Darío I. Restrepo

De la descentralización a la regionalización: Nuevo escenario de la guerra y oportunidad para la paz

In many Latin-American countries, the combination among neoliberal politics of adjustment, economic opening and transformations to political regimes, modify both economic geography and spatial conformation of institutions, political systems, social and corporativ e actors. Colombia has also been affected by this redesign, that compromises the operation of its external and internal politics. The spatial effects of the economic opening combine with those of administrative, fiscal, and political process of decentralization, generating a tension on the geographical unit of the State. The consideration of these tendencies that have marked the paths of the economic, institutional, political, and social transformations since twenty years ago, indicate a probable way toward the regionalization of the country. Will this regionalization be convenient for a more stable internal dev elopment and a favorable setting for a peace agreement based on a territorial distribution of the power, or will it be the promptest way to abandon each territory to its luck in the world competence, and to break the territorial unit of the Colombian State? This is the question that is presented here.