Big Water: The Making of the Borderlands between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay ed. by Jacob Blanc and Frederico Freitas

Big Water: The Making of the Borderlands between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay successfully utilizes borderland theory and transnationality as its framework. This allows for a deeper level of understanding when viewing a regional historical and geographical study. The study effectively expands the scholarship on South America and exposes the limitations of trying to impose political boundaries onto physical boundaries. By employing a transnational approach, the editors and authors provide a compelling argument for the merits of borderland analysis at a local level, demonstrating the fluidity of a frontier borderland.

Big Water is an edited compilation of work by various scholars. It explores a wide range of scholarly topics such as geography, anthropology, economics, and history as it examines the Triple Frontier, the common borderlands of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. The book is well organized, and rather than following a more common chronological approach, the editors adopted a thematic one that was based on the key concepts of adaptation, environment, belonging, and development. This novel approach allows for the voice of each author to be heard, but careful editing makes the book seamlessly flow from one topic to the next. Most chapters are organized around the traditional expository framework of an introduction, supporting information, and a conclusion, thereby making it accessible for even readers unfamiliar with these topics. Graphs, maps, photographs, and other visual aids are used effectively to support the content material. The work is grounded in sound historiographic research methods, with rich detail and a cohesive use of both primary and secondary sources.

The two primary goals of the book are ambitious. The first frames the Triple Frontier scholarship into a historical borderland. Approaching the content through the lenses of frontier and borderland allows for intermediary spaces to become the center of the historical narrative. This, in turn, allows for a local focus, and the borderland people are acknowledged for being agents of change. The second goal is breaking historical scholarship into a broader range of topics through an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, we see an interplay between the environment, various inhabitants, public policy, economics, and geography, allowing for a more interconnected history. Author Graciela Silvestri writes, "More than just a prescient history, the chapters in this book present a purposefully self-aware history that embodies the living, the open, and the unfinished, mirroring difficulties in giving precision to the ambiguous spaces of the Triple Frontier" (287).

The first section of the book, Adaptations, provides perspectives from the various players on the borderland. While the imperial identities of the Spanish and Portuguese were important in the frontier borderland, the indigenous people were not mere pawns. Instead, because of fluid boundaries between nations, they also played crucial roles in the inter-ethnic relations in the Triple Frontier.

The Triple Frontier's key physical feature is the dense fluvial networks of the Paraná and Uruguay Rivers. This environment is a crucial piece of the history of the settlement and development of the Triple Frontier. While section two, The Environment, is devoted to an understanding of the Atlantic forest biome and the Paraná and Uruguay watershed, the importance of the environment is broached in all the book's sections. In section two the reader is introduced to the development of the Iguazu National Park, which is featured throughout the book as an environmental/historical/cultural landscape and as an example of how countries use it as a way of holding or occupying a territory.

The inclusion of the physical geography of any locale is tied not only to the economics and development of an area but also to the cultures of the residents, which is addressed in section three, Belonging. The chapters in this section cover the Guaraní Indians' cultural use of their homeland as a space of mobility. This section also provides insight into Casimiro Uriarte, an interesting character who exemplified the power of local-level interests in state formation. The reader is further introduced to the concept of cultural patrimony, which plays a significant role in the heritage of the region, specifically in the inclusion of the Jesuit-Guaraní mission system in World Heritage recognition.

The last section, Development, investigates contemporary geopolitics and modernization. Specifically, the articles in this section address the interplay between politics and economics in a borderland setting. For example, hydroelectric power became increasingly important on the Paraná River and geography becomes increasingly contested because of the different perceptions of this space, ultimately leading to the Treaty of Itaipu. Further, the interplay at the border drastically changed the geopolitics of the region. The predominance of Argentina was replaced by the rise of Brazil.

This book was compelling in many ways. First, I appreciated the diversity of historical voices encountered throughout the various chapters. By employing a frontier/borderland framework, the authors were able to move the story from the typical analysis of the powerful and the nation to one that included the voices of those residing in the Triple Frontier. This allows for a local-level analysis and supports the transnational goal of the book and the demonstration of the permeable boundaries. Also, the interdisciplinary nature of the book is a strength. Lastly, the book offers insight into the sense of place felt by the many inhabitants of the area, which is unlike many regional studies.

I highly recommend this book to geographers with a broad range of interests. It is an excellent treatise on the applicability of the frontier/ borderlands and transnational analysis of place. This book is must-read for the historical geographer interested in settler colonialism, borderlands, local-level analysis, and a clear picture of who resides in the Triple Frontier region. Moreover, it offers much to scholars of South America and those interested in interdisciplinary research.