* Chapter 7 A Physical Environmental Sketch of the Americas
The potential of wider comparisons between the Americas
than those of preceding chapters was suggested some years ago
by the geographer Carl Sauer, a scholar with an impressive
grasp of specifics as well as a grand view.
In major design the two continents of the New World
have certain striking resemblances. Both are
triangular, broad at the north, ending in an acute
tip at the south. Both have their great mountains
at the west, fringing the Pacific Ocean; and hence
this ocean receives only a minor part of the
continental drainage. Both have wide, ancient
highlands at the east, largely reduced by long-
continued erosion to hill lands and rolling uplands.
In both cases, between eastern uplands and western
mountains, lie great plains, now or in the past
subject to heavy aggradation from the waste of the
elevated lands both to the east and west. A broad
resemblance may be pointed out between the
continental position of the Mississippi Basin and
that of the La Plata, perhaps even between the Great
Lakes-St. Lawrence and the Amazon Basins. Thus far,
an almost identical schematic diagram could be drawn
for the two continents, suggesting basically similar
dynamics of crustal modeling [10, p. 320].
Such a "diagram" can indeed stimulate some thought about
long-term shifts in landmasses and alterations in sea levels
as well as more easily noticeable processes such as stream
erosion and deposition. It can also be the beginning of an
understanding of resource distribution and natural living
conditions. The trends and relationships it shows liven up
the reading of maps.
This one chapter, of course, could not hope to be a
systematic physical geography of the Americas. It may,
however, help to introduce such a study. It does contain maps
of terrain, generalized geological structure, and climate --
with very clear implications regarding vegetation. These may
be studied separately for the systematic overviews they
provide. More comprehensive information, though, is easily
available in standard atlases and texts, such as Preston
James's Latin America or the Regional Geography of Anglo-
America by C. Langdon White and his colleagues.
FIGURE 7.1. A satellite photograph of the Americas. Photo
courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
FIGURE 7.2. Terrain. A basic reference map for the study of
the Americas. Its potential when used in conjunction with
cultural data is exemplified by the correlation of the
prehistoric cultures of high achievement and the western
mountainlands of what is now Latin America. (Base from
Goode's World Atlas, (c) Rand McNally, 1974. Content after
Finch, Vernon C., et al. Elements of Physical Geography. New
York: McGraw-Hill, (c) 1957, plate 3; and Sanders, William T.
and Price, Barbara J. Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a
Civilization. New York: Random House, (c) 1968, pp. 50-51.)
Instead, we will attempt to pull together the relevant
environmental elements into something like the major life
zones of the Americas. Demographic and cultural patterns of a
similar scale will be fitted to them in Chapter 8; actual
broad themes out of the interaction of people and their
environment come after that. We will pan slowly from west to
east; the order could be different, except that the
environmental parallelism is emphatic in the west. The whole
comparison at this scale may thus, perhaps, be more
immediately convincing if begun from there.
Sauer's "Thus far" reminds us that in this expanded
discussion, as in the preceding example studies, similarities
may be transformed into differences. Several other cautionary
signs must be raised as well. The relationship of people to
their environment must be seen as bilateral. A great deal of
futile argument results from an overemphasis on influence in
the one direction or the other. Human impact on the
environment is easily understood; we see it all around us once
we are sensitive to the indicators. It has quite rightly
become a subject of major concern. European intruders in the
Americas, bringing their Judeo-Christian ideology with them,
took a generally aggressive stance toward the natural
environments they found. They were determined to put what they
might find to use for their own purposes. After all, in the
very first chapter of the Bible God had commanded them: "Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue
it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the
fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon
the earth." The results are with us now and can be judged in
various ways. The native peoples had their own attitudes,
valued different things, and in some cases at least were
concerned to preserve a harmony between themselves and nature.
A reevaluation of their approach for our own times may reveal
some genuine alternatives. It may just be that since numbers
were lower then the stress on the environment was lower too.
Natural environmental influence on human beings is more
difficult to trace. A Peruvian professor of medicine examined
the effect of altitude on man in the Andes and concluded that
"there is sufficient ground -- on account of research carried
out to date in the Andes -- to state that a climatic influence
is at the basis of human form, function and sociological
behavior" [8, p. 177]. A statement such as that, based on
what seem carefully gathered and convincingly presented field
data, is one thing. The statements of Ellsworth Huntington,
an environmental determinist, are another. In his book
Mainsprings of Civilization he made some astonishing points:
There is a positive correlation between mental alertness and
low temperature. Homicide and sexual promiscuity increase
with hot weather. The Dark Ages and the Revival of Learning
occurred at opposite phases of a long climatic cycle [6, pp.
343-367]. There may well be something to all this; Huntington
was no fool. However, the conceptualization must be refined
and much more evidence gathered to support it.
It is also useful to remember that between the "man" and
the "land" of our simplistic formula there is a screen created
by culture. We all perceive and evaluate our environments in
terms of what we have learned and experienced. As individuals
and as groups we have our own criteria for differentiating
between the tolerable and the intolerable, the repulsive and
the attractive, the useful and the "stuff" that is just in the
way. We react to these perceived environments, not to
anything objectively definable. Certain types of landscapes
act as triggers for standard feelings and reactions: deserts,
mountain ranges, river valleys, the endless Pampa, the hills
and hollows of the Appalachians, the Brazilian "backlands," or
a bit of Christmas card New England. They have become
symbolic.
And there is one basic substantive problem in the
comparison of the physical makeup of the Americas. Their
symmetry is fundamentally disturbed by the shape and
orientation of the two continents. If the two roughly
triangular landmasses both pointed toward or away from the
equator, rather than both pointing south, northeastern North
America and southeastern South America would not be as
different as they are. The first is deprived of its Amazonia
by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean; the second seems to
have had its Boreal forests and tundra lopped away.
The Western Mountain System
Anyone who has flown on a clear day across the Canadian
Rockies or southward from Panama along the major air route to
Andean cities cannot help being impressed by this spectacular
mountain system. It is often designated in part or in its
entirety as the Cordillera, a word coming from the Spanish
cuerda, for "cord" (Fig. 7.3). It is part of the circum-
Pacific zone of seismic and volcanic activity.
Parallel subregions extend through considerable lengths
of the system. Most easily recognizable on any topographic
relief map are the formidable ranges on its eastern margins.
The northern and southern extremities are adjacent to highly
fjorded coastlines; they have a generally jagged outline as
well as many other features attributable to mountain
glaciation. The glaciated portion ends in Vancouver Island in
the north and the Island of Chiloe in the south. The
depressions occupied by the waterways between these two
islands and the mainland extend as discontinuous lowlands
southward and northward, all excellent farming areas. The
most clearly defined are the Central Valleys of Chile and
California, with their Mediterranean climates and vegetation.
The first of these two major food-producing areas contains a
major population concentration; the second borders on several
such centers. The one was characterized until recently by the
traditional Spanish American hacienda system; the other
epitomized modern commercialized agriculture.
Of crucial importance in the cultural evolution of the
Americas are the intermontane plateaus of the Mexican-
Guatemalan highlands and the Altiplano of the Central Andes,
two favored areas in which agriculture and urbanism made their
earliest appearance in the Americas. They had concentrations
of Indian population at the time of the Spanish conquest in
the early sixteenth century. They attracted New World
colonization and eventually became the cores of modern states.
Densely occupied now, their large cities are surrounded by
communities in which Indians are an important if not the
predominant element of the population. Although these people
may live quite close to the cities, they are worlds removed in
terms of culture and standards of living.
FIGURE 7.3. The western cordillera. (Base from Goode's World
Atlas, (c) Rand McNally, 1974.)
FIGURE 7.4. Nabesna Glacier in the Wrangell Mountains, near
the northern extremity of the Cordillera. National Park
Service, photo by M. Woodbridge Williams.
FIGURE 7.5. The grand Teton Mountains, one of the ranges that
make up the Rocky Mountains, which in turn form the eastern
ramparts of the Cordillera in North America.
The general continuity of the western mountain system is
broken in Middle America, by a volcanic zone bisecting Mexico
at about the latitude of its capital. Complicated and in
large part transverse Middle American landmasses, with their
related islands to the east, elaborate this interruption.
The patterns of climate and vegetation in the mountainous
area are so complicated that many small-scale maps simply
label them "undifferentiated." It is small wonder, since they
vary in two dimensions. The altitudinal variation of climate
and vegetation, with associated variations in cultural
landscapes, has fascinated geographers and others for a long
time. A famous German scholar and traveler, Alexander von
Humboldt, opened this subject up to investigation in the
Western world. He drew profiles of western mountain ranges on
the basis of barometric measurements and observed the natural
conditions prevailing at different levels as well as
settlement, land use, and customs. Along the sides of some
of the tropical Latin American volcanoes, like Orizaba in
Mexico or Chimborazo in Ecuador, are full series of zones,
from the tropical forested lowlands, home of the rubber
tappers and shifting cultivators, to the permanent snowfields
at the top (Fig. 7.7). The mountains of Alaska and southern
Chile show altitudinal zonation too, but only the upper
portions of what is seen in the tropics and these are
complicated by the effects of strong seasonal climatic
changes. Snowlines migrate much farther each year in the
north and south than they do in the tropics.
FIGURE 7.6. On Lake Todos Los Santos, near Mt. Puntiagudo, in
the heart of Chile's fishing and hunting country. This
extinct volcano is a part of the main eastern Andean range
where it fringes Chile's little South. Photo courtesy of Lan-
Chile Airlines.
The altitudinal zones can perhaps be thought of as a
series of bows, arrayed in full near the equator, then
intersecting with the earth's surface in turn as one moves
north and south.
The Arid Lands
Add horizontal to altitudinal variations in the high
mountains of the Americas, and these environments become
complex indeed. A key to understanding them lies in the bands
of aridity that diagonally saddle both the western mountains
of North America and the Andes. They show up clearly on the
map of climates (Fig. 7.8), as well as on some pictures of the
western hemisphere taken from satellites. The dry areas are
usually dominated by high-pressure systems and hence are
seldom obscured by clouds. They grade equatorward into the
wet tropics and poleward into moister and colder climates. As
a result of the configuration of the continents the Cordillera
extends into greater climatic extremes in the north than the
south.
FIGURE 7.7. Altitudinal zonation on a tropical mountain with
abundant precipitation. Variations in cultivated or natural
plant cover along a tropical mountainside reflect the upward
decrease in average temperatures and indicate something of the
complexity of cultural landscapes in terrain of this type.
(After Finch, Vernon C.. et al. Elements of Physical
Geography. New York: McGraw-Hill, (c) 1957, p. 202.)
FIGURE 7.8. Climates of the Americas. A climatic
regionalization such as this is probably the most useful
single aid to the understanding of small-scale natural
environmental patterns. (Base from Goode's World Atlas, (c)
Rand McNally, 1974. Content after Finch, Vernon C., et al.
Elements of Physical Geography. New York: McGraw-Hill, (c)
1957, frontispiece.)
The reasons for the presence and form of these deserts
with their "steppe" and semidesert fringes begin just off the
coast. The permanent high-pressure systems contain subsiding
-- that is, stable -- air masses. This condition is
reinforced by the cold waters of the equatorbound Peru and
California currents. They cool the air just above, making it
subside even more. The whole process produces conditions
opposite to the rising unstable air required for cloud
formations and precipitation. On the eastern sides of the
mountains another control takes over. This is the rain-shadow
effect, or simply the effect of a location sheltered from
moisture-bearing, eastward-moving cyclonic storms. By the
time air masses have come up and over the mountains, they are
literally rained out. The arid zones are thus drawn eastward
and poleward. All these controls are stronger off the
Peruvian and Chilean coasts than they are off California and
Mexico, making the Atacama one of the driest deserts in the
world. The rain-shadow effect behind the Cordillera is also
clearer in South America than North America.
Settlements in the arid lands must be at oases and along
streams or have to be sustained by costly artificial means.
Movement between them was and still is hazardous. The most
delicate and enduring adjustments to this environment have
been made by the indigenous inhabitants, the Indians. The
settlements and irrigated agriculture of such groups as the
Atacamenos along the western slopes of the main Andean range
in northern Chile and the Hopi oi Arizona are striking
examples.
FIGURE 7.9. In the Mojave Desert, a part of the massive arid
zone that stretches from Baja California northward into the
interior of the United States. Photo courtesy of U.S.
Department of the Interior.
The ghost towns that can also be found in the deserts and
elsewhere in the Cordillera of the western hemisphere
represent quite the opposite. People came in and went away
again, leaving a scandal. It may well be that more wealth has
been generated by the "rushes" after gold, nitrates, or
whatever, since they have been written about and filmed, than
was frantically dug out of the ground by the miners
themselves.
The desert mining town of today is a different place;
witness the copper mine and support facilities at Chuquicamata
in Chile or the modern mining towns of the North American
Southwest. Environmental adjustments, such as air
conditioning, are common. Good transportation routes link
the settlements with markets, and amenities of all kinds are
provided. There is an air of permanence. Even so, it must not
be forgotten that these settlements too are based on the
extraction of nonrenewable resources and could become the
ghost towns of the future.
Nevertheless, desert no longer means desolation in quite
the way it once did, at least not in North America. The
suburbs of Los Angeles or Phoenix have spread out into arid
country and advertise the fact. "Desert Acres" or "Sunshine
Valley" may represent attractive concepts to farmers from the
Great Plains affluent enough to winter in the Southwest, or to
those who want to retire in the sun. Las Vegas and Reno,
spelled out in lights, have added the fun to the comfort. This
sort of thing is not much in evidence yet around the cities
and towns of South American deserts, although Africa, in
northern Chile, took a leaf out of Nevada's book and included
a gambling casino in the development program for that port.
FIGURE 7.10. Navajo Indians near a traditional hogan in
Monumental Valley, Arizona. Photo by Josef Muench.
Problems and Possibilities
The western mountain system as a whole has always been a
barrier. It must have been that for prehistoric people, who
in North America at least seem to have migrated mainly along
its landward side. North American fur traders as well as
Brazilian bandeirantes found it hard to penetrate from the
landward side. Crossing the mountains remains a problem in
North and Latin America. A Canadian thinks of the way in
which the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway from
coast to coast, over the Cordillera, helped to unite the
country. It enabled Canada to enclose and retain British
Columbia. Modern highways, of course, have diminished the
problem but not eliminated it. A Chilean might think of the
spectacular march of San Martin and his army from Argentina
over the Andes at 14,000 feet to liberate Chile from Spanish
rule. A Peruvian would probably note the current difficulties
of getting from Lima into the tropical lowlands that make up
about a half of his country's area. Planes have overcome this
isolation for the affluent and for high-value freight. A
gradually improving road network is doing the same for
ordinary people and their freight.
Although the geologically "young" western mountains of
both North and Latin America are a barrier to east-west
movement, they have also long been a source of wealth. There
are rich deposits of nonferrous metals, such as tin, copper,
and of course gold and silver (Fig. 7.11). (Iron ore is
scarce; it is found in abundance only at the peripheries of
the "old" Canadian and Brazilian shields.) The major streams
flowing out of the mountains now provide hydroelectric power.
To an increasing extent these mountains have also become a
recreational resource, especially in North America.
Continental Interiors
Our sweep eastward can be more rapid than the vast
interior regions would seem to merit because of what has been
discussed already in the comparisons of the Great Plains and
the Pampa, Amazonia and the Arctic, Appalachia and the
Brazilian Northeast. The purpose must be to perceive
relationships. Some immediately become apparent in an outline
of geological structure and mineralization, both represented
on Figure 7.11. Its bold regionalization helps to clarify the
distribution of several basic resources.
Ancient, stable rocks of the Precambrian "shields" appear
at or near the surface of most of the northern interiors of
the two continents. They have been reduced through long, long
erosion to a low topography, and further scarred in North
America by continental glaciation. In places, particularly
around the southern rim of the Canadian Shield and in
southeastern Brazil, these ancient formations rise to several
thousand feet above sea level. Human occupation and use of
the regions have been sparse, but new initiatives are under
way, as was developed in the comparison of the Arctic and
Amazonia.
FIGURE 7.11. Geological Structure and key minerals. Lists --
and maps -- of key products have given geography a bad name.
Nevertheless it is useful to be able to relate, say, copper or
tin to the development of the appropriate Andean country, and
to understand something of the distribution of petroleum
reserves. An outline of geological zonation helps one make
sense of the grouping and distribution of the minerals. (Base
from Goode's World Atlas, (c) Rand McNally, 1974. Content
after Aldine University Atlas, Chicago: Aldine Publishing
Co., (c) 1969 George Philip and Son, Ltd. and Der Grosse
Bertelsman Wetatlas, (c) 1960, pp. 8-9.)
The rich deposits of iron near the Great Lakes, as well
as in Brazil's Serra da Espinhaco and Venezuela's Cerro
Bolivar, which is virtually an "iron mountain," are located on
these ancient shields. Nonferrous metals, notably gold,
silver, lead, zinc, and copper, also occur. In the western
mountain system just discussed, the second type predominates
and the first occurs only in several relatively minor
deposits. This general but basic distinction is important in
making sense of mining in the Americas, past and present.
More recent rocks, formed of sediments laid down when the
continental interiors were repeatedly submerged, overlie
sections of the shields and extend southward on both
continents. Their surface is even flatter, except where
incised by stream erosion. The development of two major food-
producing areas for the Americas and the world on two segments
of these plains has been sketched in the comparison of the
Great Plains and the Pampa.
The "old" mountains on the eastern periphery of the North
American interior lowland, are a rather dramatic series of
ranges made up of folded sedimentary strata. Eastern Brazil
has somewhat analogous highlands, but the topography is more
complex, the folding not nearly so linear.
These regions of sedimentary rocks and their offshore
extensions provide the Americas with most of their fossil
fuels: coal, oil, and gas. Isolated fields also occur along
the length of the Cordillera. As Figure 7.11 shows clearly,
the deposits are particularly large and well located in North
America.
The climates of the continental interiors extend in
generally parallel east-west zones from the Cordillera to the
eastern coasts, except at the seaward margins of Brazil and in
the dry belts along the eastern sides of the Cordillera,
poleward of the 20-degree parallels of latitude (Fig. 7.8).
The comparability of the Great Plains and Pampa environments
has been discussed. The southeastern areas of both continents
have humid subtropical climates (Caf).
A line traced from the North Pole to New Orleans, over
the rather bold and abstract but very useful climatic
boundaries on Figure 7.8, passes from the Arctic tundra
through progressively warmer and moister zones, from treeless
areas through needleleaf evergreen Boreal forests, mixed tree
species, then a patchwork of deciduous forest and grassland,
and finally needleleaf forests again. The delta of the
Mississippi, the whole south coast of the United States, and
certainly Florida present an introduction to the tropics.
Something similar can be done in the southern hemisphere,
but with different results. If we begin at the South Pole and
move over the climatic map (Fig. 7.8) to Buenos Aires and
eventually Trinidad, we cross first the polar environment of
Antarctica, then an expanse of ocean, and pick up on the South
American continental climatic zones where North America left
off. Moisture increases and seasons change from summer and
winter to wet and dry. The grassland of the Pampa gives way
to mixtures of deciduous scrub and evergreen forest species,
which yield in turn to the Amazonian rain forest. This
difference between the eastern sections of the two roughly
conical continents is perhaps the most striking result of the
fact that they both point southward rather than toward each
other across the equator.
As almost any map of the Americas must clearly show, the
continental interiors are divided into the catchment basins of
a series of major rivers. They have provided entry and exit,
some better than others. Much of the history of settlement
and land use in the interiors seems a documentation of
movement; the net westward trends in population migration, the
shift of frontiers, and the convergence of elements of
industrial production come to mind, but more of that in a
later chapter.
The Eastern Seaboards
The two eastern coastal margins provided beachheads in
the New World and now sustain heavy population concentrations.
The arrangement and locational relationships of various
physical aspects of the seaboards proved critical to the
occupancy and use of much of the two continents. These regions
were not dealt with in Part I because differences within and
between them are substantial. However, they are comparable in
some respects and we shall explore these relationships here.
FIGURE 7.12. The eastern slopes of the Andes in Argentina,
near Salta -- a part of the arid zone that extends
southwestward from the Pacific, over the mountains, and down
their eastern margins. Photo by EPA Newsphoto.
FIGURE 7.13. The eastern seaboards. An approximation of the
physical settings for the beginnings of European colonization
in the Americas. (Base from Goode's World Atlas, (c) Rand
McNally, 1974. Content after Kuchler, A.W. Goode's World
Atlas, 13th ed. (c) Rand McNally, 1970, pp. 20-21)
Both coasts are backed by the northeast-southwest-
trending "old" geologic systems already referred to,
dramatically linear in North America, more diffuse in South
America. The first provides a series of convenient passes
into the interior, notably the Mohawk River Valley and the
Cumberland Gap. The second is more difficult to traverse and,
in fact, raises an escarpment to block movement from the
harbors to the interior for much of its length. The barrier
is especially formidable behind Rio de Janeiro. Between the
mountains and the sea, on both continents, are wedged what are
often shown as plains on small-scale relief maps -- much wider
in North America than in South America.
The Atlantic seaboard of the United States has a highly
irregular coastline of embayments, estuaries, peninsulas, and
islands, the result of coastal submergence, augmented from New
York northward by glacial de posits and fringed southward by
lagoons and barrier beaches. The plain itself can be divided
into two bands, the low coastal plain proper underlaid by soft
sedimentary rocks, with elevations up to several hundred feet,
and a piedmont of harder crystalline rocks, rising gradually
toward the mountains, up to about 1500 feet. Between the two,
particularly well defined south of New York, is the fall line,
a line of rapids on the streams crossing from harder to softer
rocks, where navigation ends and important cities grew up.
The Brazilian coastal plain is less than 100 miles in
width, for the most part, and irregular in its landward
margins. The coast is much smoother in outline than that of
the eastern United States. However, it does offer a series of
embayments, sheltered by discontinuous rock reefs running from
where Brazil's coast bends southward to about 17 degrees south
latitude. It is not divided geologically into bands, as is
the United States seaboard, but is underlain by a variety of
rock types, which have been molded into low-profile landforms.
Glaciation, of course, did not occur.
FIGURE 7.14. In East County, Vermont. This northern part of
the Appalachians holds some fundamentally "American" landscape
imagery. Photo by David W. Corson from A. Devaney, N.Y.
The climate and related features of the two seaboards
differ widely. If either were located farther south, they
would be much more similar. The United States seaboard in its
northern section is a variation on the severely seasonal
continental pattern moderated sufficiently by its proximity to
the Atlantic to make freeze-up of waterways unlikely and allow
cultivation of truck crops. Moving southward one reaches
virtually subtropical conditions. The natural vegetation is a
combination of deciduous and coniferous forest, mostly long
since cleared or replaced by succession species. Soils are
generally mediocre and require extensive fertilization to
sustain commercial cropping.
The Brazilian seaboard is fully tropical; from the bulge,
with its distinct dry season and combinations of forest and
grassland, conditions change southward into tropical rain
forest, with precipitation distributed throughout the year.
Here too the natural vegetation has been almost entirely
cleared since European colonization and replaced by cultivated
plants or succession species. The soils require as careful
management as any in temperate zones but have in fact been
seriously impoverished through sustained commercial cropping
with little fertilization.
The forests of Brazil's coast were first appreciated by
the European, for their dyewoods. The soils soon sustained
widespread plantings of sugar cane. This and other tropical
commercial crops, as well as cattle, are still important to
the country's economy. The offshore fisheries, forests, and
manageable soils within easy reach of the developing cities
have also been and still are of substantial economic
consequence. Plantation systems developed on both seaboards
-- a phenomenon that has often stimulated comparative study.
The main attributes of the physical environment for the
development -- particularly the urban development -- of the
two seaboards are locational. The protected anchorages, but
more fundamentally the proximity of the seaboards to Europe
and shipping lanes southward, facilitated the initial landfall
and the sustenance of the resulting colonies. Bases were soon
developed for penetration into the interiors of the
continents.
The particularly favorable links eastward and westward
from the United States seaboard allowed for the growth of
"Megalopolis." This is an ancient Greek term for a very large
city which the geographer Jean Gottmann applied to the
almost continuous stretch of urban and suburban
areas from southern New Hampshire to northern
Virginia and from the Atlantic shore to the
Appalachian foothills. The processes of
urbanization, rooted deep in the American past, have
worked steadily here, endowing the region with
unique ways of life and of land use. No other
section of the United States has such a large
concentration of population, with such a high
average density, spread over such a large area.
And no other section has a comparable role within
the nations or a comparable importance in the world
[4, p. 3].
Cities grew up along the Brazilian east coast as well.
With the development of gold-mining in the Brazilian interior
during late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and
the construction of a road over the escarpment, Rio de Janeiro
became the major one. Industrialization and modernization
proceeded, particularly from Rio southwestward toward Sao
Paulo, but there is as yet no contiguous Megalopolis.
Brazil's urban core is sometimes presented as a triangle. Rio
and Sao Paulo form its base; Brasilia is the apex. All three
are closely linked and functionally integrated to a
considerable extent, but the links to the interior and to
important foreign trading partners are not as advantageous as
in eastern North America.
Latin America's Geographical Jinx
Most of Latin America, certainly the Brazilian seaboard
and South America's cone, is considerably south of where most
of the world's economic action is: western Europe and the
eastern United States. Maps of world surface shipping [e.g.
9, p. 85] show a thick web of sea-lanes and heavy tonnage
across the North Atlantic, into the Gulf of Mexico, across the
Caribbean, and through the Panama Canal. Routes and tonnage
are relatively meager south of the equator. Maps of nonstop
jet connections strongly reinforce this picture, which
reflects not only actual economic activity but also the basic
locational problem and translates into high transportation
costs.
Northern South America's rivers do not focus large
interior tributary regions at economically favorable points.
Just west of Sao Paulo and Rio the rivers flow westward. In
addition, movement inland is impeded by the escarpment not far
from the coast. Rapids on the Sao Francisco, the one major
river that does flow to the densely settled eastern coast,
prevent navigation between the coast and points inland. The
Amazon, of course, is a magnificent waterway into the
interior. However, the settlements it serves and the economic
activity it sustains and concentrates are of minor importance
in the large picture. The Paraguay-Parana-La Plata system,
with its shallow channels, shifting course, and frequent:
flooding is a rather poor transportation route. Buenos Aires
must be thought of as a center of overland rail and road
rather than of inland water transportation. Elsewhere the
river systems have only local transportational significance,
except perhaps the Magdalena of Colombia, but it too presents
navigational difficulties. The great Orinoco of Venezuela is
navigable for only some 400 kilometers from its mouth.
The resources for heavy industry are neither as
substantial nor as advantageously juxtaposed in Latin as in
North America. Large iron deposits are to be found in
eastern Venezuela and not far behind the Brazilian seaboard;
smaller deposits, at various points in the Cordillera. Coal
deposits are meager and usually quite far away from the iron
ore. Fossil fuels in general are not nearly so plentiful.
Except in southeastern Brazil, both coal and iron ore are long
distances from where the iron and steel are to be used. Other
minerals are often at a similar locational disadvantage.
Nowhere in Latin America is there such a fortunate linkup
of markets, minerals, fuels, waterways, and other
transportation routes as exists between North America's Great
Lakes and the Atlantic seaboard. This is perhaps the most
serious environmental deterrent to economic development along
modern lines.
It has been said that the Latin Americans have had less
to work with than the North Americans. A Chilean writer
maintained some years ago: "Everything has favoured you.... A
fruitful nature and an infinite expanse of virgin lands
multiplied your efforts" [1, p. 459]. This comment can be and
often is countered by North Americans with invidious
comparisons on the way Latin Americans have used what is
theirs. More tactful -- and constructive -- is the premise
that it was neither natural resource endowment nor cultural
equipment that led the two Americas into their current
socioeconomic situations, but a sequence of historical
circumstances.
An Ecological Postscript
The Americas were long thought to have bountiful, even
limitless, natural environments; these have recently come to
appear more and more precarious. Examples of stress and
reasons for concern have already been noted in the five sets
of detailed comparisons. Soils have been diminished through
exhaustion, erosion, and leaching, especially in the long and
densely settled highlands of Latin America, as well as in the
problem areas of both Latin and North America. The end of
some mineral reserves and fossil fuel deposits is in sight.
The atmosphere above the large cities is opaque. Many streams
have become sewers; lakes are choking with weeds. Forests are
in retreat, and whole species of flora and fauna are in danger
of eradication.
The literature on all this is bedeviled by problems of
definition and incomplete data, by alarmism as much as
complacency. Resentful comparisons pass back and forth
between the Americas on resource management. North Americans
are wasting energy; Latin Americans paying little attention to
sustained yield in their forestry operations. It does seem
clear that detrimental human-induced environmental change
threatens the life-style of the "haves" and the aspirations of
the "have-nots."
The worldwide discussion of ecological problems has
produced some dramatic north-south confrontations within the
Americas, as it has between "developed" and "developing"
countries generally. Representatives of the latter often
maintain that environmental concern is a luxury of the rich
nations. Talk by the people from developed countries of the
need for population control is seen as a conspiracy to promote
neocolonialism. It is feared, moreover, that the costs of
environmental protection in developed countries will be passed
on to the developing world in the prices for manufactured
goods. However, the evidence for actual or potential
environmental deterioration in the developing countries is
gradually becoming strong enough to temper these views.
The developing countries must continue to place economic
development first. They seem to have no choice but to
industrialize; after all, poverty is the worst "pollution."
The contemplation of "no-growth" policies would be frivolous
if not cruel. Environmental protection can be considered to
the extent that it does not hamper this primary goal. Some
countries, particularly Brazil, have taken the official
position that development and preservation of the environment
are not incompatible. There is no doubt that herein lies one
of the greatest modern challenges to human ingenuity.
References
1. Bilbao, Francisco. "America en Peligro." In Keen, B.,
Readings in Latin American Civilization. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1955.
2. Claiborne, Robert. Climate, Man and History. New York:
Norton, 1970.
3. Finch, Vernon C., et al. Elements of Physical Geography.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957.
4. Gottmann, Jean. Megalopolis. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T.
Press, 1961.
5. Hewitt, K., and Hare, F. K. Man and Environment.
Commission on College Geography, Resource Paper No. 20.
Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1973.
6. Huntington, E. Mainsprings of Civilization. New York:
Wiley, 1945.
7. James, Preston. Latin America. New York: Odyssey. 1969.
8. Monge, C. Acclimatization in the Andes. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1948.
9. Oxford Economic Atlas. London: Oxford University Press,
1972.
10. Sauer, C. "Geography of South America." Handbook of South
American Indians (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American
Ethnology, Bulletin 143) 6 (1950): 319-543.
11. Schmieder, Oskar. Die Neue Welt: Mittel und Suidamerica.
Heidelberg: Keyserische, 1962.
12. Sternberg, H. O'R. "Man and Environmental Change in Latin
America." In Fittkan, E. J., et al., Biogeography and Ecology
in South America. The Hague: Junk, 1968. Pp.413-445
13. Troll, C. Die tropischen Gebirge. Bonn: Dummlers. 1959.
14. White, C. Langdon, Foscue, Edwin J., and McKnight, Tom L.
Regional Geography of Anglo-America. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1964.
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