Siglo XXIFronteras… ¿cicatrices de la historia o heridas del presente?

Abstract

Borders, usually known as the scars of history, are one of the elements of sovereignty that give rise to the existence of a state. And if there have always been differences, disputes and wars over their conformation and modification - hence that meaning of scar, of old, apparently closed wound - it seemed that in the 21st century, globalisation and the planetary flows associated with it made these scars a thing of the past. Curiously - or not - in the era of global geopolitical reconfiguration in which the planet is immersed - the war in Ukraine being only one of its most obvious elements - this concept, which in much of the world seemed to have been almost overcome due to globalisation and supranational integration, has once again come to the fore. And often painfully, as new wounds are opened, or attempted to be opened, in the skin of the Earth, it is argued that these borders only reflected a relationship of forces at a given moment, and are therefore not intangible or immutable. Some considerations in this regard, accompanied by a few examples, and a kind of final reflection, form the core of this paper.