The lack of military invasions has certainly been a boon, but not sufficient to overcome the issues left over by Spanish/Portuguese style colonialism which crea

The lack of military invasions has certainly been a boon, but not sufficient to overcome the issues left over by Spanish/Portuguese style colonialism which created land owning aristocracies and rampant corruption. Argentina, Brazil, and Chile really all ought to be superpowers and Venezuela could have been richer than Saudi Arabia.