The symposium Amazonia – Patagonia: Territories and Imaginaries at the Extremes, within the thematic area of Colombian and Latin American Studies of the 59th ICA, seeks to bring together contributions from the intersections between art, science and heritage, and their contributions to thought and practices concerned with human populations affected by violent territorial disputes, aiming at a critical review of the imaginaries of Amazonia and Patagonia as “last frontiers,” sacrifice zones, and strategic reserves for new dynamics of accumulation. These regions were and continue to be seen, even today, as extreme, empty, remote and peripheral spaces—pristine natures that are at the same time a source of wealth awaiting incorporation into successive cycles of conquest and exploitation. The connections among imaginaries, policies and extractive practices have been devices that, throughout history, have justified treating these spaces as reserves of nature and sources of resources. They are also lands and waters of borders, of internal and international frontiers within/among American states, historically traversed by explorers, and by the advance of “civilizing” frontiers against “wild” nature. Today, faced with the exhaustion of extraction spaces and the voracity of capitalism in a crisis of accumulation, they become spaces of marginal appropriation of nature and new sacrifice zones. Studying these realities requires the development of methodologies and the formation of networks grounded in territorial and disciplinary diversity, with particular attention to the construction of imaginaries and social practices in the Amazonian and Patagonian contexts. The construction and consolidation of international interdisciplinary networks, based on continued methodological reflection converging with the processual character of relational forms of organization, aims to promote integrated and cross-border studies on the Amazon and Patagonia as regions historically traversed by extractive activities and territorial conflicts. To understand this reality, and grounded in territorial and disciplinary diversity, this symposium aims to promote the exchange of research advances, methodological approaches, and experiences of knowledge production and co-production through the articulation of various forms and fields of knowledge: Regional Development Theory, within the fields of Geography and Political Ecology; Comparative Literature, the Arts and Linguistics in Latin American and border settings; History, particularly studies on Latin America; International Relations in relation to the dynamics involved in defining internal and international borders and relations with neighboring countries; Museology, linked to the intersections between art, science and heritage; and Anthropology and its contributions to thought and practices concerned with human populations affected by violent territorial disputes. In sum, this symposium proposes to provide a space for debate and network-building that can contribute to the development of integrated and cross-border studies on the Amazon, Patagonia and other extreme spaces and regions marked by extractive histories and presents, and by conflicts in and over territories, taking into account the continental and cross-border dimension of American spaces.
