ABSTRACT
Located in the Triple Frontier region of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentine, Ciudad del Este was founded in 1957. The Friendship Bridge was inaugurated in 1975, linking the city to its Brazilian neighbor Foz do Iguaçu and dramatically broadening the area's horizons for trade activity. After the construction of the Friendship Bridge and the arrival of several groups of immigrants in the 1970s, Ciudad del Este quickly became one of the world's largest free ports, with an unregulated economy calculated at the beginning of the 2000s at 20–40 million US dollars a day, depending on the time of year. At the end of the twentieth century, Paraguay had one of the lowest gross domestic products in the world. Ciudad del Este's market represented a significant source of income and employment, and the native Paraguayans headed to the border in search of opportunities.
