200 years of independence from Latin America and its geopolitical evolution. A view from South America

Abstract

It can be said of America as world political actor, that it all began in the routes of independence fought by its member countries already two hundred years ago, assertion sustained in the displacement of the European ideology, its historic processes interrelated with criollismo and the change that this could have caused in its beginnings for the economy sustained by the colonies. In Latin America, the 20th century, analyzed from the geopolitical stance, was revolutionary with regards to the toughness with which the geographical limits of politics from Mexico to Chile exploded. That century also witnessed the rise and development of factors of power that are non-national: drugtraffickers, black market of weapons, terrorist organizations, iniquitous financial companies and transnationals spread out in extensive regions with their own objectives, able to associate with the national governments or to include them in their geopolitical projects. Contemporary geopolitics is characterized by a complex coexistence of totally controlled spaces and planned territories, alongside new enigmatic lands that function with their own internal logic, at the margin of the system that has engendered them.