Adriana DORFMAN, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
The period initiated with the COVID-19 pandemic showed border’s central role in society’s relation to space. At the scale of the state, a closed border is presented as a condition for the implementation of control measures through isolation and immunization.
Many borders in the Southern Cone of South America are also places, not only control structures of the state. This means that transborder links cannot be severed without disrupting economic, cultural and services networks at local and regional level. We document two cases to analyze how transborder actions and networks were reshaped in face of COVID-19 pandemics, with local actors getting together to contest border closures, to reestablish economic flows and to weave strategies to control the spread of the virus.
The articulation of political and economic actors to reopen the border at Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil), Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) and Puerto Iguazu (Argentina) showed how each city play a different geopolitical role to their respective country and has a different stand in international trade, translating as a stronger push from Ciudad del Este local administration to allow crossborder movement, while Puerto Iguazu political actors showed less urgency in the reopening.
The collaboration between national health systems in the twin cities of Sant’Ana do Livramento (Brazil) and Rivera (Uruguay) allowed for vaccination and treatment for the intensely related population, regardless of their citizenship. National sanitary barriers were established in the perimeter of the conurbated border city. This means that, to a certain extent, crossborder circulation was prioritized over national crossings. The collaboration in health matters did not prevent losses for local business dedicated to transborder trade serving consumers from other regions.
We can conclude that the ability to cope with state strategies of closure is related to the strength of economic and political transborder networks and territorialization.
Mots clés : COVID-19|border|geopolitics|transborder networks|territory
A104347AD