Toward a Cartography of Cross-Border Cooperation in Latin America: The Experience of AEBR in Maps

Abstract

Territorial cooperation initiatives between subnational entities that share an international border — what we refer to as cross-border cooperation — exist, to varying degrees, in all world regions. Without a doubt, Europe has concentrated the largest number of successful experiences, particularly due to its integration into the EU’s territorial cohesion policy. However, other regional contexts also feature numerous and diverse experiences of interest, at different scales and levels of intensity — Latin America being one of them. Academic literature has pointed to a research gap in the form of a lack of a comprehensive inventory of such experiences within the Latin American context. Responding to this need, the main objective of this article is to offer a cartography of cross-border cooperation in Latin America based on the experience of the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR). The research is grounded in the analysis of 29 projects in which the AEBR has participated since 2010, which have produced over 40 maps. The results are discussed in relation to existing theoretical typologies of cross-border cooperation, and analytical tools are provided to support future comparative studies.