The Moroccan Sahara conflict in Latin America between Falsehoods and Realities

Abstract

The Moroccan Sahara conflict is a regional dispute considered to be artificially created by Algeria with the aim of countering the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Morocco. This dispute, which has undergone changes over time, originated as part of the decolonization process and subsequently evolved into an ideological and geopolitical conflict characteristic of the Cold War. Today, it persists as a problem of separatism and terrorism, driven by the struggle for hegemony in the Maghreb and Africa. This conflict, which has lasted almost half a century, has been the subject of extensive studies and academic work in various universities around the world. This paper addresses the evolution of the Sahara conflict, its scope, its possible solutions from the Latin American perspective in order to analyze the region's perception of this conflict and the challenges it poses for the relations between Morocco and Latin America. For this purpose, the methodology used was exploratory and was based on exhaustive fieldwork, which led to a tour of almost every country in the region, from Mexico to Patagonia to the south of Argentina. The core of this work is based mainly on dozens of testimonies of political personalities, heads of state, foreign ministers, parliamentarians, academics, international experts and other relevant actors in Latin American countries.