Extractivism, land production and conflicts in the Paraguay-Paraná waterway

Abstract

Latin America in general, and Argentina in particular, are going through a new cycle of export primarization that consolidates the historical dependent insertion of national economies in the world economy. The continuity of the international productive specialization based on extractivism during the post-convertibility period, which began in 2003 in Argentina, had as a correlate the adoption of continental initiatives to reconvert the transportation infrastructure, with the aim of readapting it to the current international dynamics, reducing travel times and costs. In this process, the expansion of the agribusiness frontier took place in the area comprised by the la plata Basin (Cuenca del Plata) and was driven by the enormous growth in the area cultivated with transgenic soybeans by large transnational corporations. This reprimarization process has caused significant economic, social and environmental changes, and it has gradually turned the Paraná River into a waterway at the service of corporations. This paper addresses, as dimensions of analysis, some of the multiple processes that affect the transnationalized spatialization of the La Plata Basin.