The Border as a Threat: Geography, Imagination and Experience

Abstract

This paper takes into account debates concerning Geography, imagination and
experience in order to study how South American borders are portrayed in the Brazilian press. By discussing texts and maps published in the mainstream press, this paper seeks to analyze reports in which journalists do a kind of “field work” in frontier towns and cities. The coverage of a specific event that occurred on the border between Brazil and Colombia in the early 1990s is used to illustrate the relationship between the diffusion of images in the press and the legitimacy of specific forms of action in the border areas.