Leticia y TabatingaConstrucción de un espacio urbano fronterizo: hacia una geohistoria urbana de la Amazonía

Résumé

This thesis studies the space of the Amazon region and the local particularities of it in the border cities of Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil). It suggests that the configured processes of the towns and their borders are intrinsic to the forms of the production of the regional space. It questions the generalization of an “empty” region where the borders, towns and particularly the border towns are a secondary phenomena. It is possible to outline different moments in the regional geohistory, highlighting in it the role of the production of urban and border space in five different moments, which allow us to reposition both spatial constructs as central elements in the production of the Amazonian space. From this, the thesis studies the particularity of urban and border space seen from the local level of the cities of Leticia and Tabatinga: Firstly, from the specificity of the urban space in its historic transformation; secondly, from the contemporary social space, emphasizing the different mechanisms and expressions of living the city and the border. Lastly, and in direct relation to the previously outlined elements, it studies the urban morphology of the limit between the cities. It describes in detail three large adjunct zones, suggesting that the process of urbanization, which moves between formality and informality, can be associated with the action of different urban agents, who pressure changes in the use of peripheral grounds and take advantage of the border conditions as an additional element of the market of land. It is concluded that it is important to make efforts to strengthen a critical spatial view in urban and border studies of the Amazon region, and also to articulate different scales and levels of analysis to understand, in adequate dimensions, the regional processes and it local implications, along with the eminently local particularities of the lived-space dimension, all of them necessary elements to understand the border cities in their complexity.