The coloniality of power and the challenges of integration in Latin America

Abstract

The regional integration processes under way in Latin America today have been marked by a territorial logic that has conceived large areas of geographic territory in Latin America as “demographic emptiness” or as “available land.” This way of conceiving the geographical space in Latin America, dates back to the colonial legacy that accompanies the region´s socio-spatial formation and the place that the American continent fulfilled in the process of formation of the modern-colonial world system, since 1492. This article aims to discuss the physical integration processes currently under way on the continent, specifically the Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), in an attempt to show the reproduction of the coloniality logic of power and knowledge, that constitutes  its regional development model.