LATIN AMERICAN GEOGRAPHIES: A GLANCE OVER AN IMMENSE LANDSCAPE

摘要

Cities and landscapes in Latin America are the result of three distinct yet interrelated processes.1 The first is its physical geography, which continues to be fundamental to its territorial organization, its cultural diversity, and its position as a major source of minerals, metals, and hydrocarbons for global markets. The second, a historical one, is that Latin America went through a process of colonization that was distinctly different from others, particularly in North America, one that implanted an extensive network of cities and a tradition of cultural hybridization, both still operative today. The third, a socio-economic one, and one of the most rehearsed hypothesis on Latin American culture, is that there has been a fully developed modernism, in the cultural sense of the word, but without full modernization, in the economic and social senses of the term.