“hola turquía” is a collaborative piece that sets out to reflect on and challenge the arbitrariness of border-tracing. It was completed in the summer of 2013 while conducting fieldwork in the Putumayo region of southern Colombia, near the border with Ecuador. The Putumayo region of Colombia has been, historically, a site of exchange between Andean and Amazonian cultures. After the Spanish colonization, it became an important outpost of, first Franciscan and later Capuchin missionaries. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was also one of the epicenters of the atrocious “rubber boom.” In the present, the remnants of its turbulent history are still alive. As a problematic area far from any urban centers, it remains imagined as “marginal” in inter national discourse, often exoticized. We welcome the opportunity to include our work in this special issue of JAST because we are interested in addressing the role of institutions in bordertracing.