Fixing South America's Borders (Sorry Brazil!)

I think this is going to be the fastest video ever. I mean, the redrawing is pretty easy, right? You just take the colonial lines, give half of South America to Spain, the other half to Portugal. Bing, bang, boom, and we're done. We are finally taking the rest of the Brazilian gold. Okay, now I'm sure I'm gonna get enough complaints with the redesigns as it is, so going against the decision of Pope Julius II, let's scrap that idea. South America's borders aren't too problematic. there have been some disputes, perhaps the War of the Pacific being the most well-known, which resulted in Bolivia losing its sea access, among a few other adjustments. However, when you compare it to Europe, Asia or Africa, I think they're less disputed, but you know, I'm sure you're going to prove me wrong in the comments, so let's try and fix South America's borders. Again, this is for fun, don't take it too seriously and don't send me emails threatening me to delete the video, please. First I think we should start precisely with Bolivia, taking the example of the War of the Pacific and fixing what I think is a little bit of an injustice. Which is Bolivia's landlocked status. Now their status has been disputed by them for a long time, but international courts don't see it fit to restore their sea access through the re-annexation of this territory. But hey, I'm not an international court, so let's do it, stealing a little bit of Chile's coast to allow Bolivia access to the Pacific Ocean too, I mean come on Chile, you have a gigantic coast, for now this won't make that much of a difference when it comes to Chile itself, I would potentially add the whole coastline in the south just annexing the little bit that belongs to Argentina, maybe making up a northern coastline loss with a southern coastline gain and it would lose an additional piece of land in connection with Argentina too, awarding some land to the native Mapuche people who have since 1997 been struggling with both Argentinian and Chilean authorities over land ownership status. The Mapuche have lived in this rough area of Chile and Argentina for centuries and have at times claimed full sovereignty. They have their own culture, history, even a flag already. But this brings up a little bit of an issue which is how much of their historical or claimed territory do we award them. While the ancestral Mapuche lands stretch far into Argentina, the majority of them today live inside of Chile. In the Araucanía region, in fact, the official 2002 Chilean census found that 600,000 Chileans identify as Mapuches and 35 of those think that the biggest issue for the government to resolve relates to their ancestral properties. We can decide to only award Araucania to the Mapuche, but then we cut Chile in half. Maybe a solution here would be for it to be some type of autonomous region within Chile. Another solution is connected to the southern region of Chile and Argentina too, a self-proclaimed independent state called the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia, which only existed for a couple years in 1860 under the supposed rule of some French explorer, it of course didn't last but interestingly there is a direct heir to the throne who still claims rule over the made-up kingdom a French guy called Frederic Louis, plus in the hearts of Iron Forge from Paradox, you can through the Chile focus tree restore the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia, an option here would be to grant the whole of Patagonia independence as well along with Chile's southern lands but I don't there's a serious movement for independence so I wouldn't do that here. What about the rest of Argentina? The first thing I would do with my deepest apologies is remove this tiny panhandle thing over here and give it to Paraguay. I don't like panhandles, I think they look strange on maps and ruin potentially cleaner borders and drawing borders or redrawing them based on how they look on a map instead of taking into account the reality on the ground never went wrong in history, so there's no problem with us doing that here. And so in this case, Paraguay would become a little bigger. And we couldn't go past Argentina without mentioning the Falkland Islands, or as they call them, Islas Malvinas. The UK and Argentina both assert sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. The UK bases its position on its continued administration of the islands since 1833 and the islanders' right to self-determination, as set out in the UN Charter, while Argentina Argentina claims that when it achieved independence in 1816, it acquired the Falklands from Spain. I'm not here to tell you which I think is right, but the reality seems to be that the local inhabitants of the islands preferred to be British. A referendum in 2013 saw 99.8% of the population vote to stay a British overseas territory. Only 3 people voted against it. And people should belong to whichever country they prefer. So I'm sorry Argentina, the Falklands are going to stay British. When it comes to the other Guay, Uruguay, I would make no changes. There was a point when Uruguay was a part of Brazil, in 1821, the Provincia Oriental del Rio de la Plata, present-day Uruguay, was annexed to Brazil by Portugal, while the two were still colonial areas. They declared independence from Brazil in 1825, after numerous revolts, and despite a brief union with Argentina, they chose to be their own nation, so I think it's only fair that they remain as such. But speaking of Brazil, there's a few changes to make. start precisely in the south. In the region there is a separatist movement called the South is my country that seeks the independence of Brazil's south region formed by the states of Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. The group claims the region is underrepresented and under supported by the federal government. It's also a region with much higher income than the rest of Brazil so I guess they feel like they succeed better on their own. They fly this dark blue flag with three white stars representing those states. During Brazil's imperial period, several separatist movements existed in the region. Among the main reasons for secession, the groups complained about high taxation of dried meat, the main export of the region at the time. Armed conflict broke out when the Rio Grande do Sul republic tried to declare independence. It didn't succeed, but it did last for 11 years, which is a pretty significant amount of time. Now it's important to note that I don't think the movement has a lot of real support on the ground, but it has existed for a long time and for the sake of the hypothetical, and just for fun in this video, let's award them their independence. And despite this significant loss, that is not the only change that I would make to Brazil, because the rest of it would belong to Portugal, no it wouldn't, but there are a few more changes. Just like the south could be independent, I think the north could too, at least in a specific way. the Amazon region. The Amazon forest is gigantic, it takes up a tremendous part of South America and crosses across national borders, including lands of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. I considered creating a full Amazon forest country out of this territory, but this would cut countries like Peru to half their size and eat up entire nations like the Guianas. So I thought a good compromise would be to create one inside of Brazil's territory only. In fact, the only movement that exists for a sovereign Amazon nation seems to exist precisely inside of Brazil, flying this super cool looking flag too. So, what if these Brazilian states within the Amazon forest became an Amazonian republic? Not, no, not that one. Get out of here Jeff. This Amazon republic could assure the safety of indigenous people within the region as well as the security and maintenance of the forest itself. It reminds me a little bit of the hypothetical Tuareg state that we created in a past video, redrawing the borders of Brazil, within a section of the Sahara desert, another very significant natural region within another continent. Oh actually the forest stretches a little further south and these straight lines look awful so let me just fix them quickly. There we go. To wrap up Brazil we just need to talk about an extra independence movement which is Nordeste Independent. This is a movement that seeks the independence of the northeast region of brazil but the movement just comes from some guy who came up with it in his university class i think it has only 57 members doesn't seem to be a serious thing so i won't add it here and so we have our new Brazil fairly reduced from its original borders and then we move on to the Guiana regions today three separate Guiana regions exist Suriname old Dutch Guiana Guiana proper old British Guiana and French Guiana which is still French today technically Spanish Guiana was the Guiana region of Venezuela and Portuguese Guiana was Amapá in Brazil. While these two were only relevant during colonial times, I think this presents us with a pretty fascinating opportunity. What if all of these five historical Guianas were to achieve sovereignty on their own and decide to come together as a united Guianan state, sort of? The new Amazonian Republic would lose a bit of land, but hey, they're already gaining so much, so also it would be ironic that Venezuela, who claims almost half of Guyana as its own, would be the one losing their own Guyana region instead. I mean, as far as I know Venezuela is pretty chaotic right now, so maybe concentrating their rule on a smaller territory would actually be beneficial. This new country would mix a lot of cultures together and a lot of languages and different heritages, Native American, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, Spanish, Venezuelan and Brazilian, but it would be super interesting to see if their territories collectively hold a lot of valuable natural resources so it's not that unlikely that they could succeed. In this scenario and having lost already so much land I would just keep Venezuela with the rest of their territory as it is. Which brings us to Colombia. I came across a couple reddit posts that questioned people on what border changes they would make in South America and a lot of them wanted a return of Gran Colombia. Gran Colombia existed from 1819 to 1831, it was a state that encompassed much of northern South America, such as present-day Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela, along with parts of northern Peru and even some of Brazil. It dissolved in 1831 due to political differences that existed between supporters of federalism and centralism, as well as regional tensions. Breaking up into the successor states we know today. While its return would be interesting, I don't think it's realistic or even desired by anyone, so I won't do it here, and Panama would retain its independence too. There are also a couple small secessionist movements in specific provinces, like Choco and Antioquia, but they're also super small and not that significant, it seems. The only change I would make to Colombia, and it's admittedly purely an aesthetical one, is the loss of this small panhandle on the border to Peru and Brazil, or in our case, Amazonia. In this case, I would it to Peru. And in Peru we would have additional changes because according to Wikipedia there are three different secessionist movements within it. The first seems the most relevant. It's called Collasuyu and focuses on demanding further autonomy or even independence for the native people that live within Peru. It uses a super cool flag which is also used within Bolivia for its own native people. The flag is called the Wiphala. The region it consists of would cross Peru's borders but inside Peru it would essentially be the country south, roughly coinciding or at least being part of the old Collasuyu region of the Inca empire which was in fact the biggest and one of the most significant areas of that empire. It's difficult to select exactly which provinces of Peru would make up this new Collasuyu nation but the prevalence of native people is higher in the south so I guess it would roughly be these southern ones and so a brand new Native American country could be created. Within Peru another movement demands more autonomy and potentially independence, the Huambisa, prevalent in the north of the country and reaching into Ecuador too, but not only would this reduce Peru to about a third of its territory, the movement doesn't seem to want full independence, just a little more sovereignty within the country, so I chose not to go through it here. There's also a third movement called Sur Peruana, aiming to recreate the short-lived Republic of South Peru which existed from 1836 to 39. The Republic of South Peru was one of the three constituent republics of the very short-lived Peru-Bolivian Confederation which lasted for the same amount of years. The other two were North Peru and Bolivia. The issue here is that their territory coincides with that claimed by the Collasuyu and since the latter seems to have more support and legitimacy, I chose to keep that one instead. Which finally brings us to the last country on our map, Ecuador. Surprisingly, despite being so small, Ecuador also has a small independence movement for Guayaquil, the country's most populated city. It seems to be more of an argument than a real movement. The city probably got upset at the central government about something and they want to throw a little bit of a tantrum proving how important they are by pretending like they're going to demand independence, but I don't think it's a serious movement. But if I'm wrong, just let me know in the comments. The only other thing that catches my attention when looking at them is the Galápagos archipelago, but they have always belonged to the people of Ecuador. I believe it was the native Salascas people who migrated from the mainland and settled them in the first place, so no change would make sense here either, unless we gave them to Portugal maybe? I'm kidding. So that is how I would potentially fix the borders of South America. Giving Bolivia its coastline back, cutting Chile in half so that the native people could have their own state, taking a couple of territories away from Argentina, increasing Paraguay's land, retaining Uruguay's independence and giving them a new sovereign neighbor with an independent southern Brazil, creating a new Amazonian free republic in the forest, uniting the three Guianas with the addition of the two additional colonial territories and consequently cutting Venezuela territory to half of what it is now, keeping Panama, Ecuador and Colombia the same, save that little adjustment and removing Peru's southern territories from them to create another sovereign native state what do you think about these changes do you agree with any of them and regarding the ones you disagree with let me know why you do in the comments again this is all for fun it's not to be taken seriously it just kind of makes us think about the borders that exist today and how they could or could not potentially change thank you so much to my patrons for making another video possible thank you to all of you for watching and remember to subscribe if you want to catch future videos. Either way, I will see you next time for more general knowledge.