Twenty years of the Initiative for the Integration in South American Regional Infrastructure

A balance in two dimensions

Abstract

In the last twenty years, South America has undergone a process of reconversion of the transport, energy and communications infrastructure that has redesigned the dynamics of regional flows and which was part of a process of debate and transformation of the integration paradigms.

The Initiative for Integration in South American Regional Infrastructure can be characterized as the most important physical interconnection project developed in the history of South America, with a strong impact on land use planning and determined above all by the dynamics of the international market.

Integration in infrastructure does not take place apart from geopolitical disputes and the economic interests of the main actors in the international system. However, the initiative has managed to advance despite changes in the power relations at various scales, even expanding its portfolio of projects significantly and moving from open regionalism to more autonomous integration projects such as the South American Union of Nations, without altering its integration axes or priority projects.

This work addresses in an articulated way the historical dimension of integration with the geographic impact of mega infrastructure works in the region.