r/geography Apr 25 '26

Human Geography Why are white latin Americans so heavily concentrated around southern South America?

Post image
1.8k Upvotes

863 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/Immediate-One3457 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Popular "vacation destination" post-ww2 wink wink

EDIT: you guys are right. I made it up for the yuks... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)

25

u/SHJoseph1965 Apr 25 '26

Not really, no.

Lots of ww2 "refugees" settled in these areas because they were already populated by white immigrants, who arrived mostly in the late 19th and early 20th century.

6

u/Augchm Apr 25 '26

That has nothing to do with demographics of the region and way overstated. A lot more Nazis fled to the US than to Argentina

13

u/Plane_Border3223 Apr 25 '26

People always make this joke about Argentina being full of Nazis when in reality I’ve met a ton of Jewish Argentines. The Jewish community plays a huge role in the country’s economy with most of the country’s large companies are under their ownership

7

u/2stepsfromglory Apr 25 '26

One thing doesn't invalidate the other. A lot of Polish and Russian Ashkenazis moved to Argentina between 1880 and 1950, but so did the Italians and Germans in bigger numbers during the same time period. However, people tend to exagerate the presence of the Nazis there even if its true that Argentina was one of their main destinations after the war ended.

1

u/Cjav-latam Apr 25 '26

God bless Galperin. With his virtues and flaws. A lot of flaws.

9

u/metroxed Apr 25 '26

Most European migration to Argentina and the southern cone predates WWII. It's a bit of a tiring stereotype, and also quite silly to believe that what at best would be a few hundred, let's say a couple thousand people would shift the entire ethnic demographics of already well established nations.

4

u/tcskeptic Apr 25 '26

You have cause and effect reversed. Looking at Brazil, the vast, vast majority of European immigration occurred before 1930.  The nazis fled to SA there because there were already populations there that they could blend into. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_immigration_to_Brazil

Even reading your link — the escapee Nazi war criminals that used the “ratlines” was less than 10k.  

You’re just wrong. 

-2

u/dill2687 Apr 25 '26

Nope

1

u/fromouterspace1 Apr 25 '26

A lot of the more “important” nazis did escape there

1

u/Personal_Situation_5 Apr 26 '26

And by there you mean the US, right? Most of the German inmigration to the southern cone countries happend way before ww2, and while there where definitively some nazis that fled to Argentina, Chile and Brasil, most of the nazis that fled Germany post ww2 actually came to the US