Classroom lesson · Iguazú - Paraguay's Triple Border · 🇵🇾 Paraguay

Iguazú - Paraguay's Triple Border

Where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil all meet

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

At a point called the Triple Frontier, the countries of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil all touch each other at once, right where two great rivers - the Paraná and the Iguazú - flow together. On the Paraguay side sits the city of Ciudad del Este, one of the busiest trading cities in South America.

Tell me more

If you stood in a boat at exactly the right spot on the river, you could wave to people in three different countries at the same time. Each country has its own town on its own bank: Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), Puerto Iguazú (Argentina), and Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil). Every day, thousands of people cross the bridges between them to shop, work, or visit family.

The spectacular Iguazú Falls are just upstream on the Argentine-Brazilian border, and mist from the falls sometimes drifts as far as the Paraguay side on windy days. The whole area is surrounded by subtropical jungle full of toucans, caimans, and giant river otters.

The Triple Frontier is a great reminder that rivers do not divide people - they connect them. Boats, bridges, and ferries link the three sides, and the mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and Guaraní languages you can hear in the streets is like no place else on the planet.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01What would it feel like to live in a city where three different countries are just across the bridge?
  2. 02Rivers are often used as borders between countries - why do you think people chose rivers to mark borders?
  3. 03If you could visit one of the three cities at the Triple Frontier, which would you choose and why?
Try this

Classroom activity

On a blank map outline of South America, mark where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil meet. Then draw the two rivers that join there and label them. Add the names of the three border cities. Colour each country a different colour.