Redes multimodales y articulación territorial del puerto de Guaymas

Abstract

Trade opening-up and globalization of productive processes have greatly affected the development of Mexican ports, as well as the way in which they are articulated on a territorial basis. Few show an important dynamism, whereas most of them present a picture of contraction of the flows and de-structuring of their previous spatial ties. In this context, the aim of this article is to know, in a first approach, the impact of setting up multimodal networks on the territorial linking of a port which has traditionally had an outstanding regional presence in northwestern Mexico: Guaymas, Sonora. From the empirical perspective, the problems confronted by the port so as to articulate the chains of traditional products in northwestern Mexico in effective multimodal networks, as well as the chains of intermediate goods of the most dynamic and globalized industries in the region, are analyzed. From the theoretical and conceptual perspective, our purpose is to contribute to the study of the de-structuring of the territories-zone (Veltz, 1994), or "place spaces" (Castells, 1996), characterized by proximity, continuity, and relative internacional cohesion relations because of the emergence of the so-called "space of flows" (Castells, 1996), typical of the present stage of globalization of the productive and social processes, and characterized by a discontinuous, fragmented and selective integration of the territory, which is supported by nodes and wide-range networks.