The underdevelopment of Latin America is due to Western powers

 Living in Latin America and learning their history, it's miserable. Latin America often recognizes that there are countries with a lot of natural resources. It's true, Mexico, Brazil, and many other Latin countries have a lot of natural resources, but who's taking that natural resource and converting it?   Europe and the United States, of course. Even though resources come to their land, they lack the money or the technology to extract them. This unfair treatment has been around for 150, 200 years. Take Mexico, for example, in the late 19th century, you're able to drive out the Spanish kingdom and enjoy independence, but then you have a lot of social and economic turmoil. It's because the majority of Spaniards, then engineers, entrepreneurs, and capitalists, fled because they gained independence. It was necessary to seal their vacuum, to put down the serfs' rebellion, and not only were the royalists and the republicans fighting separately. Mexico was a republic and then suddenly a kingdom and then a republic again... There was a lot of complicated politics. In the meantime, the United States has given Mexico a "help hand." Mexico, suffering from fiscal deficits and a lot of confusion, instead of receiving U.S. money, gave the U.S. the right to develop certain resources. Mexico had a lot of land, half of which is now U.S. territory. California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, all of which were Mexican lands, but Mexico was just trying to sort out the post-independence turmoil, so it couldn't afford to pay much attention to these states far from the capital. Taxas, the majority of the population is Anglo-Sexon, declare independence and declare the Republic of Texas (because the United States intentionally migrated many of its citizens to Taxas, not many Mexicans lived there, so it's strategically advantageous). Mexico eventually goes to war with the Republic of Taxas, but the United States is allied with Taxas and they are able to crush Mexico. Soon after that, Taxas was annexed by the United States of America. And soon the U.S. invades Mexico under the pretext of a minor border dispute. Then the U.S. takes over the Mexican capital and takes over all of its northern territories in exchange for peace, and makes a number of unfair agreements. The U.S. can control the Americas at will because there are a lot of these unfair agreements.   In Panama, you have the Panamanian President ousted as much as the U.S. wanted, you had a puppet government, and you had the Panama Canal. It was recently returned to Panama However, various interests continue to be held by the United States. Cuba is now under strong economic pressure from the United States. And while their socialist system also plays a part, you can fully understand why Cuba became so strongly anti-American. In the second half of the 19th century, the United States sent troops to Cuba to become independent from Spanish oppression. There was a significant amount of independence in Cuba at the time. Now, with overwhelming fire and capital, the U.S. takes over the Cuban capital and makes an agreement with Spain before the independent forces reach the Cuban capital. Furthermore, we have banned the coming of independence forces to the capital. And then you have an agreement with the new Cuban government that originally had corrupt officials working with the Spanish, and what's really spectacular is... "Cuba's constitution is written by the United States," "Cuba cannot conduct diplomacy without the permission of the United States," "Cuba fully opens the market to the United States." Eventually Cuba had a second colonial period, let alone independence. Europe also has many agreements with similar concepts. The agreements are still in effect today, and if they are to be broken, there will be tremendous economic retaliation, so small countries in Latin America will not dare... Of course, Latin America's own corruption plays a part, but if you go back to its fundamental reasons, it's all 19th century.