4 - Tropical Determinism

Summary

Desolating earthquakes and hurricanes overtake us unawares, and we live in perpetual ambush of inevitable geographic cataclysms.… The climate dissolves our determination and incites our rapid psychological deterioration. The heat ages us before our time and too quickly causes us to decompose; its enervating pressure creates our national temperament.

With Latin American Independence, which was largely complete by 1824, dozens of new republics shook off the chains of colonial economic restrictions and monopoly. While struggling to achieve a semblance of political legitimacy and stability, they embarked on a path projected toward national advancement and material prosperity, hoping that without metropolitan barriers to trade, production, and immigration, they might follow the economic leaps being made by the industrializing north. Isolated Paraguay took significant, although ultimately aborted steps, in the direction of self-sufficient industry, but the rest of the region quickly discovered that with the end of their colonial relationship with Iberia, not only were they free to compete in world markets, they were forced to. There were benefits, of course. Manufactured goods – textiles, tools, tableware, timepieces – long coveted, could now be bought at reasonable prices without paying a premium to Iberia's merchants. But Latin America was in no position to compete in the production of industrial goods and would not be until the next century. The region's clearest path to prosperity was one they already knew well: the export of agricultural, mineral, and forest products.