Political Risk and Resource Nationalism in Latin American Mining and Minerals [Video]

Latin America, which we define overall to include Mexico and the Caribbean, is a vast, geographically diverse, resource-rich, multi-cultural, heterogeneous domain. As in other world regions, the long history of human occupation and the evolution from ancient settlements and cultures to modern-day nation-states has been marked by efforts to capture, utilize, and monetize natural resource wealth. The use of minerals and metals across the region was linked to early human detection of occurrences and the discovery of methods to extract and fabricate with them. European contact shifted the paradigm to exploitation for emerging global trade and economic power. Prized minerals and metals have long been part of the fabric of myth and mythology that permeated cultures in the Americas, how these territories were perceived by explorers, and how the pursuit of wealth unleashed by exploitation of natural resources drove behaviors and, ultimately, politics and policy.

Over the past century and …