Abstract

© 2019 Institut des Hautes Etudes de l'Amerique Latine (IHEAL). All rights reserved.This article addresses the transformations of processes of mobility and circulation in the Atacama highlands, which are currently traversed by the national borders of three countries: Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. We focus on the connections and relationships between the latter two. Using an ethnographic approach, we analyze the effects that the gradual installation of national borders, the shifting of their classificatory function in the transit of people and goods, and the recent heritagization of their practices related by the “share fair” have had on border mobility and economies. In response to the hegemonic vision of these communities, which are spatially cloistered by national borders or a mere articulation of ecological areas, we observe the tension between economies that are connected to global spaces even as they try to produce and establish an ethnicized territoriality based on the local.