Andean Border integration: Report on a seminar in Lima, Peru July 3–6, 1989

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The Junta del Acuerdo Cartagena (JUNAC), the governing and administrative body for the Andean Pact, and the InterAmerican Development Bank (BID), sponsored a working seminar on border integration in the Andean region in early July 1989. The meetings brought together government officials, members of the private sector, persons from local border development agencies, scholars and individuals from international agencies. Most of the participants were from the countries of the Andean Pact--Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia--but experts on border development from Central America, Mexico, the United States, Brazil and Argentina also were involved in the discussions. The purpose of the seminar was to explore border regional integration as a strategy for economic development and for the integration of the Andean Pact countries. The seminar consisted of an introductory section that discussed the purposes of the meetings from the perspectives of JUNAC and BID and presented a document to serve as a general frame of reference for discussion and analysis of integration of Andean border subregions. Also, methodologies for identification and design of projects for border integration, short term policies for border integration and development programs for border integration were discussed. The next section of the seminar consisted of presentations of case studies of Central American borders and the United States-Mexico border in order to provide a comparative perspective. Next followed a series of general and specific presentations that examined a number of projects and summarized actual developments in different border regions of the Andean Pact. These included the Peru-Bolivia border, the Colombian-Venezuelan border region, border regions of Ecuador, border regions of Peru, border regions of Bolivia and border regions of Columbia. Also presented were discussions of regional corporations, development corporations and multinational corporations in regional border development. The last part of the seminar was devoted to working groups considering general concepts of border integraton, short term policies for border integration and methodological factors for the study of Andean border regions. Each group produced a working document and these were all brought together and discussed in a general session to then form a summary document for the seminar.