Why do they matter so little?

Why do they matter so little?

Why does an entire continent matter so little to world history?

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Too far from the main productive centres or trade routes.

WE WUZ SOCCER N SHIEEET

fuck off we invented potato

explain why they didnt become like usa then. what happened in south america that made it so shit compared to the english/french colonies in the north?

US made sure they never unified or got their shit together to the point where they'd threaten our hegemony over the region

any continent that produces pic related definitely matters to me

Monroe Doctrine

Race mixing.

Stop blaming the U.S. for everything.

t. Pablo Escobar

>everything

Where did anyone do that? We're talking about one region brainlet, can you handle that?

In addition to you have to look at the socio-political context

It was under control of the Spanish/Portugese, who were primarily interested in extractive economies, basically how many raw goods can we take out of here as quickly as possible without giving a shit towards the living standards of the people extracting those materials.

Contrast that to the English colonies, at least the Thirteen, that were treated instead as markets for finished goods. Colonies would ship raw goods, England would make finished goods, and then have the colonies buy them in mercantilist fashion.

The Spanish and Portuguese didn't really give a shit about their colonists except for the ends of glory, god, and gold.

Catholicism and race-mixing.

>implying Brazil isn't doing remarkably well in reshaping global trading norms and essentially is a regional hegemon that simply doesn't want to ascend to global relevancy

jesus christ user its like you dont even read foreign affairs journals.

>why does one region matter so little in history

>HURRPA FUCKING DURRR BRAZIL MODERN DAY POWER HURRPA DURRPA

This isn't /pol/, nor are we discussing modern country's, how retarded are you huehuehuecuck?

It mattered to the millions who spent their lives there.

but this Also it is a vast underpopulated area with few frictions besides commies stirring up shit and squabbles between generalissimos. They are part of the western world, they adopted the nationalist balance of power model (reinforced by their northern neighbor) and have always had full exposure to new technology even if they lacked capital investment. So events and progress have all been quite mundane.

South America's recent history has been one of exploitation and being used as a cum dumpster for horny Spaniards and Portuguese.

it's been a regional hegemon for about 100 (one hundred) years user. You're quite tetchy, have you had enough water for the day?

>it's been a regional hegemon for about 100
>citation needed

Act like a retard, be treated like one brainlet


is missing their retard, go back there

>hegemon of irrelevantland
Wew.

Spain and Portugal were shit tier at creating good colonies

It happened due to geographical determinism not sociopolitical differences.

The Northern US has a temperate climate with good grain production and ideal conditions for labor, industry, raising troops and a nice place for the elite to live.

Brazil is bankrupt. Not as bad as Argentina or, god forbid, Venezuela, but it's all going downhill.

The best countries in South America are the ones who suck America cock more, like Chile, Peru and Colombia.

Because it was colonized by Siberian nomads

>congolombia
>good

ROFL

Still people blame the U.S. for anything supposedly bad that happened in Latin America, as if we lacked agency.

Like blaming the United States for the lack of unification. The conflict between centralism and federalism was native to South America and lasted the entire XIXth century, with little to no U.S. participation outside of Colombia where they wrestled Panama out of them.

well, some of the countries, especially brazil, literally got pumped and dumped with coffee beans and were (and still are in some sense) basically coffee bean bitches to european countries and the US. moreover, the govts did shady shit like seize land from people to increase coffee bean production to try and join the world market basically fucking the people and the entire country over because theyre basically relegated to being coffee producing bitches and cant do anything else.

At this moment in time, most countries are bankrupt. What's interesting is that it's been getting a lot more influence in organisations like the WTO, especially in regards of how agricultural produce is being sold. I wouldn't be too surprised i Brazil turned out to be the biggest agricultural producer in the world within 20 odd years, with the tariffs that most countries slap on agricultural produce being lessened.
Their only rival was Argentina, rest of S.America was even more irrelevant and when your only rival is Argentina you've already won. Over the 20th Century they're the only ones to have provided any alternate path than to US Washington Consensus style economics, which is something you might have known if you'd ever actually read something with "citations" you dumb fuck.
I'm saying Brazil has always been of some importance, growing over the 20th Century.
I'm going to suck another man's cock tonight, I wish you the same sensation.

They all more or less ot cucked by USA supremacy during mid-20th century.

US more or less controls Latin America both in terms of trade, finance, and politics.

Only truly independent countries are Cuba and Venezuela.

It doesn't help that all Latin Americans are by almost nature a slavish population that still worship their white colonial masters, and any of their pre-colonial history is not even taught or shown to them. One has to wonder though how much this economically one sided relationship will last...

You don't understand, Brazil is REALLY bankrupt. We've spent the last 10 years pretending to be a world power, financing construction in Venezuela, Cuba and Africa, hosting the Olympic Games and now some states can't even pay the police anymore.

>Only truly independent countries are Cuba and Venezuela.

That's a good case against independence, then.

Socialism and Protectionism.

Venezuela and Argentina had France-tier GDP per capita in 1950 and nearly limitless potential to expand. Then populists like Peron ruined it.

>Their only rival was Argentina, rest of S.America was even more irrelevant and when your only rival is Argentina you've already won. Over the 20th Century they're the only ones to have provided any alternate path than to US Washington Consensus style economics, which is something you might have known if you'd ever actually read something with "citations" you dumb fuck.

Latin America has spent the last 100 years looking for alternatives to mainstream economics, looking for magic ways to spend more than we earn. Always cheered on by First World socialists who love to see little brown people inventing new ways to fuck themselves in the ass, then disappear when the bill is to be paid.

How many of those people who write things with "citations" and spent the last 10 years praising Hugo Chávez and Venezuela are willing to say anything about that now? What does the likes of Noam Chomsky, Joseph Stiglitz and Tariq Ali have to say?

>Only truly independent countries are Cuba and Venezuela.
Independent from toilet paper, I assume?

This

Dude, you okay? I don't think hate boners are supposed to get that big my man.

>Muh BRICS meme

How's the Brazilian economy doing lately?

Truth.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014–2016_Brazilian_economic_recession

You could argue that it's because a huge amount of the natives still exist.

I doubt the USA would be the success it is if the natives weren't defacto eliminated and the majority of the population was 50% native.

Another reason is the immigrant pool during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The USA had industrious hard working protestants seeking to make their fortune and new life in the USA.

South America got what, Spanish and Italian farmers? The fact that they already come from European countries of less importance sets the stage in the new world while USA got immigrants from Europeans leading nations.

>hard working protestants

you're right in the rest

I'd say the heat and terrain. It is only in comparison to North America that South America is so backward and things aren't looking too civilized in North America for this to mean much.

It's hard to have a growing intellect when people are always too hot to move or too cold to go outside and build.

We had a lot from Britain, France, Russia and Germany.

If you go the Litoral zone you can see lots of towns and small cities with rare north european names, just use Google Earth

What you do is extrapolate the current Latin America situation as if it existed in a void.

Seeking alternate ways to the monopoly of finance capitalism US neo-liberal implemented on both sides of the Atlantic makes sense. Latin America more or less had tremendous potential in the 19th century after they got rid off the colonial powers leeching off their wealth. But this potential was squandered when the US established another colonial paradigm now not centered on the direct exploitation of resources and plantation slavery like colonial powers did, but on trade tariffs and fiance domination Argentina's case).

If you look at it that way, then one doesn't wonder why Cuba or Venezuela revolted against this. It even astounds me how America pulled off the Temer coup without Brazilians losing their shits and creating a civil war situation.

I'd say the terrain is even worse than the climate.

Most of people in South America live in relatively temperate climates, either in the Southern Cone, or in highland areas of the Andes.

But those same Andes create huge logistical problems in several countries, as the Brazilian Highlands create for Brazil. Specially during a time when much of economic growth was driven by railways, it was literally impossible to build them in much of South America. And while highways are better suited for the continent terrains, it's still hard to build then in the terrain.

The only country with good terrain is Argentina with the pampas, no wonder they got such a headstart against everyone.

I know but not the majority at all and no where near enough, whereas most original US immigrants were British German or Irish

>the US were the only people interfering in Latin America
>Latin America is the only place the US interfered in

>industrious
>hard-working
>protestants

> they got rid off the colonial powers leeching off their wealth
Didn´t happened.
South America passed from the spanish empire to the british (not officially ofc, but all countries were integrated to the imperial economy). By the end of the war against Spain the new republics were heavily indebted to London banks, except for Paraguay, which was dealt with in the following decades.
The USA substituted the UK after WW2

No other power has had this much influence in Latin America since colonialism ended.

There was a soft attempt to bring in outside competition against America in Latin America during Lula's presidency and with the formation of BRICS. But Lulas ambitions were dashed with the Temer coup.

Argentina is currently blackmailed by the IMF, the long arm of US financial capital sharks.

Peru is somewhat more independent, but is too insignificant to do anything.

Total US bitches: Chile, Mexico, Columbia and all the rest.

>Seeking alternate ways to the monopoly of finance capitalism US neo-liberal implemented on both sides of the Atlantic makes sense.

Then why don't you do it in your own fucking countries?

The history of South America can be resumed as: "We implemented the stupid ideas that were developed in Europe or North America but they didn't apply on themselves."

It was like this with secularism, anticlericalism, socialism, modern architecture, everything. Le Corbusier never got to destroy Paris, but we destroyed our cities in Brazil for his ideas. Foucault never managed to influence the French judiciary, but here his complains about "punitive measures" in justice are taken seriously and criminals are left free because they are victims of society.

Do you know why no one lost its shit over the "Temer coup"? Because we are fucking tired of you coming here with your Chomsky books telling us how we should implement those socialist economic measures that you would never want enacted in your own home country because you know they would led to poverty and starvation. We are tired of smug intellectuals who cheer on those stupid economic policies and went shit falls out they just move to their apartments in Paris. We are so tired we would have a civil war if Dilma actually stayed in office.

The truth is that there is literally nothing wrong with agribusiness and mining. That's all we are good for anyway. Every single time we tried to use the state interventionism to build an industrial economy it failed and we ended up bankrupt in the end. Modern agriculture is industrialized anyway. But of course intellectuals don't want that. Intellectuals want statism and big government agencies where they can work as planners, they don't want us to follow our agricultural vocation because that would mean leave their jobs in civil service in big cities, move to the countryside and find a way to work in an orange juice factory. They didn't study Deleuze and Baudrillard to do that.

The myth of Paraguay is one of the most ridiculous historical myths of Latin America, and there are many.

To think that Paraguay was an industrializing economical power in the XIXth century and the Brits got Brazil and Argentina to destroy it over their fear of competition would be hilarious if we didn't have so many people believing this obvious bullshit.

>There was a soft attempt to bring in outside competition against America in Latin America during Lula's presidency and with the formation of BRICS. But Lulas ambitions were dashed with the Temer coup.

Lula ambitions were dashed because his economic policies failed and Brazil is bankrupt.

>Total US bitches: Chile, Mexico, Columbia and all the rest.

Also some of the fastest growing countries in the region.

It pays well beiing US bitch. I wish we could become one too.

Being a spic myself, I think it's a combination of things.

1. Geography and climate
2. Spain's irrelevance after the 18th century
3. Lack of political cohesion and national identity.
4. The paradox of plenty
5. European colonization of Africa in the 19th century.

I could go on and on but I'm gonna take my nap now.

To be honest, Lula economic policies didn't fail. His successor economic policies failed, because she tried to implement the interventionist policies that the intellectuals around Lula always wanted.

Now, obviously, this is ignored. It's kind of uncanny, because I remember clearly when in 2011 and 2012 left-wing intellectuals would come in support of the "Nova Matriz Econômica" and how that would revolutionize Brazil. Now that it failed and the country is suffering its worse crisis since the 1980s, this term and the intellectuals and economists that were behind it have simply disappeared from public sight.

Dude, Brazil is a country of 200 million people, you think everyone is going to be a farmer/miner?

Also I don't know why you are so obsessed over this Protestant and Hayekian way of thinking, assuming that all countries that don't spend as much as they make are failed. Modern economies run on debt. US in fact prints as many dollars it wants and runs trillions of dollars in debt. Modern economy is interconnected. How will you develop vocational training without public funded universities and colleges?

I am not saying to create state planned communist economy. But this neo-liberal agenda and ideology drilled into your mind by America herself, is pure madness.

It's hard to imagine a full blown civil war happening here for ANY reason considering that we went through a break with monarchism and a handful of dictatorships in the 30s and 60s without anything of the sort.

Soclialists, warlords who have more authority than the state, weak elites. Basically, everything went wrong at some point.

This part is actually relevant and you can't deny it.

>geographical determinism not sociopolitical differences.
no it was def both

Modern economies run on debt, I understand that, they also run on being able to keep the debt payments under control. The U.S. can do it because if they have any problem they can just print money, Europe can do it because they just tax the shit out of everyone and people pay anyway.

Latin America can't do it. If we just print the money, we have hyperinflation, if we decide to tax the shit out of everyone, people will just invest in other countries. This is the reality. You can accept it and act accordingly, or deny it and fight it and end up like Venezuela.

Civil war didn't happen in 1964 because Jango didn't want, some units of the army wanted to resist the coup.

And political radicalization is increasing in Brazil since 2013, in a way I've never seen before. We are lucky that the left-wing here hates the military and any kind of military discipline, so we will naver have nationalist army officers to break the military unity, or paramilitary guerrilla armies like Sendero Luminoso or FARC. The chance of civil war was the left controlling the government and refusing to leave (like Maduro does now), while private militias and state policies revolted with support from the population. That won't happen now anyway, unless still 2018.

Brazil is not bankrupt, it's only a temporary earthquake but this only means we were growing too fast and we shuld take care of other things for a moment (mainly politics).
We will surpass this as quickly as you can say "Temer" and what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

>Dude, Brazil is a country of 200 million people, you think everyone is going to be a farmer/miner?

As I said, modern agriculture is industrialized enough, it's not just farming and harvesting, there are other industries involved, like chemical industry for fertilizers, mechanical and automotive industries for tractors and other agricultural vehicles, and the whole food processing industry afterwards. This should be the basis of the Brazilian economy, not only that, of course. But it should start from that.

The problem is that our last government tried to seriously compete with South Korea in shipbuilding industry, with China in steel industry, etc, not to mention the subsidies to our outdated automotive industry which keeps it isolated from the rest of the world.

These policies only end up swallowing public money. Latin America in general will never be an industrial powerhouse like Asia, we don't even have the work ethic to that. It's time to accept this and act accordingly.

>every single majority white colony is prosperous, whether it's in the frozen wastes of Canada or under the scorching sun of Australia
>It's totally due to geography, goy!

Kill yourself.

I can almost feel the smell of a brazilian public university from this post.
Scum. Stop repeating what your low-tier marxist teachers tells you.

i really want to mash my forehead into that cake and pretend im argentina

Australia is a fucking failure, however.

I smell some U.S. progressive who has read too much Chomsky instead.

Brazilian Marxists don't blame the U.S. so much and so obsessively.

They do. They are the only people in the XXI century that still hold these ideas.
American progressives don't actually care about South America, they're too busy fighting the white supremacy and creating safe-spaces.

theyve got too much pride for that, you cant fault them for it, but its still wrong

Monroe doctrine

Stop crying, just because someone isn't a lolbertarian cuck doesn't mean he is a marxist nu-male.

The first makes no sense. South Americas climate is incredibly varied and it didnt stop them from having some of the greatest empires in the Americas in precolumbian times.

should have unified

it is relevant in that there are minerals there, and it's in the way of getting to the pacific

Should have fragmented more, actually.

States like Antioquia in Colombia or São Paulo in Brazil would be richer if they weren't chained to the rest of their countries.

Its a tropical dump, if SA was a temperate QT like North America or Europe it would have been far more important, tropical areas suck ass.

Hey, tropical areas bear some sweet fruit, and brown girls a qt.

Capitals like Santiago, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Bogotá, La Paz (Andes) and even Lima (Humboldt current) have relatively temperate climates.

Only parts are tropical. Theres a lot of temperate and cold environments too. Not that tropical climate prevents development anyway.

Nothing but jungles as far as the eye can see until you reach Argentina.

This is true but the British didn't make the north a proper market because they wanted to,but was simply that Spanish style resource extraction failed so hard they had to make do.

Prove this statement.

t. Maduro