Frederico Freitas. Nationalizing Nature: Iguazu Falls and National Parks at the Brazil-Argentina Border

Millions of tourists every year visit the impressive series of hundreds of waterfalls that form Iguazu Falls, a national park on the river of the same name in both Argentina (Parque Nacional Iguazú) and Brazil (Parque Nacional do Iguaçu). Few tourists likely consider how the parks came to be and why the tremendous infrastructure supporting their tourism exists, but historians should. A binational look at Iguazu Falls forms the backdrop of Frederico Freitas’s fantastic study of the mirrored borderland parks, Nationalizing Nature: Iguazu Falls and National Parks at the Brazil-Argentina Border. Freitas combines meticulous research, compelling storytelling, and analytical rigor in his masterful comparative history of the role nature conservation played in the development of the fronter area where Argentina and Brazil meet Paraguay. In addition to the cataracts, the national parks protect two of the most extensive remaining patches of the Atlantic forest, the tropical rainforest once equivalent in size to the Amazon but now with less than 10 percent remaining. Most of Brazil’s economic development came from exploiting the Atlantic forest and by telling the story of the national parks that protect what is left. Freitas examines transformations to the forest from a different angle. By centering the joint national parks, Freitas provides a discrete conceptual touchstone that allows him to elaborate on the complicated relationships that evolved starting in the 1930s and up to the present day. What emerges is an unexpected and surprising history, beautifully told.