Uncharted Territories · Ideas & Institutions
TIER 4 Thu, 16 Oct 2025 15:22:47 +0000
Its geography could hav made it the United States of Latin America
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# Argentina Could Be a Superpower
### The United States of Latin America
| | Tomas Pueyo
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| Oct 16
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_Lee aqui una version en español de este articulo (debajo de la version en ingles)._
Argentina used to be rich:
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_Images fromArgentina en Color, via The Culturist. Find his Substack here._
Its capital, Buenos Aires, was "the Paris of South America".
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For decades, Argentina (which means "_the country of silver_ ") was among the richest countries on Earth--richer than France, Germany, Japan, or Italy:
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Millions of Europeans flocked there during its Belle Époque, dreaming of being "as rich as an Argentine".
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But then, this happened:
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Not only did the Western world leave Argentina behind. Traditionally poorer countries like Chile and China are now richer! And Brazil is catching up!
How is this possible?
Because, unlike most countries I write about, Argentina is poor _despite_ its amazing geography. With better management, it could become the United States of Latin America. Here's why.
# 1\. Size
The US is big, but Argentina isn't too far behind--they're the world's 4th and 8th biggest country respectively. Argentina is much bigger than most people realize! It can easily contain France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and over 20 more European countries.¹
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_The combined area of these European countries makes up 2.76M km 2, Argentina's surface area is 2.78M km2. Source._
Argentina claims to be quite a bit bigger, though.
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_Argentinian lawrequires that this be the map taught in schools. According to that, Argentina's surface area is ~3.7M km2, which would fit all of Europe excluding its 5 largest countries (Russia, Ukraine, France, Spain, Sweden, and part of Germany)._
With such a great size comes massive resources and defensibility.
# Defensibility
The defensibility of the US and Argentina are surprisingly similar.
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One advantage that Argentina has is that it's even more isolated than the US.
### 2\. Oceans
The Pacific is too big for any threat trying to cross it, and Argentina's western neighbors are even farther than the US's (Japan is much closer to the US than New Zealand is to Argentina). And of course, Australia and New Zealand are more culturally aligned (and hence less threatening) than the US's "neighbors", Russia and China.
The Atlantic Ocean is not as big as the Pacific, but nevertheless much too vast for big powers to threaten Argentina from afar. Again, the US is close to the action (to Europe and Russia), while Argentina's neighbors on the other side of the Atlantic are much poorer and weaker African countries. As a result, there have been very few naval battles on the coasts of Argentina.
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### 3\. Ice
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_The terminus of the Perito Moreno Glacier, in the Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina._
Argentina has no neighbors to its south, and no threat can come from frozen Antarctica. Plus, the Antarctic Ocean is one of the coldest, windiest, most inhospitable oceans in the world. Argentina is safe there.
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_U.S. Navy icebreakers push together a huge iceberg away from the channel to McMurdo Station, in the Southern Ocean, 1965._
### 4\. Mountains
To its west and northwest, one of the tallest mountain barriers on earth protects Argentina from Chile and Bolivia, the Andes:
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That mountain range is pretty desertic, too. No army can pass to invade Argentina from there.
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_It takes longer to sail from Santiago de Chile to Buenos Aires than from London to New York_
### 5\. Weak neighbors
To the north, the border with Paraguay is quite flat, but if anyone should be afraid, it's Paraguay, as Argentina's economy dwarfs its own.
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Paraguay already experienced this in the War of the Triple Alliance against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, in which it lost over half of its population and nearly 40% of its territory.
Argentina only has one threat, but it's significant.
### Argentina's Achilles Heel
Can you guess?
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_On one side, Argentina has no neighbor to its colder side, but the US has Canada. However,Canada is pretty weak compared to the US. Meanwhile, the US's hotter neighbor--Mexico--is much weaker because it's smaller and very hilly. The equivalent for Argentina is Brazil, which is much bigger than Argentina, and although its geography is challenging, its very diverse and Brazil has been overcoming it._
Brazil is much bigger than Argentina, in surface area (3x), population (4.5x), and economy (3.5x).
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_Argentina used to be richer than Brazil, because Brazil is huge butits geography is really bad. However, Brazil has spent decades improving its geography, and is now much richer._
This means Argentina's first (and nearly only) geostrategic priority is a good relationship with Brazil.
# The Argentinian Mississippi
In _Never Bet Against America_ , I highlighted one of the best sources of US power: The Mississippi River Basin.
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Since the entire Mississippi river basin is quite flat, it doubles up as an amazing irrigation field for crops and the perfect highway to bring produce to world markets, as it's the biggest network of natural navigable waterways in the world.
Well, Argentina is the same!
* It has a huge flat plain in warm and temperate climates, which is ideal for growing lots of food.
* It's flanked by two mountain ranges that concentrate water into a navigable river basin that reaches the ocean and makes transportation dirt cheap.
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And if you think it's a coincidence, think again, for both lateral mountain ranges have the same origins in the US and Argentina! On the western side, we find the tall mountain ranges.
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That's because they're young, the product of the ongoing subduction of oceanic plates (the Pacific plate is pushing Cocos and Nazca eastwards) under continental plates (the North and South American ones).
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Meanwhile, to the east, the Appalachians, the Canadian Shield, the Brazilian Shield, and Africa used to be part of the same ancient continent!
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_The Appalachians didn 't form at the same time or via the same process, though_
And in between? Both North and South America had inland seaways in the past!
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_Sources for theNorth American and South American maps_
And this is why both areas are low-lying flat plains, with similar soil quality: They formed the same way! A sea formed in between mountain ranges, sediments accumulated, and after the sea receded, rivers and wind slowly deposited more sediments.
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### 6\. Amazing Farmland
Here are the resulting soils in North and South America:
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_The green alfisols and especially the mollisols are some of the most fertile soil in the world. They 're both present in the Mississippi and Rio de la Plata basins because they formed under similar conditions. Note that both countries also have a drier western part made of aridisols, which are also fertile but too dry for much natural vegetation or rainfed agriculture. Both also have entisols in the west, which are of recent origin, the result of the formation of new mountains._
This is the result of these amazing soils:
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_Which one is the Argentinian Pampa and which one is in the Mississippi Basin? Notice the horizons. So flat._
Of course, for this type of agriculture, you need more than flat terrain full of sediments and great rivers. You need the right climate, including proper temperature and precipitation.
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### 7\. The Perfect Climate
Not only do the US and Argentina have a similar geography for the same geological reasons. They're also at similar latitudes, just on opposite sides of the equator!
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Let's _fold_ the map around the equator:
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This is the key reason why the main climates of these countries are so similar:
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_Both have a big, wet, warm region, lots of steppe, and some desert._
Due to the rotation of the Earth, the prevailing winds around the globe look like this:
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This makes the US West Coast, the Amazon, and southern Chile very wet. But these rains also affect the north of Argentina, feeding the Rio de la Plata basin, and dropping tons of water on the eastern Andes:
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_This is for January. Winter (June-September) is drier, but follows the same general pattern, just shifting everything northwards.Source._
And that's why northern Argentina gets a lot of rain (and is therefore much greener), while the south is drier and is browner, with more grasses.
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The US has a sea to its south that affects the rains,² so instead of a north-south difference, it has an east-west one. This determines the type of food it produces:
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_Above: satellite map. Below: precipitation (green is wetter, red is drier)._
The equivalent for Argentina is agriculture in the north and ranching in the south:
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_Source_
And that's why you get cowboys in both the US and Argentina--gauchos!
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In other words, the US has the Great Plains, Argentina has the Pampas. And with their similar soils and climates, they can produce and export inordinate amounts of food.
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_The US and Argentina are the 2nd and 3rd exporters of food in the world, in terms of tonnage (59 and 35 million tons respectively).Source._
Compare Argentina's farmland with the rest of South America's!
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_This is the best farmland in the Southern Hemisphere!_
### 8\. Cheap Construction
Each dollar invested goes much further in Argentina than anywhere else in South America, because it's much easier and cheaper to build on flat land. You don't need to level the ground, build retaining walls, fill slopes, displace much soil, build deep, deal with uneven foundations, break hard stone, spend a lot to ship materials and machinery, risk landslides, or pay high insurance premiums to cover for natural risks.
### 9\. The River Highway
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As a reminder, water transportation is 10-30x cheaper than over land, and yet just halving transportation costs can increase trade by up to 16x! That means water transportation can make a region hundreds of times richer. US and Argentinian farmers can make much more money, accumulate more wealth, and invest more easily than those from other countries.
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This is why it's so important that the Rio de la Plata system is so navigable:
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_The Paran a, Uruguay, and Paraguay rivers are navigable over nearly their entirety. Some of the other tributaries are also navigable over parts of their length. Look at how far this cheap transportation highway goes inland. Even Brazil can cheaply ship a lot of its agricultural and mining products thanks to the Rio de la Plata system. Otherwise, it would have to go through the mountains to reach the coast, which was simply impossible in the past, and is extremely expensive today._
This is crucial in this area, which produces lots of agricultural and mining products that cost little but are heavy--therefore expensive to transport by road. Without this river system, it's possible that none of these products could be successfully exported.
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_The vast majority of Argentinian exports (2019 here) would be impossible or much more expensive to export without the cheap R io de la Plata system._
Compare this to Russia, the biggest country in the world with some of the best farmland. It should be the biggest exporter of food in the world. Instead, it sometimes runs out of food because it spoils due to bad weather and transportation!
### 10\. Political Harmony
Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil fought over their borders after the independence of Latin America in the first half of the 1800s. But after the War of the Triple Alliance, they were done. The countries haven't gone to war with each other in over 150 years, and a key reason for this is the Rio de la Plata system.
As we discussed in _Never Bet Against America , _the Mississippi is a cultural and political unit because local populations constantly trade with each other and their trading interests are the same. This was not the case on the East Coast of the US (as rivers flow from the mountains to the coasts), and isn't the case in Europe either, which is why so many nations emerged there and they fought so many wars.
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The Rio de la Plata is the same, a single river system that promotes trade, cultural exchange, communication, and cooperation. It's the second biggest _interconnected_ navigable river waterway in the world after the Mississippi, and Argentina holds the key to the system: Buenos Aires.
### 11\. Unbelievable Port
Look at the Rio de la Plata:
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_To the right, the R io de la Plata is the biggest river / estuary in the world. It's so big that some consider it a sea. It is formed by the meeting of the Parana and Uruguay Rivers, which you can see to the left. At the bottom is Buenos Aires._
It is not a coincidence that Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital, is found right where the Parana and Uruguay rivers meet to form the Rio de la Plata: It's the perfect hub to trade all the products from the north of Argentina, Paraguay, southern Brazil, and Uruguay.
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_Can you find the R io de la Plata, Buenos Aires, and the Parana River?_
This gives Buenos Aires an incredible economic clout and lots of leverage on all its northern neighbors, who must go through Argentinian waters and the Buenos Aires port to trade with the world.
# 12\. Mining Potential
Chile is one of the biggest exporters of minerals (copper, lithium, silver, iron), but Argentina is not. Yet they're both on the same mountain range!
Chile has been a bit luckier here, because the rains on their side have created more erosion and exposed more ores, which are easy to transport to the nearby coast. Argentina needs more prospecting and infrastructure to bring trains, roads, and water to its mining regions. This is possible but it requires more investment.
# Untapped Potential
With all these assets, Argentina could be a world superpower. But it's not. What happened? We saw that Argentina's GDP per capita is much lower than the US's despite having a similar geography. But it's not the only difference. Here is Argentina's population density:
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You can notice a few things:
* See that huge spike? Buenos Aires concentrates a huge share of Argentina's population: 38%!
* The dark circle represents the Pampas, with the good climate we saw. But it has very few big cities. Look how it compares to the US's Midwest.
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_So many spikes distributed across the land! This is a typical distribution of cities, similar to what we can see in China or Europe._
* Outside of the Pampas, you can see population along the fall line of the Andes mountains
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_Notice how the line of high population density to the northwest hugs the mountains_
This is very typical of cities: People live on flatlands because it's easier and cheaper, but stay close to mountains to benefit from their resources.
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Outside of Buenos Aires and the Andes' foothills, there is very little population, even in areas that have a similar climate in the Northern Hemisphere and are more populated there!
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The US is not very densely populated: Germany hosts 240 people per km2, while the US only has 37 (6.5x less). Argentina is less populated still, at 16.8 people per km2, or 55% less than the US and 93% less than Germany! If it had the same population density as the US, it would be a sizable 94M strong. If it had Germany's, it would have 680M!
Why so unpopulated despite ideal land?
Over the last 250 years, while immigrants were pouring into the US, Argentina was only growing as fast as Canada, which has a much worse climate.
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What can we make of all of this?
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# Argentina's Potential as a Superpower
Argentina is basically the US of the Southern Hemisphere:
* Very similar defensibility, with oceans, mountains, and ice on three sides, and weak neighbors on the other
* The huge exception is Argentina's neighbor, Brazil.
* Very similar land and climate, allowing for a world-class agriculture industry and cheap infrastructure.
* A very similar navigable river basin in the heartland, helping reduce transportation costs, and creating wealth and political harmony, all controlled from Buenos Aires.
* Huge, untapped mineral deposits.
Despite these striking advantages, Argentina has not been able to translate them into immigration and wealth. Geography _is not_ destiny.
One way to put it: Geography is the _hardware_ , our institutions are the _software_. When both work well, a country is unstoppable. With bad hardware but intelligent software, a country can go far. But it's easy to waste good hardware with very bad software. This is what Argentina has done. Another way to put it: Geography is _the chessboard_ : How you play on it determines your success, and Argentina hasn't played very well. Why? This is what we will explore in the next article. Subscribe to read it!
_Learn why Argentina is a middle-income country instead of a superpower_
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_Version en español aqui._
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_I played around to see how many European countries I could fit in Argentina, comparing its landmass of ~2.8M km 2 to the European countries ranked from smallest to largest. I took this list and excluded Akrotiri, Dhekelia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, European Turkey and European Kazakhstan._
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_To be equivalent, Argentina would need a sea to its north, since it 's on the other side of the equator._
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