História Unisinos

Apresentação: Fronteiras, espacialidades e memórias em tempos de conflitos (séculos XX e XXI)

Ángeles Castaño Madroñal, Jiani Fernando Langaro — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

Apresentação do dossiê "Fronteiras, espacialidades e memórias em tempos de conflitos (séculos XX e XXI)"

Towards a decolonisation of knowledge on borders: (Counter)memories and cultural heritage in the Spanish-Portuguese border of Andalusia

Elodia Hernández León, Ángeles Castaño Madroñal — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

The article exposes the permanence and recrudescence of inter-state borders in the era of globalisation. This allows us to develop an approach committed to the decolonisation of knowledge and a situated methodological approximation to the meanings that borders have for the local populations and neighbouring areas. We analyse different expressions of border cultures, such as smuggling and “as falas”, and their role in the processes of patrimonialisation. To this end, we carried out research and ethnography fieldwork with populations located on both sides of the southern border between Spain and Portugal. The investigation leads to the introduction of a revised perspective on the concept of cultural heritage itself, which has been historically linked to the identity essences of national state projects and, therefore, marked by an emphasis on the homogeneity and materiality of culture. From this understanding, intangible heritage stands as an opportunity for the symbolic and economic development of peripheral populations by fostering the emergence of local history and memories that had remained invisible in favor of the legitimization of border walls.

(Post-)colonial borders and ethnic borders of the Vietnamese multiethnic state with China

Duy-Bao Vu, Ángeles Castaño Madroñal — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

The borders delimiting the territorial sovereignty of (post-)colonial na- tion-states are a result of their history.The Sino-Vietnamese border in the northern region of the multi-ethnic state of Vietnam establishes the legal basis for the shared boundaries with China, based on the political heritage left by the historical legacy of Indochina during French colonialism. The material construction of these boundaries has left a deep imprint on the daily lives of Vietnam’s highland peoples, and on their inter-ethnic relations with border-dwelling groups on both sides of the line throughout history. New policies and the construction of classificatory categories and integration into national hegemony adapt to the Asia-centric geopolitical context that connects East and the Southeast Asia. A situated anthropology of borders and of ethnic minority communities at the borders challenges

and sometimes reproduces the inherited discourses of the coloniality of knowledge and power that the discipline played a role in during the colonial geopolitics of Asia. The challenge of integrating diversity within the multiethnic reality of these countries lies in constructing a new epistemology of the border, where the memory, identity, knowledge, and heritage of these cross-border groups find a place within the framework of a broad perspective on minority rights. This is a complex challenge amid the logics of systemic fragmentation, militarization, and global walling of borders characterizing this phase of capitalism, with Asia playing a prominent role in this process.

Between school and territory: representations of the teaching role among indigenous teachers in the northernmost region of Chile

Raúl Bustos, Alfonso Díaz Aguad, Sara Joiko Mujica — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

In Latin America, the predominance of a homogeneous concept of identity has been identified, even in those countries that recognize cultural diversity, creating a divorce between community knowledge and the school, to the point that for those stu- dents who embody diversity in the classroom, the school represents the place where they do not feel free, and their cultural identity is contradicted (Suckel et al., 2018). This is especially sensitive in border contexts.This work proposes to analyze the representations of their role held by teachers of indigenous descent in the Chilean region of Arica and Parinacota, bordering Peru and Bolivia. A qualitative, descriptive-interpretative study is presented, in which data collection was conducted through in-depth interviews and focus groups discussions. The thematic analysis, using mixed coding, revealed that the national curriculum forms the central node of the representation of the teaching role, relegating its commitment to ethnic identity to the background, revealing the imprint of centuries of cultural invisibility and national homogenization policies. In this way, the aim is to contribute valuable input to the construction of an education based on horizontal interculturality and mutual relevance.

“History hunters”: colonization and territoriality in Guarani epistemology

Luisa Tombini Wittmann — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

Guarani epistemology offers critical interpretations of modernity, revealing both the persistence of colonial violence and the resilience of Indigenous struggles for land and life. Grounded in the decolonial theoretical methodological framework, this article examines Guarani cinema as historical knowledge emerging from Indigenous research. The research focuses on films by the Mbyá-Guarani Cinema Collective, par- ticularly Desterro Guarani (2011) and Tava, a Casa de Pedra (2012), which explore the Jesuit-Guarani colonial history in the South of Abya Yala and its consequences in present times, highlighting indigenous territorialities and temporalities.

Dilettante borders: thresholds of experience between tales and experiences

Eudes Fernando Leite, Leandro Baller — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

This article aims to deal with the Brazil-Paraguay Argentina Border based on from sources that show the forms of perception and representation of a remarkable ambience in the states of Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná. Taking the literary text and the narrative produced by oral history, combined with historical studies that deal with the border in question, the text aims to demonstrate that the border, besidesys being a place, a boundary, is a space of experiences that results in existential forms derived from social combinations operated in the existence of the border.

A false priest: crime and power relations among Ukrainian immigrants in Serra do Tigre (Mallet-PR, early 20th century)

Helio Sochodolak, Maíra Ines Vendrame — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

Our documentary base was initially produced in the Municipal Court of the Judicial Term of São Pedro de Mallet, in the district of União da Vitória, Paraná, based on a police investigation from 1928. The investigation’s defendant is “the false priest” Nicolau Ziombra, who, for the Archbishop of Curitiba, was a swindler and exploiter of popular faith. He was also accused of being constantly inebriated, causing disorder, charging for activities, embezzling church funds, persecuting public teachers and prevent- ing burials, including of children, in the cemetery next to the church. The legal narrative is intense, almost 300 pages long and engages the reader in every moment of the plot, making it possible to understand the power relations at a local level between churchmen, shopkeepers and different groups of Ukrainian immigrants around the control of spaces considered vital, such as the church and the cemetery. Our aim is to analyze, based on a criminal case, the power relations that were evident in the clashes over control of the church in Serra do Tigre, in the district of Dorizon, in the municipality of Mallet-PR. Through the use of the Judiciary, we seek to understand the strategic use made of this resource to strengthen the positions and dominance of ethnic groups in local disputes for the control of certain spaces.

Gloria Anzaldúa: thinking about the border, gender and history

Vivian da Veiga Silva, Losandro Antônio Tedeschi — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

For Gloria Anzaldúa, thinking about the border means thinking about this mobile, polyphonic, hybrid space, made up of incessant external and internal crossings, allowing the experimentation of identities that show the diverse ways of living and mov- ing in contemporary times. This is the topic of this article: to reflect on the theoretical perspective of the Chicana author, who moves through this space, in defense of her ethnic identity and her identity reconstruction.

Mahagonny, or the cultivation of toxic cities

Carlos Tapia Martín — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0300

This article critically examines Special Economic Development Zones (SEZs) through an analogy with Brecht and Weill’s opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. Both represent urban models built on the logic of capital, extraterritoriality, and social fragmentation. SEZs, presented as development solutions, operate under autonomous legal frameworks that undermine national sovereignty and deepen inequality. Using the concept of the “toxic city”, the article analyses how these zones promote a form of citizenship subordinated to capital, eroding social and environmental justice. Case stud- ies such as Próspera (Honduras), Bitcoin City (El Salvador), and La Rinconada (Peru) illustrate different forms of urban toxicity—from legal exceptionalism to unregulated exploitation. The text argues that these cities do not cultivate culture or community, but rather reproduce an agonising model of neoliberal urbanisation. The opera Mahagonny serves as a critical framework to show how art anticipates and denounces the pathologies of contemporary urbanism.