The Atacama Logistics Platform, a South American challenge

It began a week ago in Buenos Aires and lasted three days. Mercosur Parliamentary Union Forum, an international event to which I was invited and in which I ended up being named as Executive Secretary for the San Francisco Pass and Pircas Negras Bioceanic Corridors. Within my participation I explained the importance of promoting the bi-oceanic corridors that connect the economies of Mercosur with the Pacific Ocean basin. Obviously, as an inhabitant of the Atacama Region, my message was alluding to the San Francisco and Pircas Negras border crossings, which link our Atacama Region directly with the Argentine provinces of Catamarca and La Rioja and through these with the entire Mercosur and its great productive potential. For the representatives of the Mercosur countries, especially Brazil and Argentina, Chile is becoming a vital country, of high importance for exporting to the Pacific Ocean basin, as they stated in this international forum. Personally, I am convinced, and I made it clear in Buenos Aires, that Atacama meets advantageous conditions to be a Mercosur logistics platform towards the Pacific and we are at the moment when we can take advantage of the opportunity that is presented to us or let it pass by to begin “blame the cobblestone”, as is very common in our region: blaming others for our own inefficiencies, inabilities, pettiness, short-sightedness or selfishness. It's now or never.

Between Chile and Argentina there is intense integration, mainly cargo and tourism flows, which means a permanent coming and going between both countries, by land or air. Despite this, Atacama, as always, is in debt. It seems that in our region it is not possible to measure what is coming, neither in the public nor in the private sector. The latter does not get involved to pressure the former regarding the urgent investments that are needed associated with connectivity. At the time I write this note, the San Francisco Pass is closed and a commercial mission from La Rioja that intended to cross the mountain range this way has not been able to do so. I insist, it gives the impression that Chilean-Argentine integration is taken in Atacama as a trick which takes place every year in the binational meetings called Atacalar. After the end of this one, which lasts two days, it doesn't matter what happens. Overall, the “famous attack”, meaningless, with a lot of bombast, but without practical sense. An example of this is happening, the San Francisco Pass remains closed. Surely there will be excuses, but the concrete fact is that a month and a half after the last Atacalar, Atacama does not have connectivity with Argentina.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to carry out training in the second most important port in Europe, Antwerp, in Belgium, the second after Rotterdam, a port in Holland. Both countries form a formidable multimodal logistics platform for all of Europe, both have a total area of 72,538 square kilometers, a figure less than the 75,176 square kilometers of our Atacama Region. It cannot be argued then that to become a logistics platform for an entire continent it is required to own large areas. What is a fundamental requirement for this is to have a vision with a strategic, long-term sense and the capacity and courage to make the decisions that are required, independent of those who have always had and have an attitude of sabotage with the future of Atacama, those who take every possible excuse to prevent new opportunities from happening in Atacama for its inhabitants, especially the youngest. As I already pointed out, I have the privilege of knowing a formidable multimodal logistics platform for all of Europe, existing in Belgium and Holland and I can attest to the enormous opportunities that these provide to the inhabitants of these countries, in professional career development as also technical. It is worth saying that the per capita income of these two countries is far above Chile and the purchasing power of its inhabitants, too.

For Concrete Atacama as a logistics platform for Mercosur It is necessary, first of all, to improve connectivity with Argentina. Three decades have passed since the so-called “Atacalar” began and on the side of our region very little progress has been made, the public sector unfortunately has not been up to the task and until now seems not to realize the development lever that This would mean for the present and future of our region. The second condition is port qualification, the existence of port terminals that are able to meet the production needs of both Argentina and Brazil, mainly. In Huasco, the Puerto Las Losas Terminal is operational, which meets the conditions, due to maritime operation sites and storage areas, to begin serving the first cargo flows from Mercosur, which are a few months away from the start of its operations and therefore having the export logistics needs. To this port terminal in operation we must add the Copiaport E project, which has already begun to be vilified by the usual ones, by those who believe in the economies of poverty or alms and to achieve this state, they use all the arguments, including the environment and in the case of this project, the business vices of the former owner of the area where this port investment initiative is intended to be located. Considering everything that I have already pointed out, that is, the great opportunity that Atacama is presented with to become a logistics platform for Mercosur, thereby generating enormous opportunities for well-being for those who are waiting for a job in the region today, This port project should be seen by the Atacameños as a “regional project”There can be no indifference towards this, it is not just another project and it is necessary to stand up to those who for years have been undermining the development possibilities of our region, thereby discarding a future with better opportunities for the children of Atacama. Whoever reads these lines can follow these characters through the media, characters who have no qualms about harming the inhabitants of Atacama in their permanent search to generate unemployment or underemployment or informal survival jobs, that is, an economy of poverty, over which these lords reign. I reiterate, The Copiaport E project is a “REGION”, which should not leave indifferent neither the public sector nor the regional business community, nor the workers who will surely find the longed-for job there. Atacama must be THE Multimodal Logistics Platform of Mercosur.

I end my writing with a memory, a distant memory. The Chilean ambassador to the United States during the government of President John Kennedy, Walter Müller Hess, in a conversation with the American president, expressed his admiration for how a great country, a great economy like that of the United States, could build large roads and highways. Given this, President Kennedy told the Chilean diplomat that the matter was the other way around, the United States had opted to build great connectivity embodied in good roads and highways and this had led it to be a great economy.