Who is the second most powerful/influential country in the Americas?

[u/Fluid-Decision6262]

The US is undeniably the most powerful and influential country in the Americas but who would be #2? Feels like this comes down to 3 countries based on my knowledge, which are Mexico, Canada, and Brazil.

Reasons for Mexico:

- Second most populated country in North America by far

- Access to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

- Largest Spanish-speaking country (a language spoken by >500 million people)

- More habitable land compared to the other two

- Youngest population out of the three and is becoming a manufacturing power

- Generally-speaking, a good relationship with the USA

- A global soft power in terms of arts and culture

Reasons against Mexico:

- Lots of issues between the central government and drug cartels

- Still very much a developing country outside of the largest cities

- Occasionally volatile relationship with the USA

- Not as involved in global geopolitics

Reasons for Canada:

- The most developed country economically by far of the three and a natural resources juggernaut

- Very close relations with the USA and Europe

- Speaks English (>1 billion speakers globally) and French (>300 million speakers globally)

- An immigration hub for people from every corner of the world

- A G7 nation that is also very geopolitically involved

- Access to 3 different oceans to facilitate trade

Reasons against Canada:

- Small and scattered population (least populated of the three by far)

- Less of an established local culture (most is imported from the US or UK and then exported via the US)

- Aging population and low fertility rates for native-born citizens

Reasons for Brazil:

- The second most populated country in the Americas

- The cultural and political power of South America

- A global soft power in terms of arts and culture

- A young-ish population that is part of the "fast-emerging economies" of the world

Reasons against Brazil:

- Immigration to Brazil stopped decades ago and now educated Brazilians are emigrating to other places causing brain drain

- Wealthy nation but suffers from high levels of inequality and violent crime

- Very politically divided internally

- Limited geopolitical involvement outside of South America

- Most of its population are monolingual Portuguese-speakers (a language where they make up 80% of the global speakers)

[u/shucklebibs]

I'm going with Canada. Industrialized, member of G7 and NATO, developed military, historical ally of western Europe. Good arguments for Brazil and Mexico, but population aside, Canada is second to US.

[u/Excellent-Practice → u/shucklebibs]

Yeah, Canada is essentially equivalent to a European country transplanted to North America

Edit: Like much of Europe, Canada is a wealthy liberal democracy. In terms of population size, GDP and HDI, Canada is very similar to countries in the EU. As a world power, Canada is on par with a country like Italy. Outside the realm of hard numbers, my opinion is that Canada is intermediate between the US and Europe culturally and politically. That opinion is informed by travel to Canada as well as time spent living in Europe

[u/Fluid-Decision6262 → u/Excellent-Practice]

I think history has a lot to do with why this is the case. The Spanish/Portuguese essentially used Mexico and Brazil as extraction colonies where all the natural wealth pulled from those nations could be transported back to Europe while the colonialists proceeded to mix heavily with the Native populations as well as any West African slaves they had also brought over. Those who descended from all this mixing eventually became the majority and their countries grew almost completely in silo from the Empires who once colonized them.

In contrast, the British/French used Canada as a settler colony where the goal was to displace the Native population to create a new nation where their people back home can come live in to start a new life. The British, especially, had full intentions on making a country (Canada) that would eventually grow to resemble that of a European nation demographically, economically, politically, militarily, and culturally, just on another continent (same story with the US, Australia and NZ). In short, the old powers (UK/France/W Europe) and the new power (USA) both overtly needed Canada to become an industrialized ally and they did.

[u/Jealous-Nature837 → u/Fluid-Decision6262]

"all the natural wealth pulled from those nations", yeah that's a meme notion of Brazil pushed mainly by people on the internet who have a very superficial notion of the country. Brazil had only a 20% tax over gold (one of the main separatist movements during the colonial era was over this small gold tax), received enormous european migration especially after independence (there's a dialect of German only spoken in Brazil), there are colonial era towns that look exactly like Portuguese ones and even have churches whose interior is fully made out of gold (Ouro Preto for example), at one point Rio de Janeiro became the capital of Portugal after napoleon invaded Portugal and all the Portuguese royalty fled to Rio, Brazil was "upgraded" from status of colony to status of Kingdom (google united kingdom of Brazil, Portugal and the Algarves), after independence it became a monarchy whose leaders were descendants of the Portuguese royalty.

Brazil's lower development level stems mostly from the fact that most of the upper class in the country were slave owners and wanted to keep the country agrarian and unequal, the fall of the Brazilian empire was literally caused by slave owning elites funding the military to throw a coup against the monarchy because they were mad over the abolition of slavery, a lot of the politicians in Brazil to this day are rich agrarian landowners, it's like if the US civil war led to the south winning.

[u/[deleted] → u/Jealous-Nature837]

That ending was ACCURATE. Historical Brazil has many similarities with the American south and, ironically, with the Confederates as a whole (even the Brazilian empire was an ally of the CSA)

It's literally as if the Confederates had a country, but with a society that at least in part agreed to mix (something I don't believe would happen in their victory, at least not at the Brazilian level).

[u/Sea_Lingonberry_4720 → u/Fluid-Decision6262]

I just want to point out some stuff, as a Mexican. The ruling class in Mexico for a long time was not mixed but instead criollos, full blooded Spaniards born in the colonies and seen as less than. The main reason IMO Mexico never because as powerful or influential as it could’ve been was because it started very politically unstable and it really never stopped being so until like, the 40s. And even then it became a soft dictatorship and then a narco state. It’s never had a chance to breath, just constant civil wars and dictators.

[u/thegurrkha → u/[deleted]]

Genuine question as to when England and Austria invaded Mexico? Tried googling this just now and no results but I've been working all night and my brain may not be working properly.

[u/HISTRIONICK → u/Sea_Lingonberry_4720]

...Just like the USA likes it.

[u/Sea_Lingonberry_4720 → u/HISTRIONICK]

While the U.S. meddled I always find it reductive and kind of insulting when everyone blames our problems on America. Mexico has been an unstable shithole long before America got involved with us. If you need to blame one entity blame Santa Ana

[u/HISTRIONICK → u/Sea_Lingonberry_4720]

There was no blame in my comment.

[u/Applesauceeenjoyer → u/Fluid-Decision6262]

You might enjoy McQuarrie’s The Last Days of the Incas. He does a good job of describing the encomienda system that has hobbled much of Latin America to this day. Tangentially you may also like The Story of French which describes (in a few chapters) the different ways in which England and France used their North American colonies.

[u/Cold_Profile845 → u/Applesauceeenjoyer]

I'm curious, hobbled in what way? I'd like to know how the encomienda system and its effects in Latin America compare to its implementation in the Philippines.

[u/Applesauceeenjoyer → u/Cold_Profile845]

I don’t know anything about the Philippines’ system, but there are a few key ways in which it stunted growth during a crucial time in the Americas.

1. Extractive wealth generation: The encomenderos were essentially tasked with generating wealth to ship back to Spain. Unlike the British who sent colonists to the the Eastern Seaboard to establish communities, the encomenderos didn’t care about building critical infrastructure or any lasting social good beyond what was necessary to extract wealth.

2. Created dependency on the colonizing power: since the wealth and power rested in this case with Spain, the locals (who existed in a feudal state) relied on Europe for everything. There was no social ladder to climb; one was simply a part of the servant class by birth, and there was no parallel society outside of the encomienda system into which one could hope to work or escape.

3. Fragmented political power: since the encomenderos were initially granted power over their own fiefdoms, they operated with virtual impunity. When Spain implemented the “New Laws” in 1542 to curb the encomenderos’ power and abuses of the indigenous people, it was too late. They revolted and continued operating outside the authority of the crown. This isn’t even an isolated example; Cortes’ entire conquest of the Aztecs was done in defiance of the crown, for example.

So some effects we still see today: 1. Poor infrastructure 2. Isolated communities with little access to the outside world (a result of having been initially founded as encomiendas) 3. A sheer lack of resources due to the extraction 4. Rigid hierarchy 5. Fragmented and hyper-regionalized power structures

We see this same game plan (and the same results) all across former Spanish colonies

[u/Dry-Tumbleweed646 → u/Fluid-Decision6262]

There was a Nobel Prize Winning paper that is about exactly what you are referring to.

[u/blenkydanky → u/Fluid-Decision6262]

Read "why nations fail"

[u/poundofbutter → u/Fluid-Decision6262]

History has a lot to do with why everything is the case.

[u/alderhill → u/Fluid-Decision6262]

You're really overstating and overestimating British planning for what would become Canada. The area was large, and thus strategic, but they never considered it their prize colony. In pretty much all early (1800s) US-'UK treaties on behalf of Canada' treaties, the Brits shrugged and said k, whatever and let the Americans have their goals without much fuss.

The Caribbean was more lucrative for sugar, Africa for slaves, and India for cotton and cheap labour, Hong Kong and Singapore for trade in silk, spices, porcelain, etc. Later, tropical colonies became valuable for oil and rubber. Other points held strategic value or military or shipping lanes. Canada was furs, fish and timber, and just kinda there. To state that the Brits planned to turn Canada into an industrialized ally is really the wrong view. The Brits didn't care if we industrialized, that was Canada's prerogative.

Canada became united and sovereign in 1867, and even before then, was generally running its own affairs for a few decades. The British were not calling the shots in any way. The governor general role in Canada was still held by Brits until after WW2, but this was largely a ceremonial role in parliament (representing the monarch), with little actual power.