De llave del reino y frontera a límite. Un ensayo sobre la Transversal de Huancabamba y su construcción como región entre dos países

Abstract

Today “different” spaces reappear that political centralization had made invisible, such as the one that extends from the depression of Huancabamba, the lowest point of the Peruvian Andes, and crosses through Ayabaca, before it closes in on Loja and ends in Cuenca, in the southern region of present-day Ecuador. The new possibilities of global linkage allow the reinvention of re-ethnicized identities, that recover ties and human-territorial relationships sunk in the mists of time and that surpass the limits so carefully constructed by the national states. An Andean spot, key to the prehispanic kingdom but forgotten by the bullionist interest of the viceroyalty, that had turned into a wild border, reappeared temporarily at the end of the XVIII century as a highly valued quinine producing area before falling into oblivion until this day.

Keywords

• frontier
• history
• region
• Northern Peruvian
• Viceroyalty economy