The Future Geography of Latin America

Abstract

Geography, as a discipline, is largely oriented toward the present, and a relatively small part of its effort is devoted to historical studies. This brief article is intended to illustrate the usefulness of a forward look at geography, anticipating the use of land space at some point in the future. As such, we consider it useful, when examining Latin America, to make certain methodological distinctions. We specifically want to distinguish several levels of intervention, namely the public and the private, and the domestic and the external to the region of reference. Furthermore, we want to point out that some developments will occur without any intervention at all, others will depend on certain types of intervention, and still others will occur in spite of a major intervention designed to achieve contrary results. As in the case of other social scientific analyses, there are internal variables and external variables. Undoubtedly the distinctions and contingencies deserve a clearer analytical treatment than we offer in this article.