Fronteras Liquidas Forum: NEST + CentroGEO
Ceñal Murga, Pedro. 2016. “Cruce del Río Suchiate - Frontera México-Guatemala, Tecún Umán, Guatemala". Fotografía. Ciudad de México. Archivo Personal de Pedro Ceñal.
THURSDAY, JAN 18: 9AM - 2PM
CENTROGEO, (SALA DE USOS MÚLTIPLES)
CONTOY 137, COL. LOMAS DE PADIERNA, DELEGACIÓN TLALPAN, CP. 14240, MÉXICO, CDMX.
NEST + CentroGEO - forum
It is not the bridge that unites two places, it is the bridge that creates them.
Martin Heidegger
The geopolitical reasoning proposed to address the Mexico-Guatemala cross-border region is based on the paradoxes of borders: on the one hand, they are political divisions that mark the limit of the exercise of sovereignty and the security of a nation-state. And on the other, they are lines of adjacency that generate local, legal and illegal exchanges that transcend the border, marking spaces of relationship that give rise to cross-border regions (Fuentes, 2017). Hence, any border is porous.
(From “Las Fronteras”, Julieta Fuentes, CentroGEO)
The CentroGEO-NEST forum is a working group or meeting where the two groups will invite researchers from their respective communities to discuss the Mexico-Guatemala cross-border region. The forum process begins with the development of the “program” or structure of the forum itself.
Taking a cue from “Las fronteras” by CentroGEO researcher Julieta Fuentes:
…initiatives have emerged that propose alternative ways of thinking about the border between Mexico and Guatemala, conceiving it not as a line of separation but as a space of strategic relationship that represents binational development opportunities at a local scale and is presented as a counterweight to the image of a uniform, conflictive and repressive border.
NEST also proposes the CentroGEO-NEST forum along these lines of “alternative ways of thinking”, conceiving of the traditional disciplinary borders “not as lines of separation, but as a space of strategic relationship”.