ABSTRACT
One of the more well-known aspects of Latin American development strategies has been their dependence on natural resources. This condition has a long history that begins with the Spanish and Portuguese colony and persists under the different Republics until today. There have been undeniable efforts by countries to promote their own industrialization, but this dependence has been kept up through successive increases and decreases in the extraction of gold, sodium nitrate, rubber, cocoa, wool, soya, and oil, amongst others. This shows that the different types of development applied in the continent have always been tightly interwoven with Nature.
