Inspired by @TheMann and his ideas for making Mexico a more prosperous land. Let's see how Mexico and other Latin American countries could be made into at least rapidly developing nations.
AHC: A Prosperous Latin America
- Thread starter Duke Andrew of Dank
- Start date
For Argentina all you need is a better response to the WWI beef glut. Have the government spend money on further industrialization and you could pretty easily keep them in the first world economic tier they were in. The post war crash and its effects are really what knocked them out of that level. If they spend there money wisely and diversify their economy then Chile is going to have to follow along if only to keep within shouting distance by using their nitrate money, which will force Peru to follow along in order to keep parity. With Argentina and Chile spending their WWI largess on industrialization, smartly, they very well could end up being the drivers of economic progress for the entire southern cone region.
I don't know if there's any simple solution for making a region as big and diverse as Latin America more stable and prosperous than it was in our timeline. One thing's for certain though, Latin America would require a lot less political meddling from the United States to get a better chance at functioning properly.
True, though even without US involvement, Latin America was no stranger to occasional military coups and civil wars in the past. Also, there's the issue of widespread poverty and sky-high rates of violent crime, which could probably be blamed more on the legacy of Spanish/Portuguese colonial rule.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I agree. Too much the feudal model of a small upper class and a large peasant class.
ATL: Not sure if this part of the world really had that many more revolutions than any other part, but . . . . . if one of these revolutions had hit it right as far as right mix of govt and private investment, union rights but not too much, and maybe a few other factors . . . . .
that economy rolls forward. And maybe becomes a model for nearby nations.
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For whatever reason, the Spanish and Portuguese were just not that into education, or education in their colonies, compared to the British. The contrast in the eighteenth century between the number of universities, printing presses, and journals in the British North American colonies vs in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies is hard to believe.
So once officials were no longer sent out from Madrid and Lisbon, you had a situation in the new Latin American countries where even the elites were pretty ignorant. That is one reason why monarchism was thought of as a reasonable political option, the argument was that there were not enough educated people to make republics successful and the historical record supports this.
There is one issue that I can think of that can't be overcome, and that is an issue that affects sub Saharan Africa, and that is that South America is somewhat geographically isolated. The development of Latin America is often negatively compared to that of late twentieth century Southeast Asia, but Southeast Asia sits literally where the world's major trade routes converge. Geographically, the closest continent to South America is Africa, and the geography of the continent is bad even for internal communication.
So once officials were no longer sent out from Madrid and Lisbon, you had a situation in the new Latin American countries where even the elites were pretty ignorant. That is one reason why monarchism was thought of as a reasonable political option, the argument was that there were not enough educated people to make republics successful and the historical record supports this.
There is one issue that I can think of that can't be overcome, and that is an issue that affects sub Saharan Africa, and that is that South America is somewhat geographically isolated. The development of Latin America is often negatively compared to that of late twentieth century Southeast Asia, but Southeast Asia sits literally where the world's major trade routes converge. Geographically, the closest continent to South America is Africa, and the geography of the continent is bad even for internal communication.
Anglo America vs Latin America is a night and day example of inclusive vs. extractive institutions covered in Daron Acemoglu's book Why Nations Fail. In the United States and Canada most of the natives were killed off the so the colonial power had to build institutions that would generate wealth for most of the population and attract immigrants.
In Latin America a larger proportion of the population was left to be used as slave labor so there was less need to attract settler. The colonial socio-economic system was designed to squeeze every last cent from the colony in question and send it back to Spain. After independence, the Spanish metropole was simply replaced by a small, mostly white, planter elite who dominated the economy.
Latin American colonies with lots of settlers like Uruguay and Argentina still had problems because they inherited the essentially feudal institutions from 15th century Iberia that were imposed on a Latin America with a subject population of natives and some slaves in the Americas.
In Latin America a larger proportion of the population was left to be used as slave labor so there was less need to attract settler. The colonial socio-economic system was designed to squeeze every last cent from the colony in question and send it back to Spain. After independence, the Spanish metropole was simply replaced by a small, mostly white, planter elite who dominated the economy.
Latin American colonies with lots of settlers like Uruguay and Argentina still had problems because they inherited the essentially feudal institutions from 15th century Iberia that were imposed on a Latin America with a subject population of natives and some slaves in the Americas.