Rethinking borders, regional integration and territory

Pedro Caldentey del Pozo and Francisco Santos Carrillo, researchers at the ETEA Foundation and Universidad Loyola Andalucía, have collaborated as authors in the book “Rethinking Borders, Regional Integration and Territory”, published by CLACSO and coordinated by Willy Soto, professor at the School of International Relations of the National University of Costa Rica (UNA).

In the chapter entitled “La vigencia del regionalismo para la agenda de desarrollo en América Central”, Caldentey and Santos defend the validity of integration as an instrument of development for Central America, proposing a revision of the current model that emerged from Esquipulas towards a strategic approach to integration that responds to the new challenges of development in the region.

Synopsis of the book

State, territory, cross-border spaces, regional integration processes, have traditionally been approached from Social Science theories developed in Europe and the United States. This could represent a slap in the face of reality, in this case Latin America, since some of the experiences of regional integration in Latin America took place long before Europe began its integrationist process. Using European and American theoretical frameworks, of course, is no “sin”, as long as it is considered that such paradigms were born to explain the realities of those countries and not to account for the socio-historical processes of regions such as Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, or the South within the North, that is, the peripheral zones within the “developed” countries.

This book is an attempt to break with the pretension of “unique and absolute (social) science” with which Eurocentric thought has been presented (and we, many times, have accepted). But, the same recipe must be applied from the South: humility or denial of the pretended absolute truth. That is to say, the “decolonial” goes through the recognition that no matter how entrenched we are in quantitative and qualitative methods, no matter how much “methodological triangulation” we employ, our studies will be an approximation of something, not a portrait, much less a video.

The publisher offers a free download of the book on its website.