América Latina en Transformación

Un diálogo geopolítico con Heriberto Cairo

Abstract

In this interview with Heriberto Cairo, we discuss his latest book Geopolítica de América Latina y el Caribe (2023). The interview ranges from the purpose of the book to the recent political history of the region, decoloniality and the possibility for a peaceful decolonization, territorial conflicts, as well as the future of the capitalist world system.

In Geopolítica de América Latina y el Caribe (2023), Heriberto Cairo offers one of the most ambitious and rigorous syntheses of Latin American geopolitics recently published in Spanish. The text clearly situates itself within the traditions of critical political geography and Anglophone critical geopolitics, while simultaneously articulating them with decolonial and Latin Americanist perspectives. The result is a highly valuable work for both researchers and advanced students interested in the relationships between space, power, coloniality, and the world-system.

From the introduction onward, Cairo makes clear his intention to distance himself from classical state-centered and deterministic traditions of geopolitics. Rather than conceiving the region as a “natural” geographical object, the author argues that Latin America and the Caribbean constitute a historical and geopolitical construction produced through spatial representations, practices of power, and processes of regional self-representation. This approach directly engages with the critical geopolitics developed by scholars such as Gearóid Ó Tuathail, Simon Dalby, and John Agnew, although Cairo shifts the focus toward the Global South and decoloniality.

The structure of the book is organized around two major analytical scales. The first part examines the insertion of Latin America and the Caribbean into global geopolitical orders, while the second addresses the territorial production of nation-states, borders, and regional integration processes. This organization allows the author to connect global and regional dynamics without falling into either economistic or statist reductionism.

One of the book’s major contributions is its interpretation of Latin America as a historically produced periphery within the modern/colonial world-system. Cairo explicitly draws upon world-systems analysis and dependency theory to demonstrate how European colonization not only violently incorporated the region into the global capitalist economy but also produced fragmented and dependent spatialities. The author emphasizes how colonial infrastructures, trade networks, and the international division of labor generated enduring forms of the “coloniality of infrastructures” and power. This reading productively dialogues with Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and the modernity/coloniality project.

Particularly noteworthy is the historical analysis of the different global geopolitical orders: the nineteenth-century British order, inter-imperial rivalry, the Cold War, and the “militarized globalization” that emerged after 1990. Cairo demonstrates how each of these orders produced specific imaginaries about Latin America: a barbaric space, a racialized periphery, a zone of anti-communist containment, or a region subordinated to hemispheric neoliberalism. The analysis of spatial representations occupies a central place here and constitutes one of the elements most clearly connected to critical geopolitics.

Likewise, the work stands out for systematically incorporating what the author calls “counter-geopolitics”: the anti-hegemonic practices and discourses generated from within the region itself. Cairo recovers intellectual and political traditions frequently marginalized by conventional geopolitics, including Latin American anti-imperialism, Indianism, Katarism, Negritude, Zapatismo, and resistance to the FTAA. This dimension is especially valuable because it avoids reproducing an exclusively external or Eurocentric vision of regional geopolitics.

The second part of the book, devoted to the territorial production of nation-states, offers a sophisticated interpretation of Latin American independence and territorial fragmentation. Cairo analyzes independence movements not as linear processes of national emancipation, but rather as geopolitical reconfigurations conditioned by the global hegemonic transition between Spain, the United Kingdom, and later the United States. The analysis of borders, territorial disputes, and regional integration demonstrates how coloniality continues to structure contemporary state spaces.

Another strength of the work is its constant articulation between scales. The author avoids both “methodological nationalism” and excessively globalist abstractions. Local, regional, and global dynamics appear as mutually constituted, making it possible to understand contemporary phenomena such as regional integration, neo-extractivism, Chinese influence, and new hemispheric geopolitical disputes.

Geopolítica de América Latina y el Caribe (2023) constitutes a fundamental contribution to critical political geography in Spanish. Cairo successfully articulates history, geopolitical theory, and decolonial thought in a rigorous yet accessible synthesis. The work not only provides a historical reconstruction of the region, but also an epistemological intervention that challenges Eurocentric geopolitical narratives and reclaims the production of knowledge from Latin America.

Ultimately, this is a landmark text for understanding the multiple ways in which coloniality, imperialism, and resistance have produced Latin American and Caribbean space. Its publication represents a significant contribution to the development of critical geopolitics situated within the Global South.