Geography: South America and the Southern Cone

Geography: South America and the Southern Cone

The South American continent is a challenging piece of real estate. The bulk of its territory is located in the equatorial zone, making nearly all of the northern two-thirds of its territory subtropical or tropical. Jungle territory is the most difficult sort of terrain/biome to adapt for human economic activity. Simply clearing the land bears onerous costs. Soils are poor. Diseases run rampant. The climate is often too humid to allow grains to ripen. Even if the rivers are navigable, the banks are too muddy for construction (as is the case with the Amazon).

Jungle and rainforest are the dominant vegetation of South America and so it is no surprise that the continent’s economic and political history has been problematic. Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana are fully within the tropical zone, and as such have always faced difficulties in achieving economic and political stability (the discovery of oil in Venezuela has obviously improved that country’s trajectory). Throughout the tropical zones nearly all of the population live within a few dozen kilometers of the coast, but those costs for the most part are not naturally sculpted to encourage interaction with the outside world. Natural ports -- deepwater or otherwise -- are few and far between.

There are, however, two geographic features on the continent that break the monotony of jungle.

The first is the Andean mountain chain, which runs down the continent’s western edge, giving rise to a handful of littoral and trans-mountain cultures physically separated from the continent’s eastern bulk and thus largely left to develop according to their own devices. Colombia and Ecuador straddle the tropics and the Andes, with their economic cores not being coastal, but instead elevated in the somewhat cooler and dryer Andean valleys to somewhat mitigate the difficulties of the tropics. Further south are the arid transmountain states of Peru and Bolivia. Peru has achieved some degree of wealth by largely ignoring its own interior except when seeking resource extraction opportunities, instead concentrating its scant capital on the de facto city-state of Lima itself. In contrast, landlocked Bolivia is trapped in a perennial struggle between the poor highlanders of the Altiplano and the agriculturally rich region of the lowland Medialuna.

The combination of mountains and jungle greatly limits the degree of integration that any of these states in this arc -- from French Guyana in the northeast to Bolivia in the southwest -- enjoy with both each other and the outside world. In all cases basic transport is extremely difficult, tropical diseases are often a serious issue, there are few good ports, agricultural development is both more labor and capital intensive compared to more traditional food-producing regions, humidity and heat hinder conventional grain production, and the ruggedness of the mountains raises the costs of everything. Historically the only way these states have achieved progress towards economic development is by establishing a dependency relationship with an external (and usually extra-regional) power that is willing to provide investment capital. Without something along those lines these states simply lack the capital generation capacities to meet their unique and staggering infrastructure challenges. Consequently, the broader region is severely underdeveloped, with most of the populations of most of these states crushingly poor. While some may be able to achieve relative wealth under the right mix of circumstances, none of them have the ability to be significant regional -- much less global -- powers.

The second exception to the tropical dominance of South America are the temperate lands of the Southern Cone. Here the summers are dry enough to allow traditional grains to ripen, while cooler weather -- and especially winter insect kills -- limits the impact of disease outbreaks. Unlike the scattered populations of the Andean region, the Southern Cone is one gigantic stretch of mostly-flat, moderately-watered territory. The bulk of that land lies in Argentina, with progressively smaller pieces of it lying in Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil. The only remaining country on the continent is where the temperate Southern Cone overlaps with the Andean mountain zone: Chile, one of the world’s most physically isolated states. It is further from Santiago to Lima by air than it is from London to Moscow, and further from Santiago to Buenos Aires by ship than it is from New York City to London. Chile does not participate significantly in the politics of the Southern Cone.

In stark contrast to the mountains and jungle that dominate the majority of South America, the Southern Cone flatlands are the best real estate on the continent. Their flatness combined with their natural prairies lowers the cost of construction, and the temperate climate makes them rich agricultural zones. But the real advantage lies in the region’s river structure. The Parana, Uruguay and Paraguay rivers combined with the Rio de la Plata -- a massive estuary that empties into the Atlantic between contemporary Buenos Aires and Montevideo -- are all navigable for a great portion of their length. Moving goods via water is -- conservatively -- one-seventieth the cost of moving good by truck once the cost of road construction is factored in. Such rivertine-transport systems, therefore, generate massive amounts of capital with little difficulty compared to land-transport systems. Collectively this river network overlaying the agricultural flatlands is known as the Rio de la Plata region.

These rivers are particularly valuable for agricultural commodities-producing regions such as the Rio de la Plata. Wheat, corn, soybeans and the like suffer from a weak value-to-bulk ratio -- oftentimes transporting them great distances can only be done at an economic loss (for example, the agonies and famines in Russia are often the direct result of the inability to efficiently bring foodstuffs to the cities -- Russia’s navigable rivers are in the wrong place and so the produce must be lugged by truck or train). Water transport allows for foodstuffs to cheaply and easily be brought not just downstream, but to the ocean and then the wider world.

The most important geographic fact on the continent is that this region’s rivers are not only navigable independently, but also collectively. Only the Greater Mississippi River network of North America has more kilometers of interconnected maritime transport options. This interconnectivity not only allows for greater economies of scale, greater volumes of capital generation and larger populations, but it greatly enhances the establishment of a single political authority. In contrast, the separate rivers of the Northern European Plain have given rise to multiple, often mutually-hostile, nationalities. Argentina controls the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and the bulk of the navigable stretches of river. This leaves the Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Brazilians much weaker entities within the region. (Overall Brazilian power is greater than Argentine power, but not in the critical capital-generating geography of the Rio de la Plata region.)

The Brazilian Geography

Most of Brazil does not lie within this choice Southern Cone territory.I’d take this sentence out, put it somewhere else (say in the section about the core) or follow it by saying where people do live. The focus here is on territory size it seems and not where the people live. It also slightly implies that most of the population lives in the Amazon, which is also inaccurate. Roughly two-thirds of Brazil’s 8.5 million square miles of territory is composed of vast tracks of challenging jungle, with the Amazon Basin being the most intractable of all. While there are many potential minerals opportunities, the daunting infrastructure costs associated with exploiting them has made -- and will continue to make -- the Amazon a money pit from a development point of view. Outside of the Amazon Basin, much of Brazil’s remaining lands are still tropical, but the rainfall, heat and humidity is far less intense. These areas can be forced to be economically viable, but only at extreme costs. The infrastructural challenges are massive, both in terms of the distances from these interior zones to population centers on the coast, and the sheer costs of clearing rainforest to in effect terraform the land for human use. Brazil has spent the greater part of the past three generations engaged in precisely this sort of grand effort. (We shall revisit these secondary lands and the impact they have upon Brazil’s development and future later in this monograph.)

Luckily for the Brazilians, not all of Brazil’s lands are so difficult. About 600,000 square kilometers of Brazil is considered traditionally arable. While this represents “only” 7 percent of the country’s total land area, that still constitutes a piece of arable territory roughly the size of Texas or France. All of that land lies in the country’s extreme south. However, much of that territory lies in the interior where it is not easily accessible. Brazil’s true core territories are less than one quarter of this 7 percent, about the size of Tunisia or Montana, straddling the area where the tropical zone gives way to the temperate lands of the Southern Cone. These are the areas of Brazil that formed the core of the original settlements in the early colonial period, and these lands formed the population core of Brazil for the first three centuries of its existence. As such, the topography of these lands has had an almost deterministic impact on Brazil’s development. Understanding that topography and its legacy is central to understanding what is empowering Brazil to -- and hampering Brazil from-- evolving into a major power in the years to come. My comment is related to the use of extreme south. I know we are referring to the farm area (Santa Catarina, RGS, Parana) and for that extreme south works. However, we go on to talking about the core and including cities further north outside of this South zone (our net assessment put Sao Paulo and Rio Janeiro as the core cities). Brazil commonly divide its territory in to 5 regions. If we say extreme south its likely people will think of their South region – SC, RS, PR. The Southeast region – SP, RJ, MG, ES –includes what we refer to as the current core. For this reason, I’d take out extreme and put south or somehow mention the southeast when we go on to discuss the current core vs the historic core.

There are two obvious characteristics that stand out about this core Brazilian region. First, it is semi-tropical, so development in the region faces a somewhat less intense version of the challenges described above for fully tropical zones. Second, and more critical, is that the Brazilian interior is a raised plateau -- called the Brazilian Shield -- which directly abuts Brazil’s Atlantic coast along nearly the entirety of the country’s southeastern perimeter. The drop from the Shield to the Atlantic is quite steep, with most of the coast appearing as a wall when viewed from the ocean -- the source of the dramatic backdrops of most Brazilian coastal cities. This wall is called the Grand Escarpment, and most of Brazil’s core cities Some not most Brazilian cities-- Rio de Janeiro, Vitoria, Santos, Sao Francisco do Sul? San Francisco has about 40-50 thousand people, how can it be a major city? Very few Brazilians know this city.Plus, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Salvador which was Brazil´s first capital, Recife, Fortaleza, Goiania, Manaus, Campinas, Belem, Sao Paulo among others are larger and more important than Florianopolis and Vitoria and Porto Alegre -- are located on small, isolated pockets of flattish land where the Escarpment falls to the sea.

The primary problem this enclave topography presents is achieving economies of scale. In normal development patterns, cities form around some sort of core economic asset, typically a river’s head of navigation (the maximum inland point that a sizable cargo vessel can reach) or a port or nexus of other transport options. The city then spreads out, typically growing along the transport corridors, reflecting that access to those transport corridors provides greater economic opportunities and lower economic costs. So long as flattish land remains available, the city can continue growing at low cost. In time, nearby cities often start merging into each other, allowing them to share labor, capital, infrastructure and services. Economies of scale proliferate and such megacities begin generating massive amounts of capital and skilled labor from the synergies.

Megacities -- such as New York City, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Istanbul and Shanghai -- form the core of the global economic system. This “standard” development pattern has been repeated the world over. The premier American example is the “megalopolis” region of cities on the American Eastern Seaboard stretching from Washington, DC to Boston, which includes such major locations as Baltimore, Dover, Philadelphia, New York City, Hartford and Providence. In Europe a similar conglomeration contains an arc of cities including the many cities of the German Rhine Valley. In both cases, major and minor cities alike merge into an urban/suburban conglomeration where the resources of each location are shared with and bolstered by the others. Even the Central Texas area from which Stratfor hails has a similar structure, with suburbs such as Georgetown, Round Rock, San Marcos and New Braunfels linking the metropolitan regions of Austin and San Antonio together into a larger and more economically viable whole of roughly four million people. In all cases the common characteristic is that there is land upon which to expand.

I would take San Francisco do Sul out of that map if your intention is to show the major cities that are located within the great escarpment.

That land is precisely what the Brazil core territory lacks. The Grand Escarpment comes right down to the ocean throughout the Brazilian southern coast. Brazil’s cities, therefore, are forced to develop on small enclaves of flattish land in the few areas where the Escarpment has not pushed all the way to the sea. There are no small cities that can form between the major cities because there is no coastal plain. Any infrastructure built by one city never serves another city, and linking the cities together requires climbing up the Escarpment onto the Shield itself, traversing the shield, and then diving back down the Escarpment to the other cities, a difficult and costly endeavor in terms of both time and engineering. Because Brazil does not have direct access to the navigable rivers of the Rio de la Plata region, it has to scrounge for capital to apply to this capital-intensive project. Absolute limitations on land area also drives up the cost of that land, injecting strong inflation into the mix right at the beginning and raising development costs across the board. This is not something that can be “grown out of” or “developed around”. The topography is constant and these cities simply cannot synergize each other -- you cannot build a modern, low capital-cost city on the side of a cliff. Enclavic geography cannot be maneuvered around, and these enclaves are Brazil’s points of interaction with the outside world. They represent a constant, permanent restriction on the ability of Brazil to grow.

Brazil, from the very beginning, started out with all of these significant disadvantages, and even in the modern day Brazil has very few major highways and railways because even where the topography does allow for the possibility, the costs are so much higher than in flatter lands further south. Even today the country lacks a major coastal road system as the Escarpment is simply too steep and too close to the coast. (There’s no need to even take Stratfor’s word for it. Follow the Brazilian coastline on Google Earth and it is easy to see how Brazil’s coastal roads are almost exclusively two-lane, and the coastal cities -- while dramatic -- are tiny and crammed into whatever pockets of land they can find.)