Geopolítica de la Conectividad Vial en el Litoral Pacífico Chocoano El caso del corredor vial Nuquí–Ánimas

Abstract

The department of Chocó has historically remained isolated due to a combination of geographic and political factors: humid forests, rugged topography, high rainfall, and a national road network that prioritized the connection between the major Andean and Caribbean economic centers, leaving behind territories with high social vulnerability (Londoño, 2002). In this context, the Ánimas–Nuquí highway project crosses one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet, including collective territories of Black communities, Embera indigenous reservations, and the Utría National Natural Park. This is an area where state presence is weak, structural poverty persists, and social imbalance is a historical condition.

This project has been interpreted in contrasting ways: for some, it represents a commitment to development and territorial integration, while others see it as an initiative that does not respond to the Chocó clamor to reach the Pacific, but rather to the outflow of strategic resources—such as oil and timber—and the commercial opening of western Colombia to the Pacific basin, in connection with the political and business interests of Antioquia, Risaralda, Caldas, and Valle del Cauca (Cocomá, 2010). This tension—territorial integration versus extractive and commercial projection—constitutes the central analytical core of this work.

Road infrastructure is not neutral. As Ó Tuathail (1996) warns, connectivity projects are “geopolitical acts” that reconfigure power relations. Highways function as strategic corridors that articulate the civilian and military spheres, enable political control, regulate flows, and define who and what circulates through the territory. In the Colombian case, the Chocó Pacific has become a laboratory for these disputes, where state, community, business, and international interests converge.