Reverse Americas: The Other Scenario

What dang crazy butterflies, PODs, ASBs, WTFBBQs would it take to have Latin America as the prosperous united democracy and Anglo-French America as the disparate collection of sometimes squabbling, frequently impoverished states?
 
The problem is North America was colonized by liberal empires while South America was colonized by backward empires. The reason North America outperforms South America is the same reason Britain led the Industrial Revolution while Spain declined into mediocrity.
 
Of course, if you butterfly away the 1930 coup (maybe have a different president elected in 1928, say Lisandro de la Torre), and you could at least keep Argentina democratic, which would have helped in keeping it prosperous.
 

Typo

Banned
There is also that Latin America was built upon taking over existing native societies as oppose to simply building a European one from scratch.
 
The following post turned out too long. :D

@tallwingedgoat - Instead of backward Spain and Portugual how about a cutthroat France and England.

Africans in the Caribbean preferred to be under Spanish rule then Englands or France since these two nations really treated them badly.

The English claimed that they were more benign than the Spanish, who they depicted as monstrous and rapacious; the reality was that the English colonies of Trinidad and Jamaica were little better than death camps.
This is not to say the Spaniards were not also bad but in comparison to the English or French they were much better.

And when it comes to natives the French and English wipedout many natives. The Spaniards did do the same thing but in 1511 the Spanish crown passed a law to try to protect the natives. Afterall, while expanding one of Spains objective was to spread Catholicism. If you wipeout everyone then you cannot spread Catholicism.

But unlike the English or French the Spaniards in parts of the Empire did learn to live with the Natives. Mixing with the natives was widespread in certain areas. The English or French did not tend to mix with the natives.

An example of the Spaniards learning to with the natives would be after the Pueblo Native revolt in New Mexico:
The Spaniards for their part learned to govern with less of an iron hand.
They reduced demands for labor and tribute, and the encomienda system was never reestablished after 1680.
They assigned land grants to individual Pueblos, giving them clear European title to their own lands.
And they adopted a more tolerant approach to the traditional religion of the Pueblos.
Spanish New Mexico in the eighteenth century became more concerned with defending its northern borders against Apache, Navajo, Ute, and Comanche attacks than it was with subjugating and converting its Pueblo populations.
Change occurred at a slower rate and in both directions as Hispanic and Pueblo people interacted and intermarried.
The Spanish colony was restored and survived in New Mexico, but not entirely on Spanish terms.
Pueblo people had to make adjustments and accommodations in order to survive, but their resistance and resilience also reshaped Spanish New Mexico.
Today:
there are more Indians living in South America and thriving better than those in USA or Canada and there are more Indians than in the past living in South America. Whereas if you look at the Native Americans in North America, there are less Native Americans than in the past.
Some South American nations have many native legislators. Also, some have had native Presidents. President Morales of Bolivia is the most current. He is Aymara Native.

Photo of him. Found out that after the US and Mexico that Bolivia is number 3 in mineral wealth in the Americas:
evo-morales_web1.jpg




And lets not forget how the English and French were busy eliminating each other in Canada. Especially, bad was what the English did to the French Acadians in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward island. Many escaped to Louisiana.
Le Grand Dèrangement, or the Expulsion of 1755. The roundup and mass deportation of Acadians, which presaged British domination of much of North America, involved much cruelty, as indicated by letters from British governor, Major Charles Lawrence. In an attempt to eliminate the Acadians from Acadia, the British packed them by the hundreds into the cargo holds of ships, where many died from the cold and smallpox. At the time, Acadians numbered about 15,000, however, the Expulsion killed almost half the population.
Of the thousands sent to Massachusetts, 700 reached Connecticut and then escaped to Montreal. Many reached the Carolinas; some in Georgia were sold as slaves; many eventually were taken to the West Indies as indentured servants.
Look what the bad Spaniards did:
According to Cajun Country, after Spain gained control of Louisiana in the mid-1760s, Acadian exiles "who had been repatriated to France volunteered to the king of Spain to help settle his newly acquired colony." The Spanish government accepted their offer and paid for the transport of 1,600 settlers. When they arrived in Louisiana in 1785, colonial forts continued Spain's services to Acadian pioneers (which officially began with a proclamation by Governor Galvez in February of 1778). Forts employed and otherwise sponsored the settlers in starting their new lives by providing tools, seed corn, livestock, guns, medical services, and a church.
The UK. even today will not apologize to these people.

Going back to the main topic it would take a strong leader to unite South America. What you should be asking is if Canada and parts of the US had been divided by high mountains like the Andes and vast jungles with there tropical diseases would the US or Canada have developed differently. Much of South America is jungles and mountains. US and Canada had forests and no Andes.
 
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