The research chair of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (México) held a symposium on the validity of political borders, analyzing the role they play in the context of globalization in relation to economic activities, considering that they they demarcate the operation and scope of the international economy.
The central theme focused on the situation that implies for Mexico, the fortification of the border approved by the United States Senate ("Operation Rio Grande"): 1,200 kilometers of wall that the US government builds between the States of Texas and New Mexico, with a cost of more than 1,100 million dollars. Few economic issues in NAFTA (USA-Canada-Mexico) have captured so much attention.
The hemispheric protest considers, with good reason, that it is not with walls that it is best treated and solves the migratory problem and illegal flows. This delicate issue was discussed on the occasion of the XVI Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government held in November 2006 in Montevideo.
United states and Mexico: distant neighbors
The premise that founded the creation of the Department of Internal Security - or "Homeland Security" in the United States, indicates that, precisely, the security of the country begins with border control; iron position adopted after September 11, 2001, which has been causing fuss regarding the relations of the Washington government with Mexico and Canada, both in the field of trade and diplomatic relations.
In the debate of the aforementioned ITESM symposium in Monterrey, the fact that borders were being erased by various forces was raised. Perhaps the main one: economic liberalization, expressed in the absence or decrease of barriers to trade flows, which began to nullify the traditional role of international borders, giving rise to the creation of a world without borders. (Ohmae)
For Professor Gynn Custred of the University of California East Bay, “what was happening, however, was much more complex. Although some borders experience more porosity, others carry out transformations and reconfigurations of different kinds ”. In other words: some fade - like the case of Uruguay's northern border with Brazil - while others are fortified like the case of Mexico-United States, or the projected wall between Brazil and Paraguay between Ciudad del Este and Puerto Iguazú.
New frontiers in transitional societies
According to De Villepin's expression, in the very essence of the border there is a constant duality, a complexity shaped by history. In it you can find natural and artificial demarcation changes; the encounter and the disagreement. And as I have stressed on various occasions, the border cannot be considered as an expression of the limit of sovereignty between States. As the Spanish-Greek analyst Sadowski considers, "borders exist simply because they demarcate territories where culture, society, and style of government converge."
Globalization, in very notable cases such as the one dealt with when analyzing by the ITEMS the case of the fortification of the Mexican-American border, which I comment on, gives rise to the coexistence of integration and disintegration until in some cases reaching situations of prosperity and also late. Notorious case of the latter is the situation that Germany is going through with high Turkish migration, or certain parts of Spain with the entry of Moroccans. In these situations, uncontrolled migrations, crossing free borders, limit or paralyze integration.
Towards a world without borders?
During the last decades of the last century, it has been affirmed in some political, social, cultural and economic circles that the globalization process we are witnessing is giving rise to a world without borders.
"The expression" borderless world "became popular, very well defined and illustrated after the prominent Japanese guru Kenichi Ohmae, one of the most brilliant business strategists, published -among others-" The invisible continent: four imperative strategies for the new economy ”, Where it establishes that the dimension without limits leads to a world without borders, in which capital pursues the best products and the best returns on investment, regardless of origin; “Invisible continent” that Ohmae says emerged in 1985 with Windows 1.0, Cisco Systems and the birth of CNN.
At the aforementioned symposium, a great question arose: Has globalization led absolutely to a world without borders? The answer is a resounding NO, as borders continue to be relevant. It can be admitted that uncontrolled migrations force states to take somewhat less drastic measures such as those discussed, or to enact laws regarding controls on migration flows.
The new geopolitical line of Ecuador
16 years ago (1991) Jean Christophe Rufin wrote a book under the title “The Empire and the new barbarians”, describing as “barbarians” all those who do not belong to the Empire and, in addition, oppose it, relying on the definition given by Polybius (230-120 BC), who considered civilization opposed to the Roman ideal as barbarians. The current world situation has led the United States to conceive a new limes between North and South, where the "barbarians" inhabit the latter planetary space.
According to Rufin, the new "walled limes" will serve to further divide the developed North from the South from isolated guerrillas. “The North and the South follow radically different paths. The North deals with reunifications and economic and political integrations, what Toynbee called a revolutionary change from pluralism to unity. "
The new geopolitical Ecuador is located from the northern border of Mexico in the Ibero-American space, passing one of the shores of the Mediterranean moat, the Mangreb (Algeria, Morocco, the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, Libya), extending to the East of the Altai mountains (former eastern border of the former USSR), reaching the Amur and Ussuri rivers, a border that puts the Russian world in direct contact with the Chinese world, perhaps the most conflictive area that was demarcated by the famous Unequal Treaties of 1858 -60 and 1881. In the vast area of the Far East, the "limes" have not yet been defined by the strategists of the "Empire" as countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines present political instability with a great advance in poverty.
Finally, another undefined area since it is made up of two different entities: the Caucasus and Central Asia and, finally, the Near East, is currently a very convulsed region, with great political and military penetration by the "Empire".
Throughout this geopolitical scheme, three large buffer states have been defined, albeit of various types: Mexico, Turkey, Morocco, although the latter's conduct with respect to human rights causes deep concern to the West and to the European Powers.
Weekly Chronicles 04/20/07 and Onda Digital 04/24/07
