The dilemma of local participation in the Brazil-France cross-border cooperation

The dilemma of local participation in the Brazil-France cross-border cooperation (1990-2015) Abstract: From the 1980s/90s, Brazilian foreign policy adopted a more assertive agenda regarding neighboring countries in northern South America. In this context, the celebration of the Framework Agreement between Brazil and France is inserted, an institutional framework that implemented cross-border cooperation between Amapá and French Guiana. At the time, France was interested in projecting itself politically and commercially in South America. On the other hand, Brazil has also achieved success with this new agenda. However, after twenty-four years in force, cross-border cooperation does not show effectiveness regarding the results expected by the collectives on both sides of the Guiana-Amapá border. This article seeks to discuss that the lack of local participation has become a contender in the development of this cooperation, which has not resulted in a political project capable of promoting the aggregation of cultural matrices that stimulate an identity of objectives. To development the reflection, non-participant observation, interviews with residents in the city of Oiapoque were used, as well as the examination of some agreements concluded between Brazil and France and the minutes of the meetings of the Joint CrossBorder Commission-CTM. The specificities that make the Guiana-Amapá border interesting to the governments of Brazil and France are found in the temporal experiences of multiple actors, unrelated to chronologies, but rather to the length of life lived.


Introduction
From the second half of the twentieth century, international relations in northern South America presented a new configuration, particularly regarding the Guyana region and Brazil 1 . The three political entities of the Brazilian surroundings, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana (former British colony), Suriname (former Dutch colony) -after their independence processes-, and French Guiana, entered a process of economic modernization that greatly affected the relationship with Brasília.
British Guyana achieved its independence in 1966 and, in 1970, declared itself a Cooperative Republic, with a reorganization of the domestic economy and a position in foreign policy towards non-aligned countries, including Cuba and China. Suriname, independent of Netherlands since 1975, suffered a coup military in 1980; a situation that, equally directed the country towards the non-aligned field in diplomacy and towards the socialist ideology in internal politics.
French Guiana 2 , after a wave of emancipation in the 1970s, had a reconfiguration after the administrative reform carried out in Paris in 1982, reaching significant levels of autonomy.
Nevertheless, it remained a French overseas territory, the only one of its kind in South America 3 .
Brazil played a key role in the problems of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, especially in the erratic nature of its foreign policy, sometimes attached to the USA, sometimes allied to the movement of non-aligned countries; the same happened in Suriname with the famous -Venturini's mission‖, which landed in early 1983 in Paramaribo offering economic and military aid in exchange for the government's distance from Cuba (ÁVILA, 2011). French Guiana was left with something distant, being only indirectly affected by the Brazilian foreign policy.
In the wake of the end of the Cold War and the Washington Consensus, both the Cooperative Republic of Guyana and Suriname settled their diplomatic quarrels, redefined their states in the sense of liberal democracy and, with American support, fully joined the market economy. As they were focused on the Caribbean and Europe, their trade with Brazil remained at a low level, conferring little energy and concern from Itamaraty. 1 A region that joins the former colonial portions of France, Great Britain, and Netherlands. Guyana is the current name given to all coastal lands located between the deltas of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers (ROMANI, 2013). 2 According to Silva and Granger (2016), French Guiana is one of the nine outermost regions (ORs) of the European Union and has been part of the Republic of France since 1946, when it lost its colony status; in 2016 it became an overseas territorial collectivity. The authors report that French overseas departments, regions and local authorities enjoy complete legal equality with Hexagonal France. 3 Inspired by the decolonization movement in the world, some groups in French Guiana guided the total separation from European France, especially students, professors, some unions, and the black movement, in that time linked to the appreciation of creole and local culture (MAURICE, 2014).

Considering the scope of this dossier -History and International Relations in the Guyana
Regionthis article aims to discuss that the lack of local society participation has become a contender in the development of the Franco-Brazilian cross-border cooperation project. An argument is that the construction of this proposal did not result in a political project, as according to Dagnino (2004, p. 98, free translation), -[...] the notion of political projects is that they are not reduced to strategies of political action in the strict sense, but they express and convey and produce meanings that integrate broader cultural matrices‖.
Therefore, adopting a local scale perspective would mean establishing a platform not only with local demands, but also recognizing that domestic or external political processes imply ruptures that carry continuities (HARTOG, 2014), admitting that these elements would enable to shape an identity of goals. In the construction of Franco-Brazilian cross-border cooperation, sociohistorical experiences of its populations were not combined with the transformations proposed by the cooperative design.
Studies by Martins (2008Martins ( , 2014 (2020) in 2019 the population of the city of Oiapoque had 27,270 inhabitants and the commune of Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock had in 2017 a total population of 1,207 inhabitants (INSEE, 2020). 6 In 2017, the Binational bridge operated from Monday to Friday, from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm and from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm; as of August 2019, its traffic was also released on weekends and holidays with the inclusion of the interval from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm.  Dagnino's (2004) premise that identifies, in the context of Brazilian democratization in the second half of the 1980s, a shift in the political meaning of participation as an effective sharing of decision-making power for the management function, that is, fulfilled in the implementation and execution of public policies.

Franco-Brazilian cooperation on the Guiana-Amapa border: historical notes
In 1991 […] Anxious to promote cooperation in the economic, cultural, scientific and technical fields, as well as in new sectors of common interest; Desiring to develop their good neighborly relations in the border area situated on one side and the other of their common border; Considering that Brazil is a member of Mercosur and France is a member of the European Union, and aware of the importance of the increasingly close dialogue that these two regional groups develop (BRASIL, 1997, p. 1, free translation).
The following year, Presidents Jacques Chirac and Fernando Henrique Cardoso met in the commune of Saint-Georges de l´Oyapock. Since General De Gaulle, no incumbent president had stepped on Guyanese soil. The Brazilian president, in turn, was the first foreign leader to visit the French commune. The meeting of these presidents became a symbolic act of integration of bilateral relations between the two countries in the historical interactions on the Guiana-Amapa border. From then on, the establishment was: The Contracting Parties shall hold consultations each year to promote cross-border cooperation in all areas of common interest and for examining projects developed by the local authorities of the two countries, within the framework of national legislation.
Representatives of these local communities may be associated with these works. This consultation group will meet alternately in Brazil and France (BRASIL, 1997, p. 1, free translation).
The Joint Cross-Border Commission was organized, composed of Brazilians and French, arising from the opportunity to create a dialogical dimension in which the topics of common interest to the parties were discussed. In all, eleven meetings happened between 1997 and 2019, the first in Brasília (1997), all the others alternated between the cities of Cayenne (1999,2008,2010,2013,2016) and Macapá (2002Macapá ( , 2009Macapá ( , 2011Macapá ( , 2015Macapá ( , 2019 Below is a list of the problems faced by the population of Oiapoqueproduced with data obtained from the fieldwork conducted in the city -, which corroborates the argument that no border integration policy can be implemented without the participation of local actors and actions from the States directed to the demands presented by these individuals: • the peripheral location due to the distance from decision-making centers, both state and federal. BR-156, a federal highway that will integrate Oiapoque to Macapá by land, is not ready; approximately 160 km of asphalt pavement is missing and as the road is extremely steep, this stretch still partially supports the state of isolation that the population of Oiapoque suffers (SILVA, 2017); • the low demographic and economic potential compared to its national societies make the city unattractive to foreign investments; This situation may change when oil exploration begins in the wells acquired by the company E&P Brasil, a consortium between the French TOTAL (40%), the Brazilian Petrobras (30%) and the British BP (30%) 9 . The exploration assets are located on the coast of Amapá, very close to French Guiana (LUNA; VETTORAZZO, 2013); • absence of infrastructure (energy, transport, communications). The city suffers from a recurring lack of electricity; absence of asphalt pavement in the main streets and avenues, basic sanitation and internet; • vulnerability in the face of illegal acts: trafficking in drugs, weapons, and people; sexual exploitation of children and adolescents; smuggling of gold and fish; degradation of natural heritage (GÓES, 2019); • the precariousness of the communication channels so that the population can direct their demands to the decision-making process; • the lack of public policies aimed at promoting improvements in education, health, urban infrastructure; combating the prostitution of children and adolescents and drug trafficking and assisting those who discharged from such situations. Lourenço (2012) indicates that those are the peculiarities observed in border areasinfrastructural weakness; low economic performance; new territorial dynamics due to the intensification of the flows of people, capital, and goodswhich subsidize the proposal for crossborder cooperation in the European Union. The author argues that decision-making processes must occur at a local scale, that is, that decisions must be processed in border regions so that their development occurs based on the local reality.
Also according to Lourenço (2012), in the European Union, the proposal is to promote the territorial development of the community space and, consequently, constitute priority to the efforts of integration and reduction of the economic and social fragmentation caused by national borders.
In this context, and with this proposition, the ideal is that uniting people is more important than uniting States.
However, this is not confirmed in the institutionalization of Franco-Brazilian border cooperation and there are at least three significant arguments in this direction, namely: • the visa requirement for Brazilians to enter French Guiana, considering that in France this is exempted for a period of three months; on this topic, the Brazilian Party manifests: The Brazilian delegation underlined that the visa requirement to enter French Guiana is an obstacle to further bilateral integration and limits the potential for economic and social development of the cooperation. The Brazilian delegation reiterated the desire to see the entry visa requirement reconsidered, while recognizing the efforts undertaken by the French side to mitigate the issue (REUNIÃO…, 2016, not paginated).
• traffic barriers on the Binational Bridge over the Oiapoque River are discussed in more detail a few paragraphs ahead; • the ratification of the agreement to combat illegal mining operations, operated jointly between Brazilian and French military institutions, which reduced the number of mining activities without, however, creating subsistence alternatives for the miners (REUNIÃO…,

2016, not paginated).
Below is an excerpt from the 2008 agreement that allows to understand the provision of inspection and surveillance measures related to gold mining in the Guiana-Amapa border region, including the restriction of boat traffic to transport cargo and passengers on the Oiapoque River: The Parties commit to institute and implement a complete internal regime for the regulation and control of gold mining and exploration activities conducted in protected areas or areas of patrimonial interest within their respective jurisdictions. To this end, each Party commit to: a) submit research and gold mining activities to prior administrative authorization; b) submit the exercise of commercial activities related to unprocessed gold, especially sales and resale activities to administrative authorization; c) submit companies that sell granulometric sieves (crushers and mills) or mercury to the declaration of their activity to the competent administrative authorities (BRASIL, 2014, p. 2).
However, on the Brazilian side, this activity is regulated and it is not in a historical vacuum, since the nineteenth century there have been records of gold mining in the region of the Oiapoque river bay (ROMANI, 2013;DUARTE, 2016). As seen in the fragment, the agreement provides a set MARTINS, Carmentilla das Chagas; CAVLAK, Iuri. The dilemma of local participation in the Brazil-France cross-border cooperation (1990-2015) Dossiê of inspection and surveillance measures related to gold mining in the Guiana-Amapa border region, including the restriction of vessel traffic to transport cargo and passengers on the Oiapoque River.
Such measures were not combined with others, such as the generation of jobs and income for Brazilians repatriated that are from clandestine mines in French Guiana.

Local participation in French-Brazilian cross-border cooperation
Some of these issues can be identified in the interviews conducted in Oiapoque, when some of the respondents who, in their reports, made references to the Brazilian Army operations, which were aimed at combating cross-border and environmental illicit activities on the Brazilian border with French Guiana and Suriname (which is marked by the Oiapoque River channel). In these operations, however, approaches and searches of vehicles, boats, clandestine moorings, river and land patrols were conducted.
As  The deputy did not defend the illegal practice of gold mining, which is very harmful to the environment and the riverside populations, however, from his manifestation it appears that the decision was between the governments of France and Brazil, without the participation of representative segments of local societies, such as catraieiros or entrepreneurs in the river transport sector.
[...] I have a transport company, I make a line via Oiapoque, Ilha Bela and Vila Brasil and we have a steakhouse here in the city too, right? We have lived here in Oiapoque for eleven years and we were very embarrassed by the Brazilian Army, they made a barrier to inspect (I 9, Merchant of the river transport sector, in an interview granted in July 2013, free translation).
Because there was a time when they, the French, closed the passage to Saint-Georges, it was the biggest struggle for us to pass. The councilman struggled to get it, we paid a lawyer and that's how we got to work again (I 6, Catraieira, in an interview granted in July 2013).
Border cooperation is part of the regionalization policy in Europe, which recognizes the importance of creating community spaces with the involvement of contiguous territories and the It should also be noted that the negotiations occurred in absentia of the Government of Amapá and its people, without prior consultation or participation by society and the leaders of the State and municipality of Oiapoque, who did not have the opportunity to express their real interests, opinions and concerns regarding the issues that the Agreement signed intend to protect, in a process of exclusion of representatives of the Amapá people. [...] As for the economic aspects, it must be emphasized that the increase in repression of merchants and navigators on the Oiapoque River, will cause the unemployment in the municipality to worsen and expose the community to an increased risk of the occurrence of violence, drug use, and child prostitution (BRASIL, 2013, p. 20, free translation).
The question raised by the deputy demonstrates the lack of participation by the population of Oiapoque on the normalization of the fight against illegal gold mining in a perimeter of 150 km of Brazilian territory, an area that covers the municipality of Oiapoque in its entirety and part of the municipality of Calçoene. However, this is not a defense of illegal practices, but, as Bala Rocha argues, there was no concern in recognizing the existence of minings and miners in the Brazilian territory. If the combat operations are successful, there will be a flow of approximately fifteen thousand miners returning to Brazil and, their arrival will certainly happen in Oiapoque.
In addition, even though they are not established in the city, this contingent will cause a series of breakdowns in the daily life of the city. On the other hand, the area of competence of the agreement could seriously affect several Brazilians who work legally in the mining activity, such as the Lourenço mining, in the municipality of Calçoene: MARTINS, Carmentilla das Chagas; CAVLAK, Iuri. The dilemma of local participation in the Brazil-France cross-border cooperation (1990-2015) Dossiê We have no mining problem in Brazil, if you look, the mining area we have is in Lourenço, but it is legalized, on our side. We have no conflict, we have no problem with illegal mining. So they [french] have to take care of their area, we think so, they have to guard their area, preventing illegal miners from entering (I 3, Merchant in the civil construction sector, in an interview granted in July 2013, free translation).
Another point that corroborates the assertion about the lack of local participation in crossborder cooperation is the fact that in twenty-four years of validity, its real manifestation is the Binational Bridge over the Oiapoque river -[...] The biggest benefit that we received here was during the construction of the Binational Bridge. So here is one of the benefit factors: the bridge! But we know that it will really benefit the French‖ (I 1, Communication Advisor to the Oiapoque Prefecture, in an interview granted in July 2013, free translation).

Therefore, a close association between French-Brazilian cross-border cooperation and the
Binational Bridge is observed; a fact that stems from the local belief that the bridge will bring new opportunities in terms of socio-economic development, without, however, having the knowledge to whom the bridge will truly benefit.
According to Silva (2013), the physical integration provided by the Binational Bridge is interesting to France because of the connection it will establish with the Port of Santana 11 , which has an 11-meter draft against 3.7 from Port of Dégrad-des-Cannes, the most important in French The Binational Bridge over the Oiapoque river cost 71 million reais. The allocation of this resource expresses the financing of an intergovernmental program with priority given to the economic infrastructure, which has the purpose of favoring the convergence of public action in the Oiapoque-French Guiana border territory. The view of the bridge causes discomfort to a more observant observer because while the population of Oiapoque suffers due to the lack of investments in education, health, urban infrastructure, and sanitation, there is the bridge, built according to modern standards of civil engineering and architecture, but which, for the time being, does not serve anything or anyone, that is, as stated by d'Hautefeuille (2009, p. 9, free translation), -this bridge does not have a local origin‖. For local actors, the connection between improvements in their living conditions and the bridge over the Oiapoque River is not so evident.
This reflects the complete disconnection of this project from the local context. A simple element supports this observation: no study prior to this decision has ever been conducted to identify socio-economic opportunities for Guyana or even Amapá [...]. These types of studies were conducted only once the announcement was made, just because French law requires the preparation of impact studies before the implementation of infrastructure. These studies, incidentally, are based only on the microlocal and cross-border scale. They, therefore, ignore the presidential decision without justifying the necessity or the opportunity to build a bridge over the Oiapoque River (D'HAUTEFEUILLE, 2009, p. 10, free translation).
In the same direction was the pronouncement of federal deputy Sebastião Bala Rocha (PDT-AP) regarding the Binational Bridge, a circumstance in which he ensures that this infrastructure does not meet the demands of the local population on either side of the Guiana-Amapa border, as it is the result of a public policy that The bridge will serve for Bala Rocha, who has a diplomatic passport, or for Deputy Evandro Milhomen or for a businessman or a trader who obtains a visa and crosses. For the poor people of Oiapoque, the bridge is useless; it serves French interests as well, because, instead of bringing three ships with goods from France to the Port of Cayenne, it will bring only one to the Port of Santana, which is larger, has 12 meters of draft -the Cayenne only has three meters. But it is important to make it clear that it will not serve the people of Oiapoque; it will serve for Macapá, Cayenne, but not for São Jorge Council of Guyana; and Saint-Georges was represented by its prefecture.
Finally, reference is made to the decentralized cooperation agreement signed in Oiapoque, in December 2008(BRASIL, 2017c. Although it is not specific to the border relationship, its proposal to strengthen ties between subnational units would be punctual for the development of partnerships between local communities, if from Oiapoque-Saint-Georges. Furthermore, while recognizing the importance and the role of central governments in border cooperation, decentralization would act as a driving force at the local level, insofar as it would expand border understandings at a local scale (MEDEIROS, 2009). This agreement was ratified nine years after its signature, in its text the governments of Brazil and France define that decentralized cooperation is constituted with [...] the forms of cooperation and international action established between French territorial entities and Brazilian federal entities, as well as the respective civil society actors to strengthen the ties between the two countries, in line with the foreign policies conducted by National governments and with the internal legislation of each Party (BRASIL, 2017c, p. 2, free translation).
MARTINS, Carmentilla das Chagas; CAVLAK, Iuri. The dilemma of local participation in the Brazil-France cross-border cooperation (1990( -2015 To decentralize, in these terms, is to multiply actors and interests, bringing along the possibility of overcoming social, economic and cultural obstacles; which would make border cooperation more operational. In France, since 1982, there is a legal framework that regulates international relations of collectivities, however, the same has not happened in Brazil, which still does not have a law that regulates decentralized cooperation. However, even if decentralized cooperation has advanced in unofficial meetings, the agreement that will standardize it is currently pending in the National Congress and, if ratified, will provide significant advances for border The obstacles related to the institutionalization of border cooperation are precisely the lack of involvement of local actors and of resources to finance actions aimed at the reality of these populations, not considering as participation the presence of some border actors in the meetings of the Joint Cross-border Commission. For border cooperation to remain not only in the rhetoric of the actors and in more allegorical than concrete actions, but it is necessary to expand the communication channels, and this cannot happen without the -conceptual‖ involvement of the whole community as an informed community, understanding that the sharing of a common language and symbolic historicity is the most complete way to achieve this unity (BERGER; LUCKMANN, 1985).
Below I 4, returned immigrant, who currently has an inn in the city of Oiapoque, criticizes that border cooperation unfolds without the information on her deliberations reaching the Oiapoque, stating that: Information goes over our heads. So the people of Oiapoque, even here, are practically discriminated, you know? I always tell that to other people, we Brazilians, here we are at Oiapoque, we really are, having everything over our heads, we don't have this information as we need to have (I 4, Returned immigrant and Hotel Industry Trader, in an interview granted in July 2013).
MARTINS, Carmentilla das Chagas; CAVLAK, Iuri. The dilemma of local participation in the Brazil-France cross-border cooperation (1990( -2015 This information shows that the attempt to promote border integration to encourage socioeconomic development of border communities should include a conceptual framework that incorporates the experiences of the local population.
The people from Macapá came, the people from Brasília came and passed over everyone here [Oiapoque], even the local authorities were not heard. Then it came from Brasilia, and even from Macapá. So we are harmed here because we live here, we know the problems, we know the deficiencies. (I 2, Computer technician and Advisor to the municipal executive, in an interview granted in July 2013 The study of the minutes of the meetings of the Brazil-France Joint Cross-Border Commission allowed to abstract from the documentation some of the benefits that outline the horizon of Franco-Brazilian border cooperation. However, it also favored to verify that there is a lack of: I) synergy between actors involved in the institutionalization of cross-border cooperation; II) adjustments to reconcile constitutional differences in favor of common interests; III) attract financing resources.
When the bridge was designed, they did not include the catraieira class, they forgot the catraieira class, they did not hold a public hearing to discuss the conditions, what could happen with the economic impact, with the social impact, with the environmental impact. They forgot about the municipality, if they did something, it didn't come to the attention of the catraieira class. (I 10, Catraieiro, in an interview granted in July 2013, free translation).
The advances in French-Brazilian cross-border cooperation are timid, but they were identified in exchange for information to combat communicable diseases, as well as in exchanges in the educational, cultural, sports, and security and social defense areas. The partnerships with some more effective results are the following: the construction of the Binational Bridge and the extension of the French Guiana's optical fiber to Macapá, which will significantly improve broadband internet in the state of Amapá.

Final considerations
MARTINS, Carmentilla das Chagas; CAVLAK, Iuri. The dilemma of local participation in the Brazil-France cross-border cooperation (1990( -2015 However converging the interests of Brazil and France may have been, the non-involvement of the border societies, Oiapoque and Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock, became the contender for the development of cross-border cooperation on the Guiana-Amapa border. The decisions made in the traditional centers of power emptied the control of the immediately affected population, generating not only the lack of identification with the project but also a series of counterproductive attitudes, such as abusive inspection, state authoritarianism, among other attacks. Gonçalves' (2020) reflection, when problematizing the participation of non-state actors in governance in the field of international relations, inspires the argument that Franco-Brazilian crossborder cooperation must guarantee definitive and uninterrupted character to the local participation.
And considering that the social reality on the Guiana-Amapa border demands public policies for health, education, and urban infrastructure; and, on the other hand, of legal and institutional effectiveness in tackling pedophilia and sexual exploitation of children and adolescents and other cross-border crimes, it is imperative to recognizein the context of decentralizationthe relevance of non-governmental organizations and/or subnational entities.
Cross-border cooperation configured in the dimension of bilateral France-Brazil relations, as an innovative and necessary approach, remains in the imagination as an element to be realized in the future. This is confirmed by the arguments presented here that indicate the absence of local participation as a restraint to its construction as a political project that aggregates the aspirations (beliefs, interests, worldviews) of what is intended as collective life (DAGNINO, 2004).
In other words, in May 2020, when French-Brazilian cross-border cooperation will be twenty-four years old, there is much more to be done by governments to discipline the historical interactions between Oiapoque and Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock than cooperation aimed at incorporating multiple actors, expanding local participation in the decision-making process concerning the Guiana-Amapa border region.
Although border populations of Oiapoque and Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock experience many necessities, it is not a matter of intending that the governments of Brazil and France decide how these needs should be addressed. It is ensured that the specificities that make the Guiana-Amapa border interesting to these governments, cannot be interpreted only by premises that homogenize, sustained in methodological nationalism; or that exoticize, similar to others based on the geopolitical fact that this border forms a dyad between a European country and another South American country. They are spaces constituted by layers of time, in a multiplicity of ways of life, which are not related to chronologies, but to stories, of different temporal durations.