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After reading this and this threads, I've been somewhat leaning to the answer "no", for the question in this thread's title.

Indeed, there is a lot of reasons to explain the OTL fate of Latin America:
-a large, surviving population of indigenous people who've been left uneducated by European strict hierarchy system, ruled over by corrupt, small European-descended elites
-exploitation-based infrastructures, made with no other purposes than the enrichment of colonizing states
-post-independence balkanization into smaller nations with lot of disputes, conflicts, and wars which hampered developments even further

In contrast, in North America we get:
-a society pretty much similar with the European version, and white settlers majority ruled by democratic and constitutional style of governments
-infrastructures more geared toward industry and manufacturing
-obviously no balkanization

But in the other hand, the above factors can still be plausibly changed by right PODs: a bit more luck for First Mexican Empire, Gran Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina, or maybe balkanization of Thirteen Colonies post-ARW, etc, etc.

Anyway, this is rather similar with "Europe/China united/disunited" problem: Europe is more likely to be disunited than China, indeed, just like North America is more likely to be industrialized than Central and South America. But that doesn't close the possibility of some ATLs where it is the exact opposite that actually happened.

So what do you guys think?
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