From beyond the Rio Bravo down to Patagonia, Latin America has throughout its history suffered from the consequences of
possessing rich underground treasures: silver, gold,copper, petroleum amongst other minerals highly coveted by the great world powers of each age. Since the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World, this region, sumptuously endowed with agricultural land capable of producing many different crops, has been at the mercy of the ambition of European and North American transnational
companies who have filled their storehouses and made sure of the economic
development of the old continent of Europe at the expense of this region.The silver mines of Guanajuato and Zacatecas, Potosi, theChilean economy which provided wheat, dried meat, wines and nitrates; the hancrafted goods of Cordoba; the mercury mines of Huancavelica; the Arica region, from where silver was shipped to Lima on its way to its final destination, Imperial Spain.The massacre and enslavemant of Incas, Aztecs,Mayas and Zacatecas were the first bleeding veins opened by the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors. And the great British corporations were set up during this age of conquest, eager for riches.Europe owes its development and economic eminence to the New Continent, ground down by poverty, backwardness and the destruction of much of its wealth, a situation which condemned the Latin American peoples to a permanent state of underdevelopment or a continuous struggle to evolve.The vast tons of goods exported between the Conquest and the present day amount to 24 times the value of the Marshall Plan. Latin America is condemned to consume manufactured products for which she herself has provided the raw materials, paying higher prices for them than those who processed them. History did not change with the arrival of modernity. Few of the principal cities of Latin America have achieved even a moderately acceptable level of development.They are still the same towns which were formed round the ports where agricultural products were exported. From being poly-productive, the region became a mono-producer to reduce the market of the poor European producers who could not compete with Latin American excellence.The administrators of large companies who were British and later North American, reduced production with the help of local foremen who for a paltry sum would rase vast tracts of land, thus assuring their control of the world food market.By these means the road to wealth was closed to a region drained of its identity by corporations, bankers and local landowners who were willing to sell out for a pittance at the expense of the Latin American public at large who are today struggling for development against the heavy weight of an overseas debt which began when their wealth was plundered by the European conquerors. Class divisions, hegemony and the political system of the region were all imposed by foreigners. Industrialisation has not altered the imbalance of the world market. It takes a French, German or Italian workman 30 minutes to earn what a Brazilian, a Venezuelan or a Salvadorean earns in a week. Large foreign companies maintain control of the technlogy and so prevent the economic development of the ruined Latin American peoples.. ..