The Parana-Paraguay hidrovía: Geopolitical, extractive and biocultural dimensions

• In Event: Environment, Infrastructure and Geopolitics

Abstract

This paper considers the Paraná-Paraguay waterway (hidrovía) and local resistance to it as a means of exploring the socio-ecological and geopolitical significance of infrastructure. The Paraná-Paraguay watershed connects Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. A large portion of the world’s soy production, among other commodities including cocaine, is exported from ports on the Paraná River, which is home to diverse communities that relate to the river and its tributaries in a variety of ways. In the context of China’s successful efforts to cultivate diplomatic and economic ties with South American states, the hidrovía has also become a site of great power contestation over military partnerships and access to strategic resources including shipping routes, lithium and food. Henri Lefebvre’s approach to the social production of space is used to inquire into the intersections and disjunctures among infrastructure for extractivist, biocultural or geopolitical ends. Lefebvre’s social production of space is a triadic relationship among spatial practice (perceived routes, networks and patterns); representations of space (as conceived by planners and engineers); and representational spaces (lived by users and inhabitants). Relevant forms of infrastructure – socio-cultural or physical – are required to either expand extractive industry, establish biocultural corridors, or maximise geopolitical position. While extractivist infrastructure dominates national and corporate planning imaginaries, more attention should be given to the largely immaterial forms of infrastructure required to build biocultural alternatives and foster multipolar relations.

Author

• Robin Rodd, Duke Kunshan University