DE MEGA A META
From Mega to Meta

Megaprojects in Central American History

Author(s): Paweł Wiechetek
Subject(s): Regional Geography, Environmental Geography
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: megaprojects; infrastructure; Central America; Panama Canal; Inter-American Highway; large dams; “world-system”
Summary/Abstract: This chapter proposes a reinterpretation of the history of Central America through the lens of infrastructure megaprojects. It is time-transcending, intercultural and transdisciplinary look that connects the apparently heterogeneous elements: the temporality of the “Long Count” and the “Short Count”; the “lifeworlds” and the “world-system”; The North- and Latin American cultural perspective; the fields of technology, politics, and literature. The cases of the Panama Canal, the Inter-American Highway and the large dams illustrate how megaprojects exceed their physical structure and their immediate functions, extending to an entire assembly of the “world-system” (the geopolitics of extractivism, finance, logistics, etc.). Currently, a transition from the “MEGA” to the “META” dimension of the projects is being observed. Infrastructure is presented as a “constitution” of globalization processes, where water, land, energy, air, and digital environments produce new space-time connections.

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