Latinoamerica

Latinoamerica, America Latina or the rest-of-the-american-continent-that-is-not-USA-or-Canada is a region of the world located in the southern section of the american continent, as other parts of the world this land has given their share of unique features and content to the cultural multiverse most of /tg/ guys dream about. As we are not Wikipedia and we never wanted to be anyway we will focus in those aspects we really care, namely their contribution to anything fantastic or scifi-related.

How it came to be

Long ago, when mankind was marching across the globe in mass-migrating tribes, some of them managed into get to the huge landmass which one day we will know as America, there these tribes established settlements which in some cases eventually grew into cities and then regional civilizations, each one developing their own trails but overall sharing the same "vibe", this is, a tendency for a massive brutal architectonic style, colorful geometric oriented designs and a tendency for a symbolic and stylized visual style which spoke of a deep and harsh connection with nature (but not in the tree-hugging way you may imagine).

While isolated from the rest of the world these pre-columbian civilizations managed to slowly advance, in many cases up to the Copper Age, some of them even creating glyph-base writing scriptures, irrigation channels and developing an impressive textile and metallurgic craftmanship, indeed, the lack of contact with other continents and the harsh geography hinted more advances, as for example, things like wheels wouldn't work quite well in the Amazonian jungles, the Pacific deserts or the Andean chains.

Eventually when the european explorers found the Aztecs, Mayans and Incans (the Big Three of the Pre-columbian World), they had considerably bad odds, and while they managed to stand their ground for decades, eventually the fell to the continuous flux of european colonizers.

It's important to explain something here, while the spaniard conquistadores were brutal and inhuman in the process of conquests. in many cases toppling entire realms and killing entire tribes, they never intended to exterminate the native population, if at least because becoming the owner of your own patch of land and native tribe of labourers was a huge social leap (most of the colonists were indeed poor people looking for a chance of social advancement) and the spaniards crown wanted subjects to fuel their quickly decaying realm. Most of the decimation was done by the diseases the europeans have brought with them (imagine the Skaven tactics, but unintentionally as back then no one even knew bacteries and viruses existed).

In fact, instead of destroying everything and starting from zero in many instances the spaniards prefered to simply take over the current system, building up over the remains of the defeated civilizations and "christening" many customs, keeping some of the nobility and wealthy classes and letting them to their own devices as long as they didn't deny the supremacy of the spaniard ruling class, this was in fact an usual modus-operandi for catholic missionaries and conquerors, who, like their 40k Imperial counterparts, took advantage of the beliefs and culture of the conquered to make things easier, the resulting process brought a unique mix were men praised the Christ yet held to the old traditions of spirits and local supernatural beings while slowly being introduced to european technology and culture.

From an economic and political point of view the american colonies were both a blessing and a curse to the old monarchies of Spain and Portugal, while they had massive resources available and their own respective markets they became dependent on the influx of resources from the colonies, gold in particular, producing an inflation which eventually broke their economic capabilities, this, combined with the simple fact none of them could make a positive accounting balance (fighting the protestants and ottomans took incredible amount of resources) eventually weakened the grip of the european countries in such way that when the ideas of democracy and independence entered the new continent it was a death sentence for the colonial dominions, and if that sounds like the roman empire, or certain futuristic Imperium, that's because that's how empires collapse, indeed Latinoamerica had the fortune of a better alternative than the germanic barbarians or chaotic invasions, sorta.

As any child, Latinoamerica inherited a lot of things from the Iberian peninsula, on one hand their love for good cuisine, arts, letters and music, their savoir vivre and quite a west-style moderation when it came to war and laws (why we shall kill the enemy when they can work for us as loyal subjects?). On the other hand the utter economic incompetence, political short-sights and lack of technological innovation, the ridiculously overextended bureaucracy and regional fractiousness of the Habsburgs and amerindian rulers was evident from inception, with civil war, regional conflicts and unstable governance crippling most chances for progress.

to be continued...