Frontier Road

Power, History, and the Everyday State in the Colombian Amazon

Frontier Road uses the history of one road in southern Colombia—known locally as “the trampoline of death”—to demonstrate how state-building processes and practices have depended on the production and maintenance of frontiers as inclusive-exclusive zones, often through violent means.

• Considers the topic from multiple perspectives, including ethnography of the state, the dynamics of frontiers, and the nature of postcolonial power, space, and violence
• Draws attention to the political, environmental, and racial dynamics involved in the history and development of transport infrastructure in the Amazon region
• Examines the violence that has sustained the state through time and space, as well as the ways in which ordinary people have made sense of and contested that violence in everyday life
• Incorporates a broad range of engaging sources, such as missionary and government archives, travel writing, and oral histories