South America

South America is a unique synthesis of ancient histories and post-modern societies. Archeological excavations suggest that just as on most other worlds of the ITA, the South American continent was first settled by Native Americans along the Pacific coastline of the continent anywhere from ten thousand to twenty thousand years before the present. Over millennia, the Native American populations of the Andes mountains gradually began to develop sophisticated civilizations. By the beginning of the Common Era, sophisticated kingdoms had coalesced along the desert coasts and in the fertile valleys of the Andean highlands. These civilizations reached their pinnacle in the 15th century with the creation of the Incan Empire, a unified imperial state that controlled most of western South America.

In the 16th century, though, the Incan Empire succumbed with the rest of South America to European colonial rule. Despite isolated British, Dutch, and French settlements on the northern coast of South America, Spain and Portugal acquired almost all of the continent. From outposts on the Atlantic coast, Portugal managed to consolidate its control over the entire area of what is now Brazil and Guyana, despite a brief interlude of Dutch control of northern Brazil in the mid-17th century. Spain, for its part, expanded into South America from its territories in the Caribbean and Peru, first completing Spanish control over Venezuela and the Andes, then colonizing Chile and the La Plata basin.

Under Spanish and Portuguese rule, South American contributed greatly to the relative prestige of both countries well into the 18th century. For Spain, the gold and silver of Peru played a crucial role in financing Spanish preeminence in Europe, while Brazil's abundant resources of wood and sugar cane fields helped finance the worldwide Portuguese trading empire. The South American possessions of both countries also provided a necessary population valve for emigrants. By and large, South America was administered solely to reinforce the glory of the mother country. Local economic and political concerns being ignored at best, actively suppressed at worst.

As the 18th century developed, many South Americans inspired by Enlightenment radicalism began to agitate for independence. In the course of the French invasions of Spain and Portugal in the Napoleonic Wars, all of South America eventually gained independence from their colonizing countries. In the case of Brazil, independence came neatly in 1822 as a result of a peaceful division of the realms of the House of Bragança between Brazil and Portugal. In the case of Hispanophone America, though, decade-long civil wars and wars of independence led to the eventual emergence of nine independent states where once there had been three vice-royalties united under the Spanish Crown.

The first century of South American independence was turbulent. In Brazil, the Imperial regime made a gradual transition to constitutional monarchy following the débâcles of the Franco-Brazilian War and the brief civil war initiated by aristocratic slaveholders. In Hispanophone South America, the messy aftermath of the wars of independence led to continuing instability in the entire area, including numerous civil and international wars and perennial political instability. Only in the 1840's did things begin to improve, as revolutionary changes were afoot.

South America's close historical, religious, and political links with Europe likely made the spread of the 1848 European revolutions to South America inevitable. Along among the major countries of South America, the Empire of Brazil avoided significant disturbances through its relatively liberal and popular constitution, while the isolation of Peru and Bolivia shielded them from foreign influence. Elsewhere, though, the support of Second Republic France allowed the revolutionary uprisings in South America to succeed. Uruguay's revolutionary transformation occurred without great loss of life, as the old oligarchic regime was overthrown and replaced with a unitary democratic republic on the French model. In Argentina, Chile, Colombia and in Venezuela, civil conflicts lasting anywhere from some few months to several years overthrew the provincial oligarchies. In their place, federal republican governments were established that effectively united each country's fractious provinces and established bourgeois democratic republics. By the mid-1850's, almost all of South America had acquired constitutional democratic rule. Even though this system wasn't secure in many places -- Argentine and Colombian politics remained highly unstable for decades -- it managed to survive and become firmly established by the beginning of the 20th century.

Immigration always played a prominent role in the development of South America. Already, in the first half of the 19th century, several million British and German immigrants had settled in the fertile agricultural lands of southern South America, from Chile to Brazil. This significant foreign input contributed greatly to the success of the democratic movements in South America after 1848. In the second half of the 19th century, though, immigration had a revolutionary effect on all South American societies. The combination of stable politics, the immense economic opportunities present in most of the continent, and the 1853 passage of anti-immigration legislation in the United States made South America an irresistible destination.

Over the course of the next two generations, almost forty million people emigrated to South America, half settling in Brazil, a quarter in Argentina, and the remainder elsewhere, but particularly in Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela. This massive influx helped stabilize democracy in South America, by overwhelming the old oligarchic elites. Many of these immigrants settled in rural areas, where they established freehold farms on the Australian model. Others -- particularly in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil -- settled in cities. The mass immigration created cosmopolitan cultures across the region. For instance, Argentine literature and dance was strongly marked by the heritage of the Italian, German, and French immigrants, while Brazilian culture became wholeheartedly multicultural (though in a Lusophone Catholic context). At the same time, the new large urban proletariats created the critical mass of wealth and labour force that was necessary to initiate the industrialization of South America. As in other fields, the countries of the Southern Cone and Brazil led South America in this field: By the First World War, Brazil had become the seventh industrial power in the world, while living standards in the Southern Cone were almost as high as in Australia and appreciably higher than western Europe.

Given the large South American population, and the region's high level of economic and political development, the emergence of South American states on the world stage as Great Powers was only a matter of time. Indeed, by 1914, Brazil -- with sixty million inhabitants and an economy as large as that of France -- would have qualified as a Great Power but for its political isolationism. The eighteen millions of Argentina constituted only a regional power, but the wealth of Argentina made it a force to be reckoned with in international trade. This wealth and political stability was enough to allow South America -- in particular, the ABC alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, the most powerful and modern countries of South America -- to resist the 'gunboat diplomacy' pioneered by the United States in Central America and the Caribbean.

Although the South American countries were closely linked and sympathetic to the Franco-British Allies, South America remained neutral for the first two years of the First World War, though pro-Anglo-French neutrals. Only in 1917 did the South American countries declare war on Germany, and dispatch contingents of their national armies to fight in the final Anglo-French offensives on the Western Front. Even though South Americans were spared the horrors of trench warfare, South America shared in the general economic dislocation that followed the end of the First World War. As founding members of the League of Nations, they refrained from the economic protectionism that marked North America. However, all South American states sharply limited European immigration from Europe in the hopes of limiting the unemployment of native-born workers, this despite a remarkable fluorescence of popular culture that depended heavily upon immigrant skills and immigrant influences in the erstwhile immigrant-receiving countries.

The Great Depression of the 1930's savaged South America just as it did the rest of the world. Indeed, only the United States and Japan suffered more from the world-wide economic collapse of the early 1930's. By the mid-1930's, though, the South American states had adopted the general League consensus in favour of Keynesian economics, and the industrialized states of South America began their tentative recovery inside the economic framework of the League of Nations. Such charismatic politicians as Joao Giorgio Antabuste in Brazil, Miguel Giguère in Uruguay, and Antonio Sebastían in Chile, came to prominence as advocates of social-democratic societies organized in peaceful regional and global confederations. Perhaps for the first time since the formation of the ABC entente cordiale in 1915, the idea of a South American organization of some kind including both Lusophone Brazil and the dozen different Hispanophone states of South America was introduced into the South American political vernacular. Even the isolated and impoverished Andean states began to evidence an interest in the idea of South American unity.

In 1940, the Second World War began in Europe. For the League, South America was tremendously important as a reserve of industrial and military strength in case the European War came to involve League member-states. Many South Americans were not unnaturally interested in the fate of Europe, given South America's particularly close links with that continent on almost every level. Following the German attacks on League states in Europe in spring of 1943, the South American states enthusiastically joined the war against Nazi Germany. Argentine and Chilean army units transported to France played a vital role in preventing a German breakout into Lorraine, while the sheer weight of the Brazilian army, advancing north into Greater Germany and Czechoslovakia from Italy, contributed to the eventual Nazi defeat. The Italo-Brazilian zone of occupation in Austria introduced Brazil to the intricacies of international politics, as did Argentina's joint management of northwestern Germany with Britain. At a cost of a quarter-million dead between all of South America, the industrialized states of South America had prevented a Nazi conquest of central Europe and strengthened their ties immeasurably with Europe and the rest of the League.

The post-war era of prosperity saw South American prosperity blossom immensely. The Southern Cone and Brazil comfortably maintained the status as some of the wealthiest regions in the world; indeed, northern Brazil, hitherto a laggard, caught up to southern Brazil following the success of the civil rights movement there. Elsewhere in the continent, Venezuela blossomed into one of the richest countries in the world in the space of thirty years, while Colombia finally attained First World standards of living. Even the poorer countries of the Andes managed to attain some measure of prosperity, thanks to land reform, seasonal labour migration, and increased investment in health care and education.

As the general prosperity of South America reinforced itself throughout the continent, centripetal pressures inevitably grew. Prior to the mid-20th century, most South American trade was conducted with countries and regions outside of South America. As time progressed, though, the improvement of continental transportation led to rapid increases in trade within South America. At the same time, migrational patterns began to reflect this growing internal concentration on trade. As the 1950's progressed, immigration from Europe dropped off sharply while internal South American immigration grew sharply in importance; in the 1950's, for instance, a bare majority of immigrants coming into Argentina and Chile came from Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, while several million Colombians immigrated to prosperous Venezuela over the 1950's and 1960's.

This growing informal unification of South America naturally encouraged proponents of some kind of wider South American union, on the European model. Many South Americans were interested in union as a means of encouraging economic growth, while others saw it as a means of fostering a self-confident continental identity, and still others saw it as a means of asserting South America's independence from the increasingly aggressive United States. While the more authoritarian regimes of South America remained skeptical, South American democracies became increasingly interested in the idea of a regional confederation. Following a series of conferences held in the Uruguayan resort city of Punta del Este in the late 1950's, the South American Community became a reality on the 2nd of July, 1960. With Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile all founding members, the Community's stated goals -- issued from its permanent headquarters in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo -- were to establish a fully unified internal market and formal institutions of common defense and foreign policy.

The 1970's saw the rapid expansion of the Community's membership. Following their decolonization in 1968-9, the Francophone republics of the Antilles and Guyana and the Anglophone states of Trinidad and Tobago, Surinam, the Leewards, and the Windwards, joined the South American Community as full member states along with newly-prosperous Ecuador and independent Puerto Rico in 1971. The democratization of the Andean republics led to their progressive incorporation into the Community. This period of expansion expanded the Community's membership beyond the old core of wealthy Hispanophone or Lusophone countries facing the South Atlantic, into the poorer and non-Latin areas of the Andes and the Caribbean. In Peru and Bolivia, for instance, two-thirds of the populations in each country were Native Americans, speaking the Quechua and Aymara languages respectively. Paraguay was almost unilingual in Guaraní, while the Francophone and Anglophone states of northern Central America and the Caribbean were far more strongly marked by their connections as components of the African diaspora and their cultural links with the rest of the Anglophone and Francophone worlds that with the South American mainland. French and English acquired co-official status with Spanish and Portuguese as official languages of the Community, while Quechua, Aymara and Guaraní gained official status in Community dealings with the countries in which they were spoken.

Despite the problems of the Community's enlargement, the 1970's were a particularly prosperous time for South Americans. Despite the growing chaos in the United States, the Community remained stable, even benefiting from the influx of American capital and skilled American refugees into Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. The Community shared fully in the League's economic boom, with the developed countries of the Community retaining their world leadership, and the newer member states closing part of the gap between themselves and the First World over the course of this decade. South America's cultural influence remained a major feature, as Brazilian music, Argentine dance, and Chilean and Venezuelan literature retained their worldwide influence. Indeed, as South America consolidated its position of world political and economic leadership, its cultures became increasingly more important. Brazil found that its global economic prominence made the Lusophônia important worldwide for the first time since the 17th century, while the sophistication of the Hispanophone Southern Cone, Venezuela, and Colombia made the Hispanophone world an increasingly more global culture, vying with the francophonie.

The South American Community remained neutral in the Third World War, along with the rest of the League. Aside from some Siberian missiles targeted at Brazil  -- all intercepted by the South American ABM network), South America escaped even the minimal involvement that beset Japan, Korea, and the European Commonwealth. As a net food-exporting region, South America avoided the famines that devastated so much of the Northern Hemisphere, and as a landmass located in the Southern Hemisphere, it likewise avoided the Long Winter that beset the North until May of 1983. The emergency 1984 censuses suggested that of the 330 million residents of the Community as of the middle of 1982, three million people -- just under 1% of the Community population -- died as a result of the Third World War, mainly from post-War epidemic disease and cancers.

South America did not escape the post-Third World War global depression that beset the surviving economies. Despite this, its relative self-sufficiency let South American economies recover relatively early. By the beginning of the 1990's, the economies of the Southern Cone and Brazil had regained their pre-War levels of output. The poorer countries of western South America and the Caribbean -- including Venezuela -- recovered more slowly, but they likewise regained their pre-War standards of living by 1994 at the latest.

In the modern world, the South American Community and its member states are enormously important factors. Brazil, for instance, with its almost 158 million inhabitants and its highly developed economy, is easily one of the dominant economic powers in the world, while its close connections with Portugal and Angola allow Brazil to function as South America's bridge to Europe and Africa. Brazilian sources continue to drive global pop culture, with Brazilian musicians and writers creating highly influential models that are emulated worldwide. Argentina -- as of 2000 the fifth-wealthiest state in the world on a per capita basis, and home to 60 million inhabitants -- is likewise a major force to be reckoned with, both as the most populous Hispanophone state in the world and as as a major influence on the rest of the Hispanophone world.

Aside from the two giants of South America, the Community includes many other states, some that are just as prosperous -- or more so -- than either Argentina or Brazil. Uruguay's five million inhabitants, Costa Rica's four million inhabitants, and Venezuela's 27 million inhabitants all enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world, on part with Australia, France and Argentina. These three states lack the cultural influence of Argentina, but they are all stable social democratic states that are just as marked by their immigrant heritage as anywhere else in the world.

The Republic of Chile is poor, by the standards of Argentina or Uruguay, with a standard of living and a GNP per capita on par with Portugal or Greece existing alongside a population of 15 million. Regardless, Chile is an eminently stable democratic socialist state, unitary in structure save for the self-governing Mapuche people in the Patagonian provinces, and a self-identified model for social and economic justice worldwide.

Colombia is poorer and more anarchic than Chile. Unlike any of the other more purely Hispanophone or Lusophone states of the Community, Colombia never received large numbers of immigrants. In fact, for most of its modern history, Colombia has been a country of net emigration, with most of the emigrants directed towards Venezuela. Due to its complex history of colonial settlement, Colombia has been a federal republican state since the middle of the 19th century, with a long history of inter-provincial conflict. Despite this, it has maintained a viable democratic system for more than a century, and since Colombia became a founding member of the Community, Colombia has become a marginal First World economy. Its 37 million inhabitants enjoy a steadily rising standard of living. Ecuador is similar to Colombia, except in covering a smaller territory, and possessing a total population of only 11 million people.

The Andean states are unique in the context of the South American mainland, inasmuch as they are overwhelmingly Native American in language, and possess Second World economies. Peru is the largest of these countries, with a total of 23 million inhabitants, two-thirds of them speakers of the Quechua language. As the largest of the Andean republics, Peru has the more prosperous economy, with a large and growing Quechua middle class taking advantage of Peru's official policy of Spanish/Quechua biculturalism. Bolivia is more purely Aymara-speaking and impoverished, depending heavily upon the remittances of migrant workers in the Southern Cone. Paraguay is a unique country, with a population of five million people that is almost entirely of Native American Guaraní stock and close economic and political ties with Argentina.

The Republic of Puerto Rico is unique in the South American Community. While all of the other Hispanophone states now part of the Community gained their independence in the first quarter of the 19th century, Puerto Rico only gained independence from Spain in 1973, following a narrowly-won referendum in favour of independence. Puerto Rico, as the most geographically exposed member of the Community, is almost the poorest member, with an average standard of living barely higher than that of Bolivia. This poverty has contributed to the formation of a Puerto Rican immigrant diaspora elsewhere in the Community of two million people, almost all living as naturalized citizens in Venezuela and Spain.

The remaining five member states -- the Antilles, Caribbea, Guyana, Surinam, and Trinidad -- are perhaps more Atlantic than South American in outlook. The Francophone republics of the Antilles and Guyana are overwhelmingly populated by Creole-speakers of African descent, whether descended from 17th century slaves or 19th and early 20th century immigrants from what was then French Africa. Although poor relative to the more developed economies elsewhere in the Community, both republics are developed quickly. In particular, the Guyanais capital of Bélem, home to the main League of Nations spaceport, is enjoying considerable prosperity. Both the Leewards and the Windwards are a poorer confederation of Anglophone islands, with substantial emigrant populations in the British Isles, Brazil, and Venezuela. Trinidad is a bicultural island nation, with a population divided evenly between the descendants of African slaves and the descendants of South Asian indentured workers. In independent Surinam, people of various Indian cultural heritages make up a 60% majority of the Surinamese population, making that country the leading gateway between the Community and the worldwide Indian diaspora.

The modern South American Community is not as tightly-knit a confederal state as Europe -- there is no common South American currency, for instance, and international law holds that unlike the member states of the European Commonwealth, the South American Community member states remain fully sovereign. Despite this, the Community is clearly following the path of the Commonwealth towards a tighter federation. The Continental Exchange Rate system links all 16 national currencies in a network of fixed exchange rates, while the South American Treaty Organization is a common military command and mutual-defense organization for all Community members. At the same time, of course, the same customs union created by the Punta Del Este Treaties has survived and been deepened extensively, to allow for the almost entirely free passage of goods and individuals between all of the member states of the Community.

In early 2000, the South American Community's unity was confirmed in the course of the intervention against the Central American states, as they engaged in a campaign of genocide against the inhabitants of the autonomous Nicaraguan province of Mosquitia. In the course the three-month-long armed intervention, hundreds of thousands of refugees -- at first Mosquitians, then Central American Hispanics -- fled into Costa Rica, the Community continued its military campaign in the area, and Central America used orbital-bombardment weapons against several Community targets, including a foiled attack upon the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. Despite this profoundly stressful conflict, the Community remained firmly united and intact. Plans for a strengthened Community -- including the possible establishment of a Community currency by 2010 or 2015, and a joint colonization program of alterworlds -- have been issued since the end of the Central American conflict.

As the 21st century continues, the future for the Community and the continent of South America seems bright: In all likelihood, South America, its cultures, its economies, and its unique political systems will continue to exert a major influence on the world at large.