The Simultaneous Production of Leisure Peripheries and Cross-Border Spaces: A Study on Tourism Valorization in the Andean Puna (Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper aims to examine the involvement of tourism valorization processes in the material and symbolic production of interstate borders in the Andean Puna (Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile). Through qualitative research based on fieldwork, interviews, and document analysis, this study builds a processual multiscalar and geographical approach. It shows how tourism contributed to the construction of leisure peripheries by national states, the networking of the border by the tourist market, and cross-border integration projects by local actors. It is suggested that bordering and cross-bordering are overlapping and complementary processes, producing complex spaces traversed by conflicting territorial projects of different actors, for whom the border became a resource of identity-building and economic improvement.