Abstract
This chapter presents a descriptive visual record of the Paraná Tri-Border Area (between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), using 40 images (map and photographs). It aims to describe this border context using images to portray the territory’s different features that have been described in written text in previous social research. With these images, we have built a visual story of the geographic/border interconnections and the particularities of the three most important cities that make up the Tri-Border Area (TBA): Puerto Iguazú (Argentina), Foz de Iguazú (Brazil), and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay). Through this exercise, we show how they differ by constituting enclaves. We will also show that this differentiation enhances specific forms of border articulation between these localities.
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Notes
- 1.
In Chap. 3, we provide more elements on the historical role of this territory’s native ethnic groups.
- 2.
The demographic contingents of this territory are difficult to determine since the three countries are at the end of their intercensal periods, and the coronavirus health emergency has postponed plans to carry out the new censuses. Thus, the numbers available are demographic projections calculated based on the latest population counts (carried out in 2010, in the case of Argentina and Brazil, and 2012, in the case of Paraguay).
- 3.
The concentrated intensity of the border and trade flow between Brazil and Paraguay led us to conduct our ethnography mainly between these two countries, as explained in Chap. 1.
- 4.
Guizardi interviewed the worker (of Argentinean nationality, born in Puerto Iguazú) on the 15th of July 2019. At that time, she was 26 years old and served tourists in a cafeteria in the city’s bus station. Prior to that, she had worked as a sales assistant in the city’s Duty-Free Shop** and in a known ice-cream parlor, located in the main tourist area of Puerto Iguazú.
- 5.
The Itaipú hydroelectric power station site is considered an area of high national security because it produces 80% of the electricity supply used by Brazil’s principal industrial and urban poles.
- 6.
The city was first called “Puerto Flor de Lis.” Later it was renamed “Puerto Presidente Stroessner” in honor of the dictator. In 1989, after Stroessner was overthrown, a referendum chose its current name, Ciudad del Este.
- 7.
Trade-Free Zones are areas that States delimit as tax-free (for import/export services, merchandise, and movements). They are used to increase exports, attract foreign investment, and improve local employment (García-Cáceres & Ospina-Estupiñan, 2017).
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Acknowledgments
This chapter was translated from Spanish to English by Christine Ann Hills and Menara Guizardi. The authors thank the National Research and Development Agency of Chile (ANID) for funding the studies that gave rise to this chapter through the Fondecyt Project1190056, “The Boundaries of Gender Violence: Migrant Women’s Experiences in South American Border Territories” (2019–2023).
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Mardones, P., Guizardi, M., Stefoni, C., Gonzálvez Torralbo, H. (2021). The Tri-Border Area in Images. In: Guizardi, M. (eds) Ultra-Intensity Patriarchy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85750-9_2
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