Fronteiras e fronteiriços: “o eu e o outro” nas narrativas de brasileiros

Abstract

This doctoral thesis resulted from a research process that was developed along a stretch of the Brazil-Bolivia border, in the southwest of Mato Grosso. In order to develop the study, the period 1940-2016 was delimited and an extension of the border area comprising the rural towns of Santa Clara do Monte Cristo, also known as Ponta de Aterro or Punta de La Carretera, part of the Nossa Senhora Aparecida and the community of Morrinhos, which belong to the municipality of Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade. In the Bolivian side, the research covered the Vila de San Vicente de La Frontera and part of its surroundings. This study sought to analyze the meanings of that frontier in the perspective of the distinct frontier groups inhabitants of the region, composed of merchants, rural residents, farmers, public servants, remnants of the “Chiquitano” indigenous people and representatives of the Bolivian government. For that, investigations were made about the occupation and settlement process of the region, the social relations, constituted sociabilities and the forms of territorialization used by that society. The methodological procedures adopted were: direct observation with registration in field book; interviews and documentary research. The analysis was built using the inductive method, with a perspective and a qualitative approach, using narratives effectively, supported by oral history tools and intensive field work, with selection and direct contact with the investigated subjects. In sum, it was concluded with the study that "the self and other" in the boundary Brazil-Bolivia border are constituted from the differentiations of the subjects and not only on the nationality factor, since the limit can be constituted in a real or imaginary form, which transpires in the social relations established between frontier settlers, including: culture, language, parties and other forms of sociability. The frontier, in this sense, extrapolates the meaning of limit, of the material rigidity of the existence of a physical place. It transcends, heading for the between-places.