Separation Anxiety
Separation Anxiety
A wall goes up in Argentina and then anti-immigrant rhetoric spreads. Will it change the course of a region bent on tearing borders down?
Karla Zabludovsky
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From
Posadas, Argentina
posted on Mar. 5, 2017, at 12:03 p.m.
POSADAS, Argentina — One morning in late 2014, construction cranes appeared on the western bank of the Paraná River, a natural border between Argentina and Paraguay. The city must be preparing to build a park, or a highway detour, university student Fabiana del Puerto guessed in a WhatsApp group for Paraguayan students who crossed into Argentina every day to attend classes.
Instead, a 12-foot-high concrete wall went up a few short months later, with little explanation from local authorities.
People on both sides were as offended as they were stunned: The fates of the residents of Posadas, in Argentina, and Encarnación, in Paraguay, are inextricably intertwined. No reason is ever too small to cross the 1.6-mile-long bridge that has linked the two in either direction for nearly three decades, whether it is to visit grandparents, get a medical checkup, buy cheaper school supplies, fill up the car with gas, or catch a movie at the cinema.
On that oppressively humid stretch of the border, located south of the Amazon rainforest, the two countries operate like one big neighborhood.
More:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/karlazabludovsky/argentina-separation-anxiety?utm_term=.jyKPQZGwn#.ho18WxLVD