The borders delimiting the territorial sovereignty of (post-)colonial nation-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.
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 Parana. 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.
Our documentary base was initially produced in the Municipal Court of the Judicial Term of Sao Pedro de Mallet, in the district of Uniao da Vitoria, Parana, 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 preventing 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.
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 studies such as Prospera (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.
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 Mbya-Guarani Cinema Collective, particularly 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.
