Trails of tourism on the circumpuneña trinational border

Abstract

Trails on borderlands have linked inhabitants, travellers and towns across international boundaries. Over the years, they are transformed regarding modalities, speeds, strategies, motivations and barriers, in relation to changes in cultural, political and economic forces that shaped them. Trails are not thought as means of access, but rather as socio-historical constructions, shaped by and shapers of relationships among people at different scales. Trails, assumed as unfinished constructions and constantly transformed, are nowadays valued, resignified and rebuilt through tourist practices. The aim of this article is to reconstitute the processes of constructing tourist trails in relation to the valorization of the ‘circupuneña’ trinational border, which took place over the last three decades. The objects of study are cross-border trails, that is, they go beyond international boundaries. Nevertheless, each trail was built through different processes and has particular features. Thus, each trail proposes different ways of seeing, photographing, experiencing and (re)constructing borders.