INTERNATIONAL HEALTH, COLONIALISM AND CROSS-BORDER CARE IN TIMES OF PANDEMICS: AN APPROACH FROM THE LATIN AMERICAN TRIPLE-BORDER (Atena Editora)

Abstract

The International Bridge of Friendship, built in the 1960s, responsible for connecting the south of Brazil with the east of Paraguay, as well as the International Bridge of Fraternity [1], inaugurated (20) twenty years after the first, and which connects the northeast of Argentina with Brazilian territory, are considered landmarks of the contemporary integration of Latin America. Both buildings were built on the confluence of two of the most important rivers in South America: the Paraná and Iguaçu rivers. From the vertices of these rivers, the national borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina were delineated.

Long before that, this territory belonged to the Guarani peoples and other autochthonous peoples. However, we know that in order to form Latin America, it was the producer and product of extensive processes of violence, especially against our native peoples. These first inhabitants of the place known today as a triple border used to move freely in their territory, their understanding of space did not admit physical borders, common to the advent of western modernity. Their sociocultural dynamics implied a coexistence with the rivers that allowed them to move between banks, which is currently considered border transit because they are different countries. The existence of the rivers, therefore, motivated the first settlements in the region and configured, simultaneously, the source of life for these communities and the condition of a naturally open frontier. The spontaneous settlement, distributed in the three ends of the river and the delineation of the border is an effect of this process.