ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on the relations of conflict and cooperation in Central American transboundary basins, by inviting to go beyond dichotomic perspectives that tend to oppose them. Extensive fieldwork in transboundary river basins of the region – including some shared with southern Mexico – shows that conflict and cooperation are deeply entangled. The chapter proposes to answer the following questions. How do conflicts and cooperation in Central American transboundary river basins entangle? What are the dynamics behind these entanglements? Contrary to traditional scholarship on transboundary river basins, Central America reveals that conflicts and cooperation coexist in time and scale. Conflict creates cooperation, cooperation may provoke conflicts, and cooperation and conflicts weave depending on the involved issues and actors. The political dynamics in transboundary river basins in Central America are strongly rooted in past and present situations regarding national borders. Above all, the analysis advocates for going beyond state-focused research to include other stakeholders such as local population, bordering authorities, and grassroots organizations, transboundary dynamics that escape from formal diplomacy, and projects to embed a plurality of entanglements between waters and borders through scale and time.
