Cuadernos de Política Exterior Argentina (Nueva Época), 138, diciembre 2023, pp. 149-150
ISSN 0326-7806 (edición impresa) - ISSN 1852-7213 (edición en línea)
Reseña
DE MARCO, Miguel Ángel. (2022). Book: "Hidrovía, plataforma competitiva para
el desarrollo. Del Siglo XIX al XXI" IDEHESI, 1055 pp.
The Paraná-Paraguay navigation route is one of the hottest topics in Argentina's contemporary
politics. As a vital commercial corridor in the Southern Cone since the mid-nineteenth century,
the Paraná-Paraguay "waterway" – whose length is over 3400 kilometers – has been posing key
questions concerning commerce, national exports, international economy, maritime
transportation, state politics and sovereignty, and new geopolitical transformations. With the
tremendous goal to unpack and discuss these questions in detail, De Marco's book "Hidrovía,
plataforma competitiva para el desarrollo. Del Siglo XIX al XXI" (IDEHESI, 2022, 1055 p.)
accompanies the reader to a long journey through the history of Southern Cone's most important
waterway, exploring its making and unmaking during the different political and economic
epochs that have influenced and frequently determined its destiny. De Marco takes this
ambitious challenge by deploying an extensive and diversified selection of sources. The book is
an excellent container from which it is possible to reconstruct salient moments of the history of
the Paraná-Paraguay commercial route by exploring the voices of the main economic, political,
and legal actors, thus composing an eclectic concert of historical sources that, in turn, suggests
the possibility of several investigative directions. Specifically, De Marco collected,
systematized, and analyzed government documents, private and public data on Argentina’s
trade, legal documents, local and national newspapers, and institutional reports, also conducting
more than 100 interviews with relevant actors in the region, as well as mobilizing a broad
spectrum of local, regional, and international secondary sources. Such a methodological strategy
makes the book an unprecedented collection of often unpublished sources on the topic, a fact
that is further enriched by the construction of new maps that help combine and discuss the
material that progressively emerges in the narration.
The book is divided into 13 chapters that delve into historical and contemporary aspects
concerning the waterway. In Chapter 1, De Marco goes back to 1852, when the country's
political turmoil resulted in a piece of legislation that allowed the city of Rosario to take
advantage of its strategic geographical position and develop a critical port node around itself.
Since then, despite the political and economic changes that have influenced the city's activities,
Rosario has become the heart of the waterway and has reinforced its net of infrastructure,
defining the waterway's internal geometries until today. Rather importantly, De Marco frames
the chapter within the period of the First Globalization, shedding light on the radical
connections between the transformations of the international economy and those occurred – or
sometimes missed, depending on the different economic perspectives – in the Southern Cone.
After summarizing the economic and political conditions that marked the epoch of the "first
waterway", the author proceeds to Chapter 2 by telling the history of the waterway during the
Second Globalization, describing Argentina's system of transportation after World War I, and
providing a detailed account of the significant changes that took place in maritime
transportation during that time. While reading this first part of the book, which works as a
powerful historical introduction, some core themes appear in the discussion, themes that
constitute key elements and issues that have been defining the question of the waterway during
the past few decades, and that will sustain the rest of De Marco's narration. One of the essential
topics in this sense certainly concerns the dredging of the waterway, an operation that is
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Cuadernos de Política Exterior Argentina (Nueva Época), 138, diciembre 2023, pp. 149-150
ISSN 0326-7806 (edición impresa) - ISSN 1852-7213 (edición en línea)
constantly needed due to, on the one hand, the shallow waters and the uninterrupted
sedimentation of soil particles and, on the other, the constant desire to further deepen the canals
of navigation and thus increase the volume of commerce.
De Marco then continues discussing aspects of the Paraná-Paraguay waterway by approaching
the end of the twentieth century. Chapter 3 delves into the important decades of the 1980s and
1990s, focusing not only on the political context in Argentina but also on the technological
changes and challenges that end of the millennium posed to the waterway project. Chapter 4, in
turn, offers a view from a regional context and discusses the most relevant actors involved in the
development of the waterway, considering such a project a trigger of regional integration for the
countries crossed by the rivers. The subsequent chapters explore the combination of
institutional, legislative, and economic components that have marked the waterway over the
past three decades, paying attention to debates and perspectives in support of private actors
(Chapter 5), the action exerted by the state (Chapter 6), and mixed solutions that also included
the public participation in the management of the waterway (Chapter 7). De Marco keeps
shedding light on the burning discussions and episodes that have concerned the organization and
promotion of the "great fluvial highway" (Chapter 8), producing a detailed exploration of the
transformations of the dredging and beaconing system (Chapter 9 and 11) and reconstructing the
role of critical regional actors such as Mercosur (Chapter 10). The last two chapters investigate
current and future developments of the waterway, correlating them with recent geo-economic
events such as the global economic crisis and the rise of China in the region (Chapter 12),
finally proposing some reflections on what the role of the waterway could be in the region, and
exploring a number of potential political and economic strategies for the future.
To sum up, the book provides a deep examination of a much-debated theme in today's
Argentina such as the Paraná-Paraguay waterway – in a context in which the very definition of
waterway is often at stake, along with its socio-material and environmental determinations.
Most significantly, as the book suggests, the waterway's history needs to be necessarily
understood in connection with global history, carefully considering the convoluted combination
of local, national, regional, and international actors that have contributed to its continuous
transformation. It is precisely this rich and complex piece of history, including the inevitable
controversies and contradictions, that De Marco's meticulous narration of the Paraná-Paraguay
waterway aims to illuminate. And this latter aspect makes the book an inspirational reading not
only for scholars and students interested in Argentine history, national development, and
infrastructure studies, but it also directly speaks to those engaged with themes concerning
geopolitical changes, new geo-economic configurations, and socio-environmental
transformations.
Por Simone Veglio. Malmö University. E-mail: simoneveglio7@gmail.com
Esta obra está bajo una licencia internacional https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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