Regional banks emerged around the 1960s with the mission of contributing to the development and integration of Latin America, primarily through the financing of infrastructure projects, essential to the region's industrialization and trade flows.In 2000, the South American Regional Integration Initiative (IIRSA) was created, under whose Secretariat the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), and FONPLATA -Development Bank -began working together to promote territorial planning and find financing solutions.Even with the dissolution of IIRSA, resulting from the paralysis of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) starting in 2017, the coordinated action of the three banks continued, through initiatives such as the Alliance for the Integration and Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (ILAT), the Sucre Declaration, and the "South American Integration Routes," demonstrating the resilience of infrastructure integration in the face of political change.Therefore, the overall objective of this thesis was to analyze the contribution of the development banks IDB, CAF, and FONPLATA to building regional infrastructure integration in South America.The methodology involved identifying integration models and operational concepts under which these banks operate; identifying the specific problems of Latin American regional infrastructure and its financing; and analyzing the performance of IDB, CAF, and FONPLATA both individually, focusing on documents, projects, and institutional structures focused on integration, and collectively, from the emergence of IIRSA to the Integration Routes.It was found that, despite the current general crisis in Latin American regionalism, both intellectual and institutional, the three banks are at the center of building a governance system for financing regional infrastructure in South America.However, they have shifted from a model centralized in IIRSA to one, after the end of this Initiative, focused on decentralized cooperation.
The investments of Caixas and Institutos de Aposentadoria e Pensões (CAP and IAP) in homes of Natal, between the decades of 1930-60, helped to boost up the local real estate market in consolidation at the time. Inserted in the first national policy on social housing in the country, these operations have demanded the creation of a wide qualified organizational structure, which would be from the "Central Offices" of Rio de Janeiro to the decentralized units of the federal states. The professionals linked to the Local Agencies have developed, on this matter, from activities related to the design and construction of residential complexes, to the daily study of financing proposals in isolated units. As from these studies, the evaluation of shelters was essential to the effectiveness of the policy, resulting in the production of data on the market value of the properties by observing and issuing judgments upon the living quarters of different social groups. Given these considerations, the aim here is to contribute to the understanding on how to operate these real estate actions in the legitimization of boundaries about the urban space and dwellings available to workers in Natal. Therefore, the views of the city and constructions expressed by the evaluating engineers in their technical reports have been taken as the focus. Being the main primary sources of work, these reports are part of the edifices process of CAP/IAP regarding Natal, whose content is systematized in the database "Enterprises", the HCUrb Research Group. In addition, there were used local newspapers at the time and interviews with professionals as complementary sources. It was found that, in general, the evaluations have configured – in a more everyday dimension of bureaucratic routines - a vehicle, among others, circulating ideas about "home" within the social security institutions, being imbued with assumptions historically constructed about the "modern habitat". Filled in loco, the reports expose the clash between modernizing ideals in vogue and clear limitations in the city scenario at the time. Fragmented images of the town are given to read through the labels assigned to the evaluated sites – these being coated of certain "scientific" character - which both legitimated and contributed to the dynamics of appreciation/depreciation of the soil and to the socio-spatial differentiation. Contradictions were evident in the endorsement given by the technicians when financing of admittedly precarious homes for insured disadvantaged categories at the local level - such as industrial workers - while strict regulations were imposed to new construction, designed, above all, to better paid categories. By identifying raters engineers as urban agents, members of a technical-focused operating system for safety and efficiency in the real estate investments of those authorities corporatist, it is desired the usefulness of further studies on these characters, their training, professional activity and participation in the construction of discourses and practices of intervention about the city and its buildings, discussing individual and grouped interests that were left behind.