Desafios e oportunidades na fronteira entre Colômbia e Panamá: explorando potencialidades geoestratégicas em um contexto de transição internacional

Abstract

The configuration of the international system in the 21st century reveals a dynamic of re-orientation of poles of world power marked upon the competition among those consolidated as well as emerging. These movements influence the range of bargains and geostrategies of the global South, designing a new regionalist and post-hegemonic paradigm in Latin America. In this context, the development of infrastructure for strategic insertion has gradually become more fundamental in the national agendas of the Latin American states. Nevertheless, few geopolitical areas face significant challenges in order to be part of this dynamic and demonstrate a greater susceptibility to external interference. This scenario is especially evident in the case of Panama and Colombia which have often suffered with the diplomacy of the bullets of Washington throughout History. External intervention still persists, and this is a latent factor that leads to segmented geopolitics in the region and underutilization of strategic resources in those territories, turning the border between these two countries into a geopolitical barrier. This region is marked by an infrastructural void and by the absence of a wellestablished geopolitical strategy, thus, demanding a deep analysis in order to comprehend the challenges and the inherent powers to the territory in the context of the international system’s transition and the era of post-hegemonic regionalism. To do so, this research adopts a qualitative, explanatory, and hypothetical-deductive approach since it refers to a theoretical-conceptual analysis that explores structural perspectives related to international geopolitics and to a Colombian and Panamanian regional context, evincing either the observation, confirmation, or the refutation of such issue. Thus, the present investigation aims to generally analyze the cause and effect of the lack of a well-defined and efficient geopolitical articulation for both the Colombian and Panamanian regions, considering the geostrategic position of the territories and their power as the epicenter of trade negotiation and Latin American integration. Through a collection of primary and secondary data, the main initiatives of infrastructural integration in both Latin and Central America have been analyzed: the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) and the Puebla-Panama Plan/Mesoamerica Project, observing the lack of projects for the border area between Panama and Colombia. Despite the projects of infrastructural integration in Latin America have received a great incentive in the 21st century, widening its scope beyond the mercantile aspect, presenting a geostrategic perspective as well, it was possible to notice that both Colombian and Panamanian regions remained on the sidelines of this dynamic. The border between these two countries has been converted into a buffer zone since the period of Panama’s Independence in 1903, which was turned to geopolitically separate South America from Central America. However, the territory presents a considerable range to expand its infrastructure in a collaborative and geostrategic model, investing in win-win relationships in bilateral as well as regional and international spheres