The history of South America is a sprawling ledger of appetites, where the continent’s geography has been treated less as a sovereign home and more as a biological vending machine for the North. At the macro level, we see a global economy built on the assumption of an infinite southern supply; at the micro level, we find that every American convenience—from the morning coffee to the smartphone battery—is a needle drawing life from a landscape that is never allowed to heal. This is the chronicle of a continent forced to provide the world’s luxury and its medicine, its energy and its vice, while the people tilling the soil remain tethered to a poverty that is manufactured in the boardrooms of the North. Continue reading →