Geographical spaces are defined in historical times and are conjugated with economic verbs. The former are too complex and unstable sets; the latter are not produced spontaneously and the latter are managed through specific laws.
However, to the whole set must be added the social and political events that are the product of particular conditions -necessary, indispensable or simply preferable- according to the will of man.
The starting point of a geopolitical analysis is critical realism, an attitude that requires studying the physical facts of a given space, simultaneously with life and history that have evolved in it.
This leads us to consider that there are causes that make up the geographical environment; conditions that influence the societies that develop in it; and clear or diffuse influences that evidence and interrelate the environment with the man who inhabits it.
This is the case of the approach that both Argentines and Uruguayans have been supporting from both banks of the Uruguay River as a result of the installation of the pulp mills in Río Negro.
Both the Uruguay River and the Río de la Plata were and are permanent scenes of geopolitical disputes from its colonial period to the days of its political independence, times when peace in the region came to be endangered, even with foreign participation..
Throughout this process, historically and politically, a slow overlap of the formal country with the real country is observed, making it clear that disunity will not favor economic interdependence between the geographic entities that make up the region.
The Nation rarely had the opportunity to really find out what was happening in the State.
This has motivated the failure of all good attempts at integration or complementation: URUPABOL, Cartagena Agreement, ALALC, border agreements.
Now it is the turn of MERCOSUR.
From hegemony to integration
The rivalry for geopolitical spaces in Latin America, which began after the discovery of Colombia and Cabral in Brazil, was inherited by the Brazilian Empire and the fragile Spanish-speaking republics.
In the American Southern Cone, and in the particular case of the Plata Basin, which is expanding politically and economically with the signing of the Treaty of Asunción (MERCOSUR), the two largest countries -Argentina and Brazil- maintained a shortage of dialogue for long years, reaching a situation of rivalry for exercising hegemonic claims regarding the minor countries of the Basin.
Such political and military attitudes validate Raymond Aron's reflection: "International actors cease to be acceptable partners if their peoples are separated by painful memories that they do not want to forget or by the pain of the wounds that remain open."
Such is the age-old theme of Bolivia's exit to the sea and Chile's position unchanged since the Pacific War.
Two opposing attitudes
In Brazilian geopolitical thought -or rather Itamaraty- the analysis of space refers mainly to the definition of a geopolitics applied to the internal field and aiming at the total integration and increasing valuation of the national territory.
Conquest and cartography are concepts that in Brazil were born together. (Case of what happened with the Artigas Corner, the Bolivian Acre, part of the Missions, the Ecuadorian Amazon).
Meanwhile in Argentina, the internal political variables from 1930 to the present day have not allowed the elaboration of a special unitary thesis. Practice federalism in fact, but not in law. Geopolitical studies began to take theoretical form from 1940 (Jorge Atencio, JPBriano, E. Gugliamelli).
Just over three decades ago, since the last military coup, an awareness of relocating the country to the new regional and global context has been manifesting.
There are symptoms of a return to continentality, to the reunion with its historical origin. The great Argentine task lies in defining a new identity. The step from not being to being.
The future of integration
The articulation of South America is essential for all the peoples that inhabit it. The history of this sub-continent reminds us of political, cultural, economic, religious, technological, strategic and geopolitical cycles, among others. The Cuenca del Plata had theirs.
Currently little is said about it, even from the expanded view of the Southern Cone.
Did what was determined by the Resolutions agreed between the five countries that comprise it fail within the Treaty of the Cuenca del Plata? An “ad hoc” group created at the 16th Ordinary Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the subsystem, (1985) indicated in its report:
“Stable and permanent concrete forms for multilateral action were not structured, which determined that the potential for regional cooperation lacked practical concretion at the multilateral level.
A great dispersion of efforts that despite some attempts to organize in the area of cooperation could not be translated into practical and operational decisions ”.
Since ancient times, it was intended to convince the peoples of Ibero-America - and thus, to a great extent, the industrialized powers succeeded - that the ills of our region resided in their inability to absorb the "modernizing" influences of developing countries.
The recommendation was the need for a total opening of doors for the entry of foreign capital, technology without transfer, institutions and cultural forms from the powerful world of the "center", to use the expression of Raúl Prebisch. Iberoamerica was recommended, patience. It was said: the prelude to development is underdevelopment, a stage similar to that which all currently technified countries passed at the time.
In my equation, underdevelopment is not the prelude to development, but the consequence of the development of other countries that are managed in absolute terms of power.
From all this I draw another conclusion: the process of subregional integrations - such as MERCOSUR or the Ibero-American community of nations - must be conceived in the continental unitary context, within logical measures - not utopian - that can facilitate the transition from dependence to interdependence.
