State-border region articulation in the Misiones or Palmas area

Abstract

The conformation of the Misiones space is an illustrative example of the intertwining of international and interregional relations that took place in various Latin American border regions, which functioned as a totality liable to occupation and displacement, historically linked to the area currently comprising southern Brazil, the Argentine and Uruguayan Mesopotamia, as well as a large part of what was the former Spanish governorate of Asunción. In order to develop this perspective of analysis, we take as a starting point the concept of region, considering its character as a methodological instrument with its corresponding anchorage in reality, that is, the relationship between space and the political, economic and socio-cultural phenomena that occur there. In other words, this concept is constructed in relation to the object of study, which shows its temporal and spatial dynamism. In this regard, we consider borders as a specific case of region. That is, as "plurinational spaces", subject to appropriation and control by more than one State, which implemented power strategies in order to impose their authority and disputed among themselves for their dominion, and as regional spaces - with their own dynamics - that generated responses to the policies of each of the State entities in which they were incorporated. The existence of these interactions between what we can call "complementary opposites" allows us to broaden the horizon of analysis by observing the inter-influence between "international relations" and "inter-regional relations", applied in this study to the specific case of the Misiones region. As for the temporal axis, although the interest is focused on the period of territorial conformation of the States in which the Misiones region is inserted, we believe that in order to explain the regional reality of the time, it is necessary to approach the distinctive elements that marked its occupation process.