Unfortunately South America has been a mess for over 500yrs due to the Spanish and Portugese colonising the regions, the conquistadors were basically pirates or thieves, that set up series of kleptocracies and where then promoted to nobles by the Spanish royalties, then ruled over the natives with little empathy, basically treated them as slaves to extract resources like gold & silver or work them to death in intensive agricultural farms to send back to Europe. Basically a series of corrupt dictatorships under each conquistador and their descendants, and it has changed much since then..... Colonialism/piracy has got a lot to answer for....
