A Park for the Borderlands: The Creation of the Iguaçu National Park in Southern Brazil, 1880-1940*

In 1939, the Brazilian government under Getulio Vargas created the country’s second national park around the Iguazu falls, at the border with Argentina. The new Iguaçu National Park was located at a sparsely inhabited area in southwestern Brazil, a region that for decades had being a source of geopolitical concern to public officials and the military. The creation of a national park at Iguazu was part of a boom in conservationist measures promoted by the Vargas Regime—in the 1930s the Brazilian government created two other national parks and enacted a new set environmental laws. The creation of Iguaçu was also concomitant to the “March to the West”, a major national campaign devised by the Vargas to open up the Brazilian hinterland for colonization. This article demonstrates that the creation of the Iguaçu National Park cannot be understood without taking into account the contemporary efforts to colonize Brazil’s hinterland and nationalize the country’s borderlands