Why Did the US Get Rich But Latin America Never Did?

Why did the US get rich but Latin America never did? In 1700, by one famous estimate, the average Mexican was almost as rich as the average person in the English colonies. Today the gap is about eight to one. And the mountain that once produced nearly half of all the silver on Earth sits in Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in South America. This is the economic history of Latin America told through its map: Latin America vs USA, from the Potosi silver mine (Cerro Rico, "the mountain that eats men") and the forced labor of the mita, to where all that Spanish silver really went: Seville, Genoa, London and China. Why is Latin America poor if it found the treasure? The resource curse may have started right here: the Spanish empire built rules to take things out, while colonial America had nothing to dig and had to give away land to bring people in. We follow both halves: Virginia's fifty acres, Massachusetts' town schools, the Homestead Act and 160 acres in Nebraska; haciendas, literacy and votes in Mexico and Brazil; the nine days between the California gold rush and the treaty that ended the Mexican American War; guano, nitrates and the lost decade of the 1980s. Then the honest answer to "why is the US rich?": the US vs Latin America economy today, the Bolivia economy next to Uruguay's, the Mexico economy and the silver it still mines, and why the gap was never written in the soil. It's the question behind Why Nations Fail, told with geography and economics. Subscribe to Fortune of Nations for one country at a time and what its map has to do with its money. 0:00 The richest mountain, in a poor country 0:50 What each side found 2:01 The mountain that eats men 3:16 Where did all the silver go? 4:26 Meanwhile in the north: free land 5:20 Land, schools and votes 6:03 Nine days that cost Mexico a fortune 6:58 Booms and busts 7:36 The lost decade 7:55 The mountain today 8:24 The gap wasn't written in the soil 8:52 The scorecard Watch next: Why Switzerland Is So Rich With No Resources Map data & imagery: Elevation: AWS Terrain Tiles (Mapzen) · Natural Earth – public domain Music and most sound effects: original, made for this video. Sound effects: "Swoosh 1" by AleXZavesa (freesound.org/people/AleXZavesa/sounds/854081), CC BY 4.0 · Mixkit (free license) #LatinAmerica #Economy #History