The Front and the Line: The Paradox of South American Frontiers Applied to the Bolivian Case

Abstract

Dialectics between pioneer fronts and legal frontiers are not specific to South America. However, the coexistence of these two realities appears to be more problematic in this continent than elsewhere. In this article, the continent's double geopolitical heritage (a result of its ‘discovery’) is analysed in order to explain the permanent state of tensions between these fronts and frontiers; these tensions help to decipher the ongoing territorial dynamics in the countries of the continent. Using the example of Bolivia, the goal is to demonstrate that the specific Latin American territorial link between a society and its national territory is produced by the permanence and coincidence of American fronts and European frontiers. Both contribute equally to establishing a state and to building a nation upon its territory; however, they are antinomic (one is mobile, the other stable). The resolution of these dialectics is conjured up by integrating these two realities into a common symbolic territory, conferring on them the same power to semanticise space. Freezing boundaries, however, risks compromising the continent's integration process (and the opening of its borders), a goal to which all states aspire in the meantime.