New Borders of Latin America

Recently, I got a comment on one of my previous articles titled "The Rivalry Between Latin American Countries" that you can check out here.

In response to the initial comment that was about giving land to Bolivia, I brought up the idea of just merging Bolivia with Peru.

Which generated this response back to my comment:

"I agree with that actually… Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador should be one country – I don’t see why not! Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay should be another. Colombia and Venezuela and Chile can be on its own because nobody else in South America likes them haha!"

Now, there is more to that comment that you can check out here but this is the part that is interesting to me.

After reading that, it pushed me into spending a few hours just casually doing a thought experiment....

"If you could, how would you redraw the borders of Latin America?"

We already have some idea of maybe how to do that in the comment posted above.

But, over the last few hours, I've been brainstorming ideas I've had regarding the matter.

Throughout this article, I'll always be occasionally citing the opinion of another article that covers the same topic titled "Make Latin America Great Again" by Expat Chronicles that you can see here.

So here are my thoughts below country by country.

Uruguay

First, let's address Uruguay since it was mentioned in the comment above.

Personally, I think we should let Uruguay stay as a country.

After all, why change something that works?

Uruguay is one of the most successful countries in Latin America when it comes to standard of living for the average citizen.

Of course, some might argue that is largely because of its small population that is easier to manage.

For example, I remembered another opinion on the matter from that Expat Chronicles piece.

The topic of Uruguay was brought up in that article cited and the author had a similar viewpoint to the reader's comment regarding the desirability to merge Uruguay with Argentina:

"Uruguay should almost win the right to govern from Montevideo for being one of the region’s most stable democracies, but with a population just north of 3 million they’re not really a country anyway. They’re a city state, so less props for what’s really just a mayor running an efficient city hall."

Now, I get the idea here -- a smaller country being easier to manage.

However, I would give Uruguay more credit than what is presented in that paragraph.

After all, there are plenty of small countries in the world that are relatively fucked up and not managed well.

In Latin America, countries that come to mind would be El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Outside of Latin America, I guess you could list Lebanon, Zimbabwe and whoever else.  

Granted, some of those countries do have populations a little bit bigger than Uruguay but they are still small.

Either way, regardless of what conditions were most influential in making Uruguay relatively successful, it is still successful nonetheless.

Why change a good thing?

Especially since, if we were to mix it in with Argentina, then the voting power of the Uruguayans would be diluted by the voting power of Argentinians.

Where Argentina has 41 million people and Uruguay has 3.48 million people.

And, with Argentina being relatively more unstable economically and voting in worse Presidents, I don't want to make Uruguay worse by basically having the Argentinians dominate the polls at who gets to be their President.

Finally, you do have the argument that both countries are culturally similar. That's true.

Not enough of a convincing argument though, in my opinion, to justify merging them together but that is true.

The only way I could be convinced on merging Uruguay with Argentina is if Uruguay has some very extended period of shitty conditions that makes it not unique anymore (say for 20 or 30 years).

If they stop proving them selves to be a good example, then they'll become part of Argentina.

Either way, I'm keeping Uruguay to be the same since the country is managed quite fine.

The South is My Country

Next, we are going to create a new country.

But where?

Well, we first have the issue of Paraguay.

In both the article and the reader's comment above, it was suggested to merge Paraguay in with Argentina.

Now, that's not a bad idea.

I agree with the sentiment of the article above that "Paraguay is not great."

And, as you can see in this article here, Paraguay doesn't rank very well when it comes to being "climate resilient" to the future consequences of climate change.

On top of that, Paraguay is already one of the poorest countries in Latin America with no direct access to the ocean.

And, generally speaking, I just don't see much hope for Paraguay in the future.

Having said that, we can make some dramatic changes to give the people who live in Paraguay a better future.

Now, as I said, I'm not opposed to the idea of merging Paraguay with Argentina but I have another theory for how to move forward.

Because, similar to Uruguay, I don't want to necessarily merge the smaller voting population of Paraguay with the bad voting decisions of the Argentine people.

So here's my proposal:

In Brazil right next door, you have had, historically speaking, a succession movement called "The South is My Country."

Where, to this day as you can see in this Wikipedia article, there's apparently some NGO that has been dedicated for decades to studying the possibility of succession.

The Brazilian states that have this movement are Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.

Hell, they even voted on the topic of succession recently!

And they are relatively prosperous states economically and literally border the less prosperous Paraguay.

Now, to the west of Paraguay, you have Santa Cruz area of Bolivia.

Similarly, plenty of people in Santa Cruz feel like they don't belong to the rest of Bolivia and there's even a succession movement there as you can read here.

And, to be fair, there are demographic, geographic and cultural differences between Santa Cruz and the rest of Bolivia.

Meanwhile, Santa Cruz is relatively more prosperous economically than a good deal of Bolivia.

Now, to be fair, an entirely independent Santa Cruz wouldn't be very successful alone given its geographic isolation.

Paraguay is also, as we said, not very prosperous relatively speaking and does need to merge with someone.

Plus, you already have a lot of economic investment by wealthy Brazilian land owners in Paraguayan land near the Brazilian-Paraguayan border.

So that's the idea -- merge these three areas together (and a few more that I would throw in also).

What territory this new country would cover would be the following exactly:

• All of Paraguay
• The Brazilian states of  Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.
• Also, we're adding the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
  
• The Argentine provinces of Misiones, Formosa, Chaco and Corrientes.
• The Bolivian departments of Santa Cruz, Chaco Boliviano and the eastern half of the departments of Tarija and Chuquisaca. 

Now, as you can see, I added in some extra areas not mentioned previously.

For example, I added in Misiones because that province is a little wedge between Paraguay and Santa Catarina.

So I figured I might as well add it so there's no awkward geography there.

Plus, I added Corrientes, Chaco and Formosa also because, if we are adding Misiones, you might as well add them due to the similarities from my perception of these areas with Paraguay or Misiones.

I also added Mato Grosso do Sul because it has a similar agricultural economy to places like Paraguay, similar demographics, favorable location and a decent enough economy to support the larger country.

And I consider it "fair trade."

Fair trade meaning that, as you'll see, I'm going to be expanding Brazil's territory to the north through Venezuela so I wanted to limit how much bigger Brazil gets as a country from that.

Therefore, I took away Mato Grosso do Sul also for that purpose and the other reasons mentioned.

Then, I added Chaco Boliviano given its assumed similarities to the Chaco region of Paraguay.

And, I could've stopped it there, but I felt like adding Tarija and Chuquisaca for geographical reasons.

Primarily because I have a strong preference for trying to end borders at natural borders like mountains, rivers, etc.

And, if you look at Google Maps, you can see Bolivia start to get quite mountainous where Tarija is.

But, looking at it, it looks like about half of Tarija and Chuquisaca is more mountainous than the other half.

So that's why I chopped those departments in half and let this new country have half of it.

Ending the border at the mountainous area.

Also, as a side point, I thought of giving all of Tarija to this new country due to the economic benefits of its wine production but I'm going to stick hard to my rule of using the mountains as a border.

Anyway, here's a little map I made where this new country is highlighted in red.

It's not perfect -- I tried to color up Santa Cruz nicely but mimicking the department borders in Bolivia was a little confusing.

I think I might've accidentally added Cochabamba into the coloring scheme.

But you get the idea anyway of what it would look like!

Of course, some might argue that this isn't the best idea to merge all of these areas together because of linguistic and some cultural differences.

Well, every country has various cultures in it if it spans enough distance and work just fine.

Linguistically where the Brazilian states speak Portuguese and the rest speak Spanish?

Well, I think they can get along fine.

After all, Paraguay officially recognizes two languages -- Spanish and Guarani.

Plus, in other countries on other continents, you do have regions where the dominant language changes.

The obvious examples that come to mind are various European countries.

Of course, this is Latin America and not Europe or other continents where the situation on the ground is very different.

I accept that.

Still, I have faith that we could make this work despite the linguistic differences.

On top of that, this new country would have a decent bit going for it economically.

After all, it has plenty of tourism value since it would own the Iguazu Falls -- one of the largest and most impressive waterfall systems of Latin America.

In which you can see more photos I took of it here.

And, as of right now, Iguazu Falls is divided between Argentina and Brazil.

That's pretty lame to have one of Latin America's coolest waterfalls be divided between two countries.

So my proposed country owning it all would fix that issue!

It also has historical value in various cool points like those Jesuit Missions that you can see in this video here.

Many of which you can find in parts of Bolivia, Misiones, Paraguay, etc.

And, with the extra money this country would have, they could promote better tourism to those areas.

On top of that, they could invest into the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in Santa Cruz of Bolivia.

Which, for those who don't know, offers more remote access to the Amazon.

So tourism benefit from that as you can see how beautiful it is here.

And, also, I imagine we could entice some tourists who want to do ayahuasca to escape their childhood trauma, corporate jobs and nagging wives for tourism benefit also.

Of course, this country would also have decent agricultural production as the areas that would exist in this country already produce a lot of different crops.

It would also have access to the ocean.

Also, it would have plenty of nice beaches that are already well known like Florianopolis.

Which, for those who don't know, this city guide rated the women of Florianopolis as being "9.25" out of 10 and the nightlife being "8" out of 10 as you can see here.

I've never been there but I have always heard the reputation among various foreigners that the women there are hot.  

So, with nice beaches and supposedly hot women, I'm sure it would bring in good sex tourism revenue for the country.

All around, it would have a solid economy of producing agricultural goods like soy or yerba mate, tourism to desirable spots and plenty of hot gals for sex tourists to spend money pursuing.

And, many of the states, like those on the Brazilian side or Santa Cruz, are economically sound and can bring prosperity to the poorer regions included in this country. 

All around, I see plenty of opportunity here!

Finally, what shall the country be called?

Well, let's name it after some historical Latino person.

Given the region we are covering, let's name it after Francisco Solano López.

Who, for those who don't know, was the Paraguayan leader who died in South America's bloodiest war called War of the Triple Alliance.

Now, Francisco and López don't seem like fitting names for a country.

So let's go with Solano.

Of course, maybe it's not appropriate to name it after a dude who led his country (Paraguay) to get gang raped by 3 other countries...

But, like Bolivia is named after Bolivar and Colombia is named after Columbus (I think)...

Let's stick to the Latin trend here of naming countries after historical people.

So Solano it is!

The capital will be Curitiba, which is the proposed capital for the succession movement mentioned in southern Brazil anyhow.

Official languages of this new country obviously being Spanish, Portuguese and Guarani.

Now, let's move on. 

Chile

Similar to Uruguay, I'm not going to change much here because of how successful Chile has been.

Granted, as I wrote here, that could change given the fact that they are rewriting their constitution.

So we'll see where Chile goes into the future!

Still, Chile has natural borders with the Andes and the Atacama Desert to the north.

And, because I like natural borders separating countries,that's also another motivation to keep things where they are.

The only thing I would change about Chile is to give it access to that tiny bit of land that Argentina has at the very bottom of South America.

Similar to what that initial article cited here talked about. 

Having actually been to that part of South America, I remember having to cross some body of water on a huge ass ship to get from Argentina to Chile as you can see in this photo here.

It seemed illogical to let Argentina have that -- almost as weird looking geographically to have Alaska separated from the US by Canadian territory.

In the same way that Canada should just join the US already, that tip of land on Tierra del Fuego just needs to be Chilean already.

Let's stop making geography awkward!

Peru, Bolivia & Ecuador

Next, we have the countries of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Now, similar to the reader's comment way above, I am in agreement with merging Bolivia and Peru together.

As you can read here, Bolivia is going to be one of the least ready countries in Latin America to respond to the effects of climate change.

It's one of the poorest countries in Latin America with no access to the ocean and terrible infrastructure.

All around, I just see no hope for Bolivia ever having a strong future.

Plus, it does have some similar culture, demographics and geography to what you see in Peru relatively speaking.

So why not mix the two in which Bolivia can have access to the ocean again and in which the relative prosperity improves the standard of living of the average Bolivian over time?

Of course, like I said before, the only part of Bolivia that would be mixed into Peru would the anywhere from Cochabamba area to the west of that.

Now, when it comes to the Atacama Desert and the land that Chile took long ago, I'm letting Chile keep that.

I don't want to change anything about Chile aside from the small land they get from Argentina.

Now, should we put Ecuador into this larger country?

Part of me says yes and another part of me says no.

From my limited understanding of Ecuador, it works for the most part as a country.

It's not the worst place on the planet.

On top of that, how do we know that the greater country of Peru and Bolivia doesn't spiral into a shithole one day?

It can happen to any country!

After all, Venezuela used to be one of the most successful countries in Latin America but then it became a shithole.

Though I have no reason to believe that Peru will end up like that anytime soon...

Despite, of course, the fears some have of Pedro Castillo turning Peru into "another Venezuela."

A fear that, as I wrote here, I think is a little bit ridiculous and exaggerated.

Still, as far as I know, Ecuador works for the most part (not the most successful country in Latin America but it works).

And, by merging it with Peru, it would arguably be brought down with the country if Peru ever suffered a terrible fate like Venezuela has.

On the other hand, I get the argument for merging Ecuador into Peru given the similarities that it has with the country.

Now that is a decent argument similar to the one made about Uruguay also.

And Ecuador isn't as successful as Uruguay....

So I could go both ways here.

Either keep Ecuador the same or merge it with Peru.

So, because I can't make make a solid decision here, I'm going to flip a coin right now as I type this.

Heads to keep Ecuador the same and tails for merging it with Peru.

Or, because I only have Mexican coins, I guess it would be "eagle on a cactus" for keeping Ecuador the same and "weird as fuck Aztec looking stone thing" for merging Ecuador into Peru.

The "weird as fuck Aztec stone looking thing" wins!

So we're merging Ecuador in with Peru and Bolivia.

Finally, we're merging the north western part of Argentina around Salta and Jujuy....

Because, from my limited understanding, they have more Quechua speakers and cultural influence in that region of Argentina.

So let's mix it in with the Greater Peru country.  

Argentina

Outside of losing Misiones, Corrientes, Salta, Jujuy, Formosa, Chaco and Tierra del Fuego, Argentina will stay the same.

That might seem like a lot but it only takes away 5 million of the 45 million person population that Argentina has.

Plus, if you look at a map, the provinces taken away don't actually constitute that huge of a landmass of Argentina.

Literally it just skims the very top of Argentina off and take away that very tiny province in the very bottom south.

But what about the Falkland Islands?

Well, I have no opinion on the manner.

Because the UK is an ally of the US and because 95% of my DNA heritage comes from England and Ireland...

I'm biased to the UK keeping the Falkland Islands.

On the other hand, it doesn't make the most sense for the UK to keep those islands either in my opinion.

So, because I can go either way, it's time for a coin flip!

The eagle to keep the islands or the stone to give them to Argentina.

Stone wins!

Alright, Argentina...

You can have the Falkland Islands.

Makes up for the northern provinces you lose, no?

Just don't fuck them up like you fuck your own economy up.

Mexico & Central America

So, we have Mexico and Central America.

Now, right off the bat, Mexico is definitely not getting back its territories it lost to the US.

After all, we won them fair and square.

If you lose a war, you lose your shit.

Plus, I'm from the US, so I'm going to have my bias here obviously.

Anyway....

I'm merging Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize into Mexico.

These countries are places that I honestly see no future for in the long run.

Especially if climate change gets worse where heat waves and more intense hurricanes more frequently keeping fucking these places up.....

Mixed with all the people trying to leave these countries anyhow (though Nicaraguans seem to go to Costa Rica more)...

Then I'm allowing Mexico to take the territory of the countries mentioned above. 

Now we have Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

The last two countries being relatively quite successful in Latin America.

Similarly, I do have concerns for how they'll face issues like climate change with heat waves and more intense hurricanes...

But, for the most part, these countries seem to be doing fine as of right now.

With Nicaragua, I obviously want to merge that country into a bigger one.

I could merge it with Mexico but I have a better idea....

Which is to merge Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama into Colombia.

Find out more under the Colombia section later.

In contrast to that first article cited here that calls for Costa Rica and Panama to be one country alone in control of the Galapagos Islands. 

While I get the logic of that and wouldn't see issue with Panama and Costa Rica merging alone assuming they have a bright future....

I'm going to lean towards the side of caution and merge them into Colombia.

And I differ in giving them the Galapagos Islands.

The Ecuadorians seem to be doing an alright job running the place but, in the long run, I would transfer them away from what would be Greater Peru.

Galapagos Islands

On one hand, I want to keep the Galapagos Islands as a revenue for the larger Peru country.

It sure does help their tourism industry!

However, I have doubts about the Galapagos Islands in the future of climate change.

As you can see here, some important piece of the Galapagos Islands was destroyed by natural causes.

Meanwhile, you have the Chinese fucking up the ecosystem of the Galapagos Islands greatly as you can see here.

And along the historical trends of Latin countries constantly getting bullied or taken advantage of by more powerful outside countries...

I have my doubts that the greater Peru will be able to stop the Chinese from fucking up these islands even more.

Finally, you have articles like this one here that go on about how climate change will threaten the islands by asking if any of them will disappear due to rising sea levels and threats to the wildlife in the area.

"According to the New York Times, climate change is heating the ocean, and scientists have a reason for concern because it poses a great risk to local wildlife."

Then you have this article here on how the Galapagos Islands will change in the future due to climate change.

And let's not forget the impact that current tourism already has on the islands.

Above all, what I am really getting at is known as "last chance tourism" as you can read here.

The idea being that certain tourism spots of natural beauty are at risk of being destroyed or negatively changed in a way that threatens them and could possibly have their tourism revenue significantly diminished in the future. 

Personally, I have my doubts about the ability of the Galapagos to bring in the tourism revenue of the past in the future due to especially the impact of climate change. 

I'm sure they'll survive in some capacity but, if I had to guess, they might lose a bit of their natural attractions that gets lots of tourism dollars flowing in.

If that isn't the case and the islands remain profitable in the long term, then I'd let Greater Peru keep them.

And so, with that consideration, one could wonder if it's better to be "a little more nihilistic" regarding the future of the Galapagos and consider alternatives to its future. 

For example, that article cited before by Expat Chronicles brought up an interesting idea that you can see below:

"...but I had to give the Galapagos Islands to Panama. I’m worried the Colombians will turn the place into a sex-tourism paradise with yachts filled with prepagos and Aguila-branded thatch huts selling aguardiente and cocaine all while blaring vallenato."

That's a great idea actually!

Well, replace the vallenato with reggaeton viejo and we got something to work with here.

After all, we all know that Colombia is popular for sex yachts, drugs and booze.....

Who wouldn't want "unlimited sex" with "all meals included" on a drug holiday in Colombia?

Look, I get it would fuck up a bit the ecosystem on the islands...

But my thinking goes like this...

First, if the islands are already going to be fucked by climate change with possibly much of its tourism revenue lost, why not go out with a bang?

Lots of banging

And I'm serious -- if the islands are fucked anyway in the long term, you might as well enjoy the ending!

What better way to enjoy the ending of an amazing place then to have sex tourists taken in for a sexy orgy with hot Latinas and endless amounts of booze and drugs available?

All with reggaeton music (not vallenato) included like this song here.

Plus, regardless of if the turtles survive on the galapagos....

Which sounds cooler?

Watching some lame ass turtle take a shit on a rock?

Or.....

Take down a bottle and fuck a hot Latina with them pepperoni nipples and fat brown ass with reggaeton viejo blasting all the while she squirts over the eroded Darwin Arc?

Look -- different strokes for different folks.

I'm just saying that I see more fun and more tourism dollars in the latter than the former.

Especially if the Galapagos Islands are fucked anyhow -- then screw it.

Go out with a bang -- lots of bangs.

Good music and liquor.

So, while I wouldn't normally consider turning the Galapagos Islands into a sex and drug filled tourism spot, I actually like the sound of it.

Especially in the event of these islands eroding more with their marine life dying off, I'd give these islands to the Colombians (if their revenue stream could survive with most of it intact, I'd let the Greater Peru country have it). 

Celebrate the destruction of our planet's ecosystem like we in a discoteca.

COJELA!

That's rad, bro.

The Spanish Caribbean

Next, we have the DR, Puerto Rico and Cuba.

Puerto Rico is a territory of the US already so it's not anything to worry about.

If Puerto Rico ever gets more fucked up due to hurricanes, they can all move to the mainland US legally as they already are US Citizens.

And they're moving on over anyway.

Now speaking of Puerto Rico....

As we all remember, that Hurricane Maria not too long ago fucked up their country where plenty of citizens went months without electricity as you can read here.

And, in the Caribbean area, we have this island called Barbuda that literally got wiped off the map by Hurricane Irma.

Where, as you can read here, literally everyone on the island had to evacuate and be a climate refugee on the island of Antigua.

And, from my knowledge, hurricanes are set to get worse and more frequent as you can read here.

From my limited understanding, these hurricanes become more frequent and more intense as the water gets warmer.

According to this article here, we could possibly see 5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100.

And this article here claims we could pass 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming in the next 5 years.

On top of that, the countries of the DR and Cuba are not known for having the best economies.

Especially Cuba.

Hell, there's even talk of relocating people away from parts of Florida and some already are as you can read here.

Part of the US!

In short, while it's difficult to predict how bad things will get in this area, I don't see much hope for the DR and Cuba.

I'm recommending that they be put under the territory of other countries.

And, to be fair, we need to include Haiti also because it takes up half the island of the DR.

So really -- the DR, Haiti and Cuba is what we're talking about.

As I said, the rest of the Puerto Ricans can move whenever they feel like it.

We'll offer them free flights to our finest destinations to relocate to like Gary, Indiana.

Anyhow, what about those other countries that I mentioned?

The DR, Haiti and Cuba?

Well, to me, it makes sense to relocate them to either Mexico or the US.

The two closest countries with the best economies in the area.

Now, being honest, I'll just throw these three into the US.

However, we can't take everyone obviously because you do have criminals in these countries like anywhere else.

And, being an American, I'm watching out for my own country here.

So similar to the US deporting non-Guatemalan immigrants to Guatemala like we did a year or two ago as you can read here...

I'm going to have a process here for giving the US these territories and moving people out.

If you have a bad criminal record and are from Haiti, then we'll try to pull some strings diplomatically to get Chile to take in the Haitians with a bad record.

After all, Chile already has plenty of Haitian immigrants as you can see here that they took in not too long ago.

The Dominicans and Cubans with a criminal history?

Well, we can't do Mexico because some of them will likely go to the border to cross into the US.

So why not Brazil?

It's far away and already has plenty of crime.

Boom. Problem solved.

And we'll take in then the vast majority of people who are not criminals so they can have a new life in the US whenever they feel like relocating while their countries (Haiti, the DR and Cuba) come under American control.

Also, if it wasn't for concerns regarding climate change that I have for this region, I'd probably still merge the DR, Haiti and Cuba into the US.

After all, we already have Puerto Rico and it's right up close to these same islands also.

Plus, with the extra money that the US has, we could do a better job at keeping these places livable than Mexico or Colombia if they were US States.

For example, make Cuba look as charming as it was before the Revolution like you can see here.

And, essentially, ramp up the tourism offerings these places can provide.

Colombia

As I said, Colombia will get the Galapagos Islands to turn them into a sex and drug fueled hotspot.

Also, I mentioned that Mexico only gets up to Honduras.

I didn't feel it would be fair for Mexico to take up all of Central America.

And, to a degree, I think it's fair to return Panama back to Colombia given it used to be part of the country.

However, that leaves Costa Rica and Nicaragua standing in the middle.

While Costa Rica is a more successful country, I do have doubts about how Costa Rica and Panama will do in the coming decades with climate change.

I can definitely see some migration of people away from these two countries if things were to get really bad.

If they don't, then actually I'd probably let Panama and Costa Rica merge into one country.

However, because of my doubts, I'm thinking of merging them with the much poorer Nicaragua into Colombia. 

Some might argue for Mexico to extend through Panama and leave it at the Darien Gap.

However, there's another natural barrier at the Nicaraguan and Honduran border: La Mosquitia.

Which is one of the largest rainforests in Central America.

Here's a video of it.

Outside of that, Colombia will also be getting a piece of Venezuela that we'll cover soon enough.

Which, to be honest, is another motivation for why I leave Colombia half of Central America....

The theory being that the more sensible voters of Costa Rica and Panama at the very least (maybe not Nicaragua) will help balance against the far left voters that'll be coming in from Venezuela.

Which, being honest, was the final straw that convinced me to merge Costa Rica and Panama into Colombia instead of leaving them alone as a merged country.

But we'll get to the topic of Venezuela soon enough.

And that's all for Colombia. 

Brazil & The Amazon

As I said, those southern states of Brazil will succeed away from the country.

However, we will give Brazil those three tiny countries just north of it -- Suriname, Guyana and French Guyana.

Next, we have the Amazon Question.

Now, without any doubt, Brazil has fucked up the Amazon greatly.

As you can see here, the Amazon has recently transformed from a place that emits more carbon than it absorbs.

Even worse, it emits more carbon than absorbs all the time apparently -- even in areas that are not being burned to the ground.

And it's not just Bolsonaro like everyone wants to complain about...

The Amazon, from my understanding, has had a history of getting fucked up over the years previously.

Though, yes, it has gotten worse in the last few years.

And, to be honest, I think it's going to keep getting worse.

I don't think we'll ever stop it or reverse it mostly because of increasing population demands.

Where the human population globally is expected to reach 11 billion as you can read here...

On top of that, if countries like China, India or Nigeria keep on growing economically, you'll obviously have an even bigger middle class that is going to be demanding a shit ton more in a consumerist lifestyle.

Consequently, when it comes to diets, you'll obviously have more demand to cut down more trees in the Amazon to make more room for cows.

Which, as you can read here, is one of the larger driving forces behind all of this.

So, because of market forces especially, I don't see this changing.

If we could somehow reverse it, I'd honestly recommend that we make the Amazon into a "special division zone."

Where it is technically part of Brazil but it has its own laws, especially in regards to topics like combating deforestation.

Because it is clearly evident that the Brazilian leadership, in the past or now, isn't going to stop it entirely.

Now would a "special division zone" with its own laws stop it also?

Not by itself -- you'd have to arm up the indigenous groups of the area with the right technology to combat it.

Something you can read about here that has been effective apparently in Peru.

Plus, maybe put in some other administrative and enforcement protocols and authorities to combat it.

On top of that, some effort to try and reverse the damage.

However, as I said, that's all a pipedream -- it isn't going to happen.

The truth is that the Amazon Rainforest, from my perspective, will face the same fate as the Atlantic Forest.

For those who don't know, the Atlantic Forest as a large area on the Atlantic Coast of South America that got devastated by urbanization and market forces driving agricultural policies.

More on the Atlantic Forest here.

For the Amazon Rainforest, I see the same fate in which we'll supposedly see a larger Savannah area replace the forest in the long run.

Regardless, that's a bit of a ramble, isn't it?

So, if we could save the Amazon, I'd make changes by, as I said, turning it into a "special division zone" similar to what Hong Kong had in respect to the rest of China before that agreement was supposedly violated?

But, if it can't be saved, then I'd just accept the fate it has going forward.

Not sure what changes to make in regards to that then.

On top of that, similar to Colombia, I'd give a piece of Venezuela to Brazil.

So let's jump into that final topic.

The Venezuela Question

As we all know, Venezuela is a shithole.

I'm not sure I ever will see the country become normal again.

It could!

My idea for it becoming normal would involve installing some market friendly dictatorship that writes a new constitution similar to what Pinochet did in Chile.

Minus the killings though -- let's not kill people like Pinochet.

Killing is morally questionable as some argue.  

But a new constitution with market friendly policies? Yes!

Because, from my limited understanding, Chile had a severe situation also in which it had economic and social instability under Allende.

Then Pinochet came in and put in the right policies that, in part, helped drive the country forward economically.

Which is, from my understanding, why some Chileans like what the guy did.

However, I'm not seeing much hope for such a dictatorship to come in and fix things.

Assuming that doesn't happen...

Then, in my opinion, it's time we give up on the idea of Venezuela being a country.

Time to divide it up between Colombia and Brazil!

Now how I'm going to divide Venezuela up really comes down to natural borders that we can use to separate Colombia and Brazil with an eye towards not fucking up the electorate of each country.

On the first one, that means keeping an eye towards using mountains, deserts, rivers or whatever else to find common borders to use.

On the second bit of that sentence, it's to make sure we don't flood either Colombia or Brazil with the same population of 28 million people who, as a majority, voted in the wrong people starting decades ago that led to this mess.

Because, in short, I don't want far left leaning voters who put in Chavez or who like Maduro to be swinging the elections in either Brazil or Colombia.

And, consequently, fucking up either country.

So, keeping that in mind, let's remember now that Brazil has a population of 211 million and Colombia has a population of 50 million.

So how are we going to divide this country up?

Well, for starters, I have no idea which Venezuelan states have more opposition to Maduro and less crazy far left wing voters.

I tried looking up the governors of each Venezuelan state, and from my limited understanding of Venezuelan politics, they all seem to be somehow affiliated with socialist parties or policies.

Now, to be fair, it's not clear to me how solid Venezuela's democracy is at the local state level and if those governors won their elections fair and square.

I've heard Venezuela has a shit democracy but I'm not at all familiar with how things are done at a state level.

So I asked a Venezuelan guy that I know on Twitter regarding which states of Venezuela have more opposition to Maduro.

And he said the following: Zuila, Miranda and Merida.

Now, I prefer giving these states to Colombia because Colombia has a smaller population and so each Venezuelan voter will have more electoral impact there than in Brazil.

Here's a map anyhow of each Venezuelan state with those specific states above pointed.

That's what we need to put in Colombia!

However, as you can see, there's some distance between Miranda and Merida and Zuila.

Meanwhile, Caracas is right next to Miranda and, not knowing much about Venezuelan politics, I'm just assuming they have more left winging voters for Maduro in Caracas than elsewhere.

Granted, I could be wrong on that but it's just an assumption.

Finally, if you look at a map of physical geography, you have a mountain range called "Cordillera Merida" that passes through Merida state upwards towards the coastal area.

So how we going to divide this up?

Well, starting off is easy...

We start with Zuila and Merida that border each other and border Colombia!

Next, I'm going to pull out my calculator with an eye on the population numbers of each Venezuelan state according to Wikipedia here.

Now, I would naturally use that mountain range called "Cordillera Merida" as our dividing point between Brazil and Colombia....

However, if I tried to include all the states that mountain range passes, it gives Colombia almost 19 million new people.

19 million out of 28 million.

And I don't feel comfortable doing that to a country of 50 million people even if it includes some more conservative states and when everyone isn't obviously a supporter of Maduro in those areas.

So I'm going to basically skim along the coast to Miranda and leave it there.

And end it at where Caracas is since Caracas is north of Miranda and would be geographically awkward to isolate Caracas as a single Brazilian territory with Colombian territory surrounding it.

So what states go to who and how many people are relocated to each country?

Well, Colombia will take over the following Venezuelan states:

Merida: 828,952 people

Zuila: 3,704,404 people

Falcon: 902,847 people

Yaracuy: 600,852 people

Carabobo: 2,245,774 people

Aragua: 1,630,308 people

Vargas (La Guaira): 352,920 people

Capital District (Caracas): 2,935,501 people

Miranda: 2,675,165 people

Total: 15,275,871 people to Colombia.

Now, I don't like giving 15 million people either but that is almost half of the country anyhow.

So it seems fair enough and 7,208,521 people in that 15 million number do come from, supposedly, more conservative areas.

Good enough!

So the states listed above will be what Colombia gets at an added population of.

And Brazil can have the rest.

Here's a map where all the states in red go to Colombia and everywhere else goes to Brazil.

Which, to add, is quite nice because that puts administrative control of Margarita Island and Guiana Highlands to Brazil.

Both places that I've been dying to visit and might now because, in theory, they should be safe enough to visit when administered by a government with a better economy.

Check them out here!

And that'll be how we resolve the issue with Venezuela.

As a last point, I know some might protest the idea of putting large chunks of Venezuela into Brazil because of linguistic differences...

Well, similar to Solano, it'll be fine -- plenty of countries in the world have regions where certain languages are more spoken in some parts than others.

And, over time, hopefully the generations of the Venezuelans taken in learn Portuguese in the Brazilian school system and all.

Plus, there's already plenty of Venezuelans living in northern Brazil as you can see here.

So some of them are already used to Brazil!

Final Thoughts

There were some other things I considered but decided against.

For example, I thought of making our new country, Solano, extend through the rest of the continent to reach the Pacific Ocean.

Like a mini US -- a country that spans from one side of the continent to the other.

Having access to both oceans.

Would then cross into the mountains, take over the Atacama Desert and probably go as far south as Iquique in Chile.

However, I didn't do that because I wanted to respect those mountains as being the border of the country on the western side of it...

And also because, given how successful Chile is, I didn't want to change anything about the country.

If it was Venezuela we were cutting into, then I'd definitely have let Solano cut that deep into the west.

On that topic, I did entertain the idea of having some "super Andean" country that covers all of Chile to where the Andes end in Venezuela.

But that's a more playful idea -- I didn't take it as seriously.

And lastly, the final issue I got stuck on was how to divide up Venezuela.

Ultimately, population numbers and how conservative the voters supposedly are weighed more in my mind than using the mountain range as a dividing point.

Anyway, that was a long article.

Here's a map of the end result of what Latin America would look like.

Obviously, my coloring skills could use some work. Didn't hit the borders exactly as they'd look but you get the idea of what it would be.

And we managed to bring the total amount of countries in Latin America down to 8.

Drop any comments below in the comment section.

And follow my Twitter here.

Thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Matt