It was the year 1825. Inspired by the example of the United States, the colonies of Meso and South America cast off their Iberian overlords in a series of wars of independence. All the young states of the America had great hope and promise ahead, and in 1828, South American independence leader Simon Bolivar summoned a conference of all the American states in Panama City, though little of substance was accomplished there.
Flash ahead 30 years. The United States was on the road to being an industrialized global superpower. She had established a solid intellectual tradition with the Transcendentalist movement, and well before that, a series of brilliant political essays by various American statesmen.
As for the states of Latin America, the promises of independence were not so bright as they became mired in civil wars as elite families battled for control, caudillos, and the near absence of a middle class or any technological or cultural accomplishments. Much of the population were illiterate Indians and meszitos who toiled under the whip in plantation agriculture or the mines of the Andes.
So the question I posit to Sup Forums. Where did we succeed while our fellow states in the Americas deflated like a punctured tire?
Colton Hughes
>1858 >Yanks being anything other than poofs Topkek.
Cooper Young
mate, you pretty much said it yourself
instability and purposeful backwardness thanks to the behalf of the affluent elite
Lincoln Cox
But Brazil is one of the most successful countries in the world
Jason Butler
it had way higher potential. >massive amount of wood for resources >No devastating wars >Dominant power in south america >massive amount of land
Asher Martin
I think it has something to do with bad trade routes: the US are facing Europe while SA is facing Africa. And also the class system and elitist, argicultural societal system. The US industrialized way quicker
Wyatt Adams
Protestant work ethics
Gavin Butler
>could not keep Cisplatina topCuck
Christopher Myers
...
Logan Morris
cis scum
Dylan Collins
Easy. America is white.
Ian Mitchell
North Americans had a government model to work off of and was intended to be a habited, self sufficient colony
SudamericANOs only had the messes that were the portuguese and spanish empires fucking south america up strip mining for gold and silver. South america wasnt intended by the iberians to be inhabited in the long term, just for resources to support the empires
Jonathan Carter
Nobody wants Ur a gayans
Jacob Davis
Spain had much more authoritarian political traditions than Britain desu.
Easton Williams
Centuries of practice.
The United States may have gained legal independence following the revolutionary war, but we had had defacto governing independence for centuries prior. The inattentiveness of the British government to the colonies allowed the colonies to govern themselves long before the American revolution.
Joseph Rodriguez
Don't forget mercantilist, it really slowed down economic growth in their colonies badly, once left to their own devices the system just collapsed They were control freaks
Isaiah Barnes
Spain itself was a backwards shithole, let alone the colonies. George Stephenson, an early British railroad pioneer, visited the Iberian peninsula in the 1840s and said "I have hardly seen enough people of the sort to fill a single train."
Kevin Collins
Well you did helped with that stability with us uh Also turmoil for not having a clear view in where we should go Relax lad, you are to big to fail and maybe doing ok but you are not """most successful"""
Ayden Smith
Everyone who went to America wanted to live there.
Everyone from Spain going to the Spanish colonies just wanted to rape and bring some money home.
Was that so hard?
Nolan Russell
>Also turmoil for not having a clear view in where we should go
Yeh there were repeated civil wars between pro-Church monarchists and secularist liberals. Political Catholicism was a ball-and-chain around Latin America that did not affect the US.
Julian Brown
Liberals vs Conservatives The Republic of Juarez vs Maximiliano's Empire Our political """stability""" begun unti 1934 in a period we call El Maximato We didnt have an army loyal to the country until 1913 Has been harsh man
Ryan Diaz
>Inspired by the example of the United States Not Brazil tho. We had an Emperor who proclaimed our independence. It was our golden age.
Aiden Sanchez
And btw, by the end of the Empire we were as rich as the US in per capita terms. The gap only appeared with the oligarchic governments of the first half of the 20th century.
Dominic Phillips
It did help that the US had closer cultural and linguistic ties to the superpower of the era.
Nathaniel Wood
lol that Misiones. reddit never gets my country borders right Chaco was ours for example
Adam Reed
República do Café com Leite foi um erro.
Josiah Martin
>closer cultural and linguistic ties and geographical ones compare how long a steamboat wold take to sail from New York to London with how long it would take from Buenos Aires to Paris but the last nails in the coffin were the World Wars, all focused on Europe, Near Asia and USA. South America was totally out of the conflict, both militarily and economically
Isaiah Stewart
Our border with Bolivia in Acre is both ugly and ahistorical too.
Benjamin Turner
Now Spain, even during the glory days of the XVI-XVII centuries was a poor country with no industry or middle class but for a time got enriched by the gold and silver from the colonies, all of which went to build the nobility new palaces, the Church, or funding military campaigns.
Cameron Garcia
President Adams sent two US delegates to the Panama Conference, but he encountered considerable hostility from, especially, Southern states that were reluctant to accept the brown, Catholic countries of LatAm as their equals. One delegate died during the trip to Panama City.
While the US had good relations with Latin America during the early years and was often seen as a brother republic, this began to change after the Mexican War and there was increased distrust and fear that the US was willing to join in with the European powers in milking the region's resources.
Thomas Thompson
people that colonised north america wanted to live there while the spaniards only wanted to extract resources from their colonies. this led to differences in population, infrastructure and idiosyncrasies.
Julian Martin
>the inattentiveness of the British government to the colonies allowed the colonies to govern themselves long before the American revolution.
This is true to a fault. It was ironically that revolution that allowed Britain to have a strengthened relationship with its other colonies. The USA tried to invade Canada at one point, but we couldn't ignore it, we had to set an example that we could protect what we had won.
Same with the Falklands too. American history changed a lot about Britain's future and where it 'could have' headed.
Colton Reed
>The USA tried to invade Canada at one point, but we couldn't ignore it, we had to set an example that we could protect what we had won
"Peaceful annexation of Canada by the US might have been possible down the road, however the War of 1812 effectively ruined any chance of it happening. The use of brute force merely strengthened Canadian nationalism."
Samuel Perez
>tfw no Imperial Federation >tfw no United States of North America
soon after the US industrialized, Latin America became prime real estate for labor and resource exploitation by north america and western europe
then the US imposed their neoliberal economic order on Latin America, which destroyed the gains of import substitution and allowed extremely repressive governments to engage in state terrorism and essentially genocide political dissidents who were only fighting for their right to dignity and livelihood
fuck the USA desu senpai
Eli Moore
this explains a lot,
but then we have a place like australia, that was a fuckin prison and now is a first world country
Jaxon Nelson
Don't let the Aussies fool you, it wasn't a hardcore prison for thigs and badasses, they hung those people. Australia was a penal colony for mostly debtors and mild ne'er-do-wells. Basically fully functioning members of British society that had fallen on hard times.