A Borderless International Border

The Brazil-Uruguay border region is an intermixed community with its own culture and language

November 2018

We take the bus from Punta del Diablo in Uruguay to Chui, a town that is split between Uruguay and Brazil. Outside of town, the driver asks us if we need a stamp. “A stamp?” I ask, wondering why not everyone on the bus needs a stamp. We, along with a French guy, get off the bus and go into customs. We are not in the divided town yet, still supposedly in Uruguay, so why we are getting exit stamps now is beyond me. At any rate, we get our passports stamped and get back on the bus.

The bus drops us off in the heart of Chui. We are still in Uruguay because the signs are in Spanish. I ask someone where the border is. Straight ahead, they say. I am confused because there are no customs. We walk a couple blocks. Across the street I see Portuguese signs. This street, I realize, is the border.

I am concerned, however, that we will be entering Brazil without an entry stamp. Did we miss the customs? People, however, are walking back and forth across the street freely. Maybe we have to walk to the edge of town to get our entry stamps, just as the Uruguayan customs were on the edge of Chui.

We walk to our hotel, a few blocks into Brazil, and check-in. I ask the owner where the customs are. He says that they are outside of town, a few kilometers. I say that tomorrow we are going to the city of Rio Grande by bus, a couple hundred kilometers into Brazil. He explains that the bus will stop at the customs so we can get our entry stamp.

After an afternoon nap, we wander back out in the dusty streets of Chui. We go to a fruit stand on the Brazil side and start to speak Portuguese but it comes out as mixed with Spanish. I have been in Spanish speaking countries for over four months and I do not easily switch to Portuguese. No problem. Everyone here speaks both or some mixture of the two.

We wander back over to Uruguay and eat dinner at a food truck selling delicious Uruguayan meat sandwiches. I ask the women if they are Uruguayan or Brazilian. They say Uruguayan but that everyone is mixed. I asked if they learn both Spanish and Portuguese in school. Spanish is the language of instruction on the Uruguayan side but they do learn Portuguese as a second language.

The night manager at our hotel is Uruguayan. I ask her if there is an issue with working in Brazil. She said the town’s residents can work on either side, no issue. The two sides of town are totally integrated.

As we walk back and forth between Uruguay and Brazil, the time also changes. Brazil is one hour ahead. Every establishment has a clock with the time for both countries. Our bus leaves at 6:30 the next morning. The woman who sells me the tickets emphasizes that it is Brazil time.

We stumble out of bed the next morning and head to the bus stop next to our hotel. I ask the bus driver if we are going to stop at customs and he says yes. He asks for our passports which I think is odd but I comply.

A few minutes out of town we stop at customs. The driver tells us to sit tight. He goes into the customs building and gives the officer our passports. The officer just stamps ours without verifying that we are in fact the ones on the bus. The first time I ever had a border guard stamp my passport without verifying my identity. Until we pull away I am sure the customs officials will come on the bus but alas, they do not.

Heading north to the city of Rio Grande there is nothing but a few small villages and fields of agriculture and livestock. It feels very remote and is extremely flat. It has the feel of Nebraska.

Once we get to Rio Grande, the urban Brazil of brick walls with barbed wire appears. The laid back feel of Chui is gone.

The borders between Brazil and Uruguay are fluid in part because of Mercosur, a trading block of certain South American nations that allows the free movement of goods, and to a more limited extent, people.

In addition to Mercosur, the historical social connections between Uruguay and Brazil help. The border region has multiple towns like Chui that are split between the two nations (some towns have different names on each side of the border but form a continuous town; others, like Chui, have the same name on both sides of the border). As our experience in Chui shows, people have strong connections with each side of the border. There is a shared culture, known as gauchesca. There is a distinct dialect spoken along both sides of the border that is a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, called Portunhol. For generations, borders mattered little as there have been mixed-nation families, socio-cultural groups from both sides, and easy movement.

The Uruguayan-Brazilian border shows that when a government allows normal human connection to flourish, it does. People living in close proximity will usually coexist peacefully if left alone, free of demagogues and grievances. The border is far from both countries’ capitals that it can feel like a forgotten region where national politicians wouldn’t think to create a conflict. It shows that identities form when left alone and that for some people, national identities are abstractions from the outside that do not correspond to their realities.