change overnight. Formal contracts, those specified by legislation, could be modified by new legislation; informal contracts, those expressed by habits and customs regulating rural production, could seldom be altered in the short run. The expansion of cattle raising over the pampas in the first half of the nineteenth century brought about rapid change in the conditions of production, and legislation, customs, and habits had to adjust to them. A new definition of property rights over land, labor, cattle, water, and grasses was required.

The redefinition of property rights over land and labor has not failed to attract the attention of scholars. Land was distributed to private individuals at the time of the founding of Buenos Aires, and later by grants made by governors on behalf of the king. Since land was also settled without proper titles, a process of legalization began around 1750. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a complex and slow procedure was followed by settlers who wanted to legally obtain a tract in property. But the massive privatization of public land, started with the emphyteusis system in the early 1820s, peaked with Rosas's land grants and sales of the late 1830s and early 1840s. A new round would take place in the 1870s and 1880s, when the Conquest of the Desert was completed.

Compulsory forms of labor other than slavery did not develop in colonial Buenos Aires. Encomienda and repartimiento were not viable due to the lack of a significant sedentary Indian population.