Territorial discourses opposed in the 21st century: The case of the Chile-Peru relationship from a critical geopolitics perspective

The objective of this article is to understand, from the perspective of critical geopolitics, how the discourses of territorial conflicts between Chile and Peru in the 21st century have been represented by each of the parties, while at the same time establishing underlying elements that they go beyond the official conceptions issued by the States. To obtain this, a theoretical-conceptual approach to the notion of territory is considered from the mentioned discipline, and thus establish how the territory has been considered mostly as a conflictive aspect in bilateral history, demonstrated in recent years in the territorial oppositions made by the maritime border and in the so-called "terrestrial triangle". It is concluded that the territorial conflicts are only a sample of a more structural problem in the relationship between both countries, while the territorial discourse is used to maximize the differences and minimize the similarities.