El Verde

Category:Frozen War
Category:World War III
El Verde, officially the Verdean Federal Republics - founded in secret originally between Argentina, Chile and Uruguay decades before World War III - was a totalitarian multinational state in the early 21st century that encompassed a majority of the Southern Cone. At over 5.7 million square kilometers, El Verde was the second-largest country in Latin America, fourth-largest in the Americas and seventh-largest in the world. El Verde is bordered to the northeast by Brazil, the north by Bolivia and the northwest by Peru, while bordering the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to the East and West respectively. El Verde was a federal state with 115 provinces and departments, and 4 regions - each with its own devolved regional government - lead by three autonomous cities: Santiago, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. El Verde, in addition to its own territory, claimed sovereignty over a part of Antarctica, the Galapagos Islands, El Salvador, Paraguay, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
Spain conquered and colonized the region in the mid-16th century, replacing Inca rule, but failing to conquer the independent Mapuche who inhabited what is now south-central Chile. In 1818, after declaring independence from Spain, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay emerged in the 1810s, 1830s ranging from relatively stable to internally warring authoritarian republics. The Spanish founded Montevideo as a military stronghold in the early 18th century because of the competing claims over the region. Uruguay won its independence in 1828. In the 19th century, Chile saw significant economic and territorial growth, ending Mapuche resistance in the 1880s and gaining its current northern territory in the War of the Pacific (1879–83) after defeating Peru and Bolivia. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh-wealthiest nation in the world by the early 20th century. In 1896, Argentina's GDP per capita surpassed that of the United States and was consistently in the top ten before at least 1920. Currently, it is ranked 89th in the world. Following the Great Depression in the 1930s, Argentina descended into political instability and economic decline that pushed it back into underdevelopment, although it remained among the fifteen richest countries for several decades. 
In the 20th century up to the 1970s Chile saw a process of democratization, rapid population growth and urbanization and increasing reliance on exports from copper mining for its economy. During the 1960s and 1970s, the country experienced severe left-right political polarization and turmoil. This development culminated with the 1973 Chilean coup d'état that overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically elected left-wing government and instituted a 16-year right-wing military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that left more than 3,000 people dead or missing. Pinochet would confer with his Argentine counterpart Juan Peron in 1973, shortly before his death, regarding further cooperation and integration between Peron's Argentina and the civic-military dictatorship in Uruguay. Pinochet would again confer with Argentine military junta in the 1980's and early 1990's. The regime ended in 1990 after a referendum in 1988 and was succeeded by a center-left coalition which ruled until 2010. Following the death of President Juan Perón in 1974, his widow and vice president, Isabel Perón, ascended to the presidency, before being overthrown in 1976. The following military junta, which was supported by the United States, persecuted and murdered thousands of political critics, activists, and leftists in the Dirty War, a period of state terrorism and civil unrest that lasted until the election of Raúl Alfonsín as president in 1983. 
El Verde was formally founded by the 2024 military junta in Chile and the left-wing regime in Argentina, with a puppet government in Uruguay and Paraguay - the Federal Republics of El Verde were founded in August of 2025, experiencing immediate backlash from their subjects - effectively held hostage by the El Verde centre-left ecofascist party. They were boosted to prominence in the early 2020's by disaffected Democratic Party and Jill Stein/U.S. Green Party supporters, due to their effective campaigning masquerade in which they positioned themselves as the "global moderators" and offered to unite the left with neoliberalism against illiberalism and nationalism. This attracted many younger and older voters, and once they were in power the mask came off. Reforms were swift, and standard of living plummeted. The El Verde movement sunk its tentacles into South America, aligning with the Nazbol 'PiNCeR' movement in Peru, Brazil and Venezuela, and attained total control over the Southern Cone by 2027. 
==History==
===Cold War (1981–1991)===
===War on Terror (2001–2019)===
===Verdean conflicts (2016–2027)===
:See: Bolivian–Brazilian Territorial Crisis, Chilean Crisis, BAP Almirante Grau hijacking, Argentine–Brazilian Invasion of Colombia, Cuban–Verdean Invasion of Central America, Verdean Invasion of Bolivia, & Verdean Invasion of Baja California
Throughout the late-2010’s and into the 2020’s, Chile, Cuba and Brazil deepen their military cooperation. It is through Argentina and China that Brazil and rogue-states such as North Korea and Cuba came to be so close by the early 2020’s, just prior to the final escalation in global confrontation. As early as September 2016, then President of Ecuador Rafael Correa warned of a potential ‘Operation Condor 2.0,’ in which out of fear of a resurgent Russia, the U.S. begins funding into power authoritarian regimes that would support them in lieu of Moscow. This enabling of the right-wing is most prominent in Spain - as well as one of the primary three offenders of the previous campaign of state-sponsored terrorism, and the second-most powerful country in the Western Hemisphere: Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
Beginning in 2016, Alberto Curamil, a Mapuche environmental activist, successfully blocked the construction of two hydroelectric power projects. Chilean authorities arrested him in 2018, seemingly putting to bed the goals of Mapuche indigenous peoples for autonomy and freedom from Argentine–Chilean ethno-nationalism, until in 2019. Curamil is given the prestigious Goldman Prize award by an international human rights body, giving right-wing President Sebastian Pinera the first headache of his administration, and jump-starting what would become a near-decade-long conflict for the liberation of the Mapuche and indigenous peoples across the Americas. In June 2018, a controversial and outsized response to violence in the poorest region of Chile known as Araucania, came in response to a wave of arson and other attacks against primarily forestry companies by indigenous Mapuche and their allies. “Jungle Command,” the special militarized police unit created by Pinera, drew massive backlash with protests reaching as far away as Santiago, when a protestor on a tractor named Camilo Catrillanca was shot through the head by Commandos near the village of Ercilla in November of that same year. Even despite the growing backlash against the Colombian-trained Jungle Commandos, equipped with bullet-proof jackets, drones and high-tech surveillance and communications systems, Pinera continues to defend his Araucania policy – entrenching the opposition and drawing condemnation of the Chilean government from international bodies such as the United Nations and Amnesty International as well as the international community writ large.
After the failure of the uprising against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the Communist Party of Cuba in the spring of 2019 and fall of 2021 respectively, interests involving American imperialism for resources among other reasons such as soft warfare against the Venezuelan populace itself results in an inevitable and incredibly bloody Civil War in Venezuela in mid-2022, in which the US military intervention fails catastrophically. The repercussions cripple Colombia, which finds itself not only engaging FARC rebels, but simultaneously fighting off Tupamaro insurgencies on its Eastern border. And Venezuela soon thereafter falls victim to right-wing ultranationalist military occupation by Bolsonaro-loyalist anti-Socialist radical militancy. This causes a ripple effect across Eastern South America, affecting the Guyanese and Ecuadorian economies as well.
By this point in time, Argentina - already recoiling from economic and political crises from the 1990's and 2000's - was on the verge of becoming a failed state with the return of the Kirchner Dynasty and their subsequent sell-out to Chile and Cuba regarding the New South American Depression beginning in Colombia and Venezuela.
The economic instability in its Southwestern neighbor results in parallel instability in Brazil. This soon affects the outcome of the 2022 presidential election resulting in the subsequent Communist dictatorship which allows the military to run rampant with their own ultra-nationalist, imperialist ideology - in time fully annexing the countries of Suriname, Guyana, Paraguay and Uraguay - as well as the West Indies, and as far north as the Bahamas, by 2027.
Despite Brazil's overwhelming numerical advantage, the geographically-strategic location and technological supremacy of Chile would prove too much of a threat to overcome, let alone ignore. Brazil initially assumes a non-aligned, neutral stance in South America similar to Switzerland in Europe, but later sees its interests converge with Chile vis a vis Cuba and China. Chilean and Argentine ultra-nationalists found their views intersect with the Brazilian military brass and nationalist establishment, which seized upon the radicalism of the incumbent Brazilian government to achieve their goals of a "Soviet American Union" with the American countries of Argentina and Chile playing the role of Ukraine and Belarus.
But perhaps the most impressive of Chile's weaponry was its unrivaled martial prowess in general. Dressed in dark gray, with the iconic Stahlhelme helmets on their heads, Chile’s soldiers bear more than a passing resemblance to the Wehrmacht of World War 2. The colorful sashes and ceremonial rapiers of their officers seem to have been pulled directly from a history book, with the goose-stepping hammering home the point. However, the Chilean military didn’t just decide to embrace the Nazi aesthetic and lift the Prussian drill and doctrine from a history book. Rather, its distinctly Teutonic style has its roots in the 19th Century.
In the 1880s, Chile managed to prevail over Bolivia and Peru in the War of The Pacific, a dust-up over mining territory in the Atacama desert. Its military wasn’t in great shape, however, and its leaders wanted to bring in some external help to gain an edge over Chile’s neighbors. Enter the Prussians. Under Otto von Bismarck, the Prussians had managed in 1870 to unify the splintered principalities of northern Germany and win the Franco-Prussian War inside of ten months. Despite its small size, Prussia had a hardcore military culture and could hold its own against far larger European powers. The Chileans shipped a bunch of Prussian officers over to whip its military into shape, and by the time the Prussian Captain Emil Kِrner retired as the Commanding General of the Chilean Armed Forces in 1910, the country’s martial prowess was unmatched in South America.
Within a few years of Brazil's crisis, Argentina's civil unrest, and the collapse of the Guyana and Colombian economies, following - of course - the Venezuelan Civil War, Peru had been largely isolated and cut off from the East of the continent, and Argentina militarily dependent on the Chileans and Chile economically dependent on Argentina - and Russian-ally Cuba playing them both. Resistance movements fomented - and faltered - in Ecuador, Northern Colombia, and even as far north as Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras in 2023, 2024 and 2025 respectively. But the sheer tactical, strategic and technological superiority of the Chilean military - backed by the sheer size of the Cuban forces - was insurmountable, with no Brazil or America to come to the rescue, even all of the rest of the South American countries combined were unable to penetrate through the Andes - the longest and largest mountain range outside of Asia - or make it through almost 20 million kilometers of secured maritime territory extending as far East as Rapa Nui (or roughly 2,000 kilometers from British and French territory) - to strike anywhere vital to the aggressors' infrastructure or prevent Peru from falling into Axis orbit. The best case scenario involving a defeat for Argentina and Chile, sooner rather than later, was for the U.S. to collect itself long enough to deliver a tactical nuclear bombardment - and even then, Chile grew closer to adversaries militarily with each passing day.
===Cuban Civil War and insurgency===
Following an embargo after the takeover of a pro-American right-wing regime in 1959 and sour relations between the two nations for decades following the 1961 failed invasion of Cuba and 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, US president Barack Obama loosened business and travel restrictions with Cuba in 2014, also removing it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Presidents Trump and Biden would resume and accelerate these restrictions in 2017 and 2021, reversing their predecessor, and accelerating the embargo and trade restrictions on Cuba under the former-Vice President in 2022.
In the wake of renewed US aggression against Cuba, historically pro-US El Verdean country Chile reaffirms bilateral ties with the Communist state and even EU officials criticize the US (before drawing condemnation from their own authority) for their aggressive Cuba policies. These calls for rapprochement are joined by 80 House Democrats who call on the president to "revert to Obama-era Cuba detente", with four of its seven leading proponents representing the Congressional Progressive and Populist Caucuses. After a falling out with the White House and Democrats capitulating to Republicans proceeding initial support from House moderates, progressives spearheaded by Independent Vermont Senator and Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasts the Biden administration's stimulus bill as "[worse] than Trump's" after Senate Democrats rebuke the United States House of Representatives on the $15.00 minimum wage proposed by the Biden-Harris campaign in the 2020 election, and House Democrats led by House Speaker Pelosi capitulate to the Republicans on immigration.
This progressive-Democratic conflict would result in House progressives and Chairman Sanders being isolated in Congress on Cuba. A failed coup and brief insurgency in Cuban-allied Venezuela in 2019 and 2021 would embolden the Cuban dissident movement and Nationalism among the ranks of the Milicias de Tropas Territoriales and even among the military itself - bolstering a manpower over 1.2 million, the 11th-largest standing army on the planet (surpassed only by Brazil, China, India, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Vietnam, North and South Korea and the United States) - the United States passes more sanctions and this time targets other Latin American states maintaining relations with Cuba beyond just Venezuela and Nicaragua, blasting and sanctioning Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and El Salvador. The aforementioned countries, followed by more shortly, break ties with Cuba - following suit of the US in support of Cuban President Miguel Dيaz-Canel against the Castro regime - and in response Cuba begins acquiring soft power throughout Latin America in immediate blowback against the US pressure against the Castro regime. As a result, Castro is overthrown, but maintains support among the active duty - although dwarfed in number by the nationalist pro-Canel MTT. Castro and the ailing Revolutionary Army support left-leaning government in Argentina and the Pinera regime from exile in Nicaragua, although both eventually fall to the Nazbols at home and abroad - with the Korean-backed Cuban insurgents expanding their control over the country and region throughout the 2020's.
===2023-2027===
Immediately following the short and brutal Cuban Civil War was the three-year-long Argentine Crisis, instigated by Crypto-Nazi Chilean ultranationalists backed by the far-right Spanish Vox party that wished to unite all of Spanish-speaking America under the flag of Chile, while also utilizing the at this point year-long Mapuche Uprising as their primary scapegoat for fearmongering. The largely-isolated supporters of Pinochet and Colonia Dignidad had surged to prominence amid the growing backlash against the right-wing government of Sebastian Pinera, as well as the socialists of Michelle Bachelet, who were united in their disdain of the Theocratic movement. Finding its origin amid backing and funding from the Nationalist Bolsheviks of Argentina and the Iron Legionnaires of Rome, and pro-Legionnaire Clergy in Vatican City and throughout Latin America and Europe, the ‘National Peasants and Republicans Party’ (Partido Nacional Campesinos y Republicanos in Spanish, Partido Nacional dos Camponeses e Republicanos in Portuguese – PNCR, or “PiNCeR”) attained a worldwide presence. Although in most developed countries where the Pincer had official recognition as a political party they had a slight if even marginal existence, throughout the Middle-East and Latin America they were highly organized and involved in local and regional politics, with their representatives reaching the national stage in Russia, Cuba, Tunisia, Venezuela, Brazil, Syria, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, El Salvador and every country in Latin America except Costa Rica, Belize, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. However, it is only in the El Verdean countries and Brazil that such a rabid strain of Nazbols would come to absolute power outside of Cuba, North Korea and Catalonia. Even gang-controlled Colombia kept the budding regime in Chile at an arm’s-length.
After Pinera’s resignation and the PNCR surge to power in the winter of 2021, the Chilean military brass were replaced with pro-Pincer loyalists, and a purge was initiated freakishly similar to the Nazis in 1930’s Weimar Germany. Pincer storm troopers patrolled the streets of South and Central American capitals and big cities, bullying, threatening and – eventually – killing its critics or people who thought differently, and its apologists and allies were deeply embedded within the North American government. The Pincer believed El Verde should be preserved for the ‘lineage of [their] fathers,’ which in their terms meant “European El Verde”. This put the US-backed government of Bolivia directly in the crosshairs of the Chilean juggernaut, which happened to coincide just as one of its chief rival Chile's closest allies in Latin America – Peru – lost its recently-retired flagship, the Almirante Grau, to a terrorist hijacking by perpetrators believed to be tied to Argentina and Chile. The missing ‘gun cruiser’ puts the world into a state of terror, knowing that one of the most powerful weapons of war on the planet was potentially in the hands of terrorists. This pandemonium is seized upon by the Argentine PNCR, which throws the country into a state of crisis and sees the return of the Kirchner dynasty less than a year later. The Anti-Fascist resistance fights on for years to come, but the fighters are reinforced month after month, year after year, by Russian, Peruvian and Chilean armor and artillery that cut through the Andes via bottleneck and switchback in hit-and-run attacks impossible to defend against and impossible to retaliate against, the dug-in columns of hostile armor and the sheer firepower awaiting both infantry and air craft attempting to bomb them out greeted with the same result each time – no matter the attack angle, the Andes themselves posing the greatest natural obstacle to the Argentine resistance. After almost two years of fighting against the Argentine government and Chile’s armed and paramilitary forces across the Southern Cone, the resistance falters in Argentina, and the country de facto falls under the influence of Russia and its vassals in Chile and Peru. At the same time, Argentinian and Chilean Armed Forces launch full-fledged military attacks in Bolivia, and the Taura and Simon Bolivar air bases in Ecuador. After these attacks, Chile and Argentina directed their Navy at Central America and Baja California with Chilean and former-Peruvian air support, while launching ‘shock-and-awe’ maneuvers against southwestern Bolivia in the other direction. Despite how thinly-dispersed its Armed Forces were at the time, the methodical precision and preparation laid out beforehand by the Pincer was impeccable and uncanny.
From March 2023 to August 2024, the alliance between the Panamanian, Honduran and Colombian states is broken when the latter of the three withdraws after military bases in San Andres and Buenoventura are hit by air strikes, killing 1,000 soldiers atop the thousands of others that had been killed or disappeared by the Pincer reign of terror over El Verde. Until 2022, an ailing Central American resistance to the Russian, Cuban and Venezuelan militants persists on a trickle of U.S. and North American aid, but the millions of displaced adding to the Venezuelan refugee crisis destabilizes virtually every country south of North American Mexico, and leaves Baja California wide open to an attack by Russian, Cuban or Chilean forces. With the newly-dependent autonomies of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama united under the flag of a Californian–Mexican federal entity; a level of civil unrest and socioeconomic instability unseen since the Central American Crisis of the late 1970’s wrought the region and left it at the mercy of relentless Pincer terrorism and Chilean ultranationalism backed by the rogue state of Texas. As opposed to coming to the aid of their southern neighbors like the binding treaty obligated them to in such a situation, California and Mexico – and thus, North America – declares neutrality alongside Colombia and Texas.
The 2024–2026 War in El Salvador begins when the Salvadoran Army spearheading an independence movement launches attacks in what would begin the Nicaraguan–Salvadoran War and the Battles of Leon and Managua indicative therein. The sporadic skirmishes and attacks by Salvador backed by Chile, Brazil and Russia gradually escalate and accelerate throughout the fall of 2024 and spring of 2025, culminating in a full-fledged Invasion of Nicaragua by the Salvadoran Army and Navy backed by Cuba, with the apex of the fighting in Leon and throughout northwest Nicaragua. The fighting results in a unified North American–US condemnation of El Salvador, and the Russian, Chilean, Cuban and Brazilian government’s support for the attack on Nicaragua, seen as an attack against the entire North American continent. Authorities in Los Angeles and Mexico City had little to complain about regarding the pro-Russian states of Latin America and their expansionism, as the neutralization of Ecuador and Colombia following a protracted war with Peru serves to push the former two countries into North America’s budding orbit outside of the United States’… that is, until, Chinese-backed Pincer Brazil's designs set upon the Baja California peninsula. Specifically, one of the most prominent metropolitan centers on the North American continent – Tijuana.
==Government and politics==
==Military==
With just over 200,000 active-duty personnel the Verdean Armed Forces bolstered a ready force greater than France, and just behind Saudi Arabia and Japan, but could call on nearly 400,000 by the early 2020's - with a force of over 600,000 by 2026. Their air force was small, with only 600 air craft and no attack helicopters, but they made up for this with a large and dynamic naval fleet; mostly on contributions from the State of Chile. The nation state had nearly 250 seafaring vessels, a fleet larger than South Korea's and Egypt's. They had possession of the only gun cruiser left in service, as well as a dozen former-Ticonderoga class frigates they had stolen from U.S. allies in 2024. What the Verdean Armed Forces lacked in size they made up for in superior discipline, training and - in some instances - technology to most nations.
El Verde possessed a small but capable land force of 906 main battle tanks, 2,412 armored fighting vehicles, 135 self-propelled artillery, 450 towed artillery and 56 rocket projectors. The Leopard II was the tank of the line in the Verdean Armed Forces, with 332 Leopards spearheading the Verdean tank fleet. The top-heavy nature of the Verdean Land Forces owed to its aggressive posturing throughout World War III, although its small size led to it being used primarily in joint-maneuvers with greater powers. The tank fleet became the primary tool of the Verdean ground forces during the conflict, boasting a tank fleet in par with Japan and Poland, while possessing one of the most advanced tanks outside of the United States, Germany and China. El Verde possessed the third-largest Leopard II fleet behind Turkey and Switzerland.
==Demographics==
The population of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay is 40, 17.5 and 3.6 million respectively. Buenos Aires is the largest metropolitan area at 13.1 million and Santiago, Chile has 6.4 million.
As far as ethnicity is concerned, the population of the Southern Cone was largely influenced by immigration from Europe. Whites and mestizo make up 97% of the total population of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Mestizos make up 15.8% of the population, being a majority in Paraguay, whereas Whites make up over 80% of the population - Argentina and Chile dominating roughly four-fifths of the entire Southern Cone. Native Americans make up 3% of the population and mulattoes (0.2%) and Asians (1.0%), mostly in Southern Brazil and Uruguay, the remaining 1.2%.
Argentina, along with other areas of new settlement like Canada, Australia, Brazil or the United States is considered a country of immigrants and a melting pot of different peoples, both autochthonous and immigrants. Most Argentines are descendants of colonial-era settlers and of the 19th and 20th century immigrants from Europe, with 97% of the population being of European and mestizo descent for generations, the majority of these immigrants came from Italy and Spain, as well as other European countries. The last national census, based on self-identification, counted about 600,000 Argentines (1.6%) of Amerindian heritage. A further 3–4% of Argentines were of Arabic or East Asian extraction. A study conducted on 218 individuals in 2010 by the Argentine geneticist Daniel Corach, has established that the genetic map of Argentina is composed by 79% from different European ethnicities (mainly Spanish and Italian ethnicities), 18% of different indigenous ethnicities, and 4.3% of African ethnic groups, in which 63.6% of the tested group had at least one ancestor who was Indigenous.
In 2009, Chile had an estimated population of 16,970,000, of which approximately 8.8 million or 52,7% are European, with mestizos estimated at 44%. Other studies found a white majority of 64% to 90% of the Chilean population. From Chile's various waves of immigrants Spanish, Italians, Irish, French, Greeks, Germans, English, Scots and Croats communities. The largest ethnic group in Chile arrived from Spain and the Basque regions in the south of France. Estimates of the number of descendants from Basques in Chile range from 10% (1,600,000) to as high as 27% (4,500,000). Furthermore, Chile is the country with the highest number of people of British origin in Latin America,[citation needed] which is reflected in certain costumes, habits and the historical good relation between Chile and Great Britain. In 1848 an important and substantial German immigration took place, laying the foundation for the German-Chilean community. The German Embassy in Chile estimated 500,000 to 600,000 Chileans are of German origin. Other historically significant immigrant groups include: Croatia whose number of descendants today is estimated to be 380,000 persons, the equivalent of 2.4% of the population. Other authors claim, on the other hand, that close to 4.6% of the Chilean population must have some Croatian ancestry. Over 700,000 Chileans may have British (English, Scottish and Welsh) origin. 4,5% of Chile's population., Chileans of Greek descent are estimated 90,000 to 120,000.[citation needed] Most of them live either in the Santiago area or in the Antofagasta area. Chile is one of the 5 countries with the most descendants of Greeks in the world. The descendants of Swiss add 90,000, an estimated that about 5% of the Chilean population has some French ancestry. and 600,000 to 800,000 Italians.
In the case of Uruguay, the majority of the population is of Spanish and Italian descent. The indigenous populations are now extinct, yet retains a visible minority with mestizos and blacks making up 12% of the population.
A 2009 DNA study in the American Journal of Human Biology showed the genetic composition of Uruguay as primarily European, with Native American ancestry ranging from one to 20 percent and sub-Saharan African from seven to 15 percent (depending on region).
Meanwhile, although the majority of the population of Paraguay is composed of mestizos (mixed European & Amerindian), the European contribution has impacted significantly. It is not uncommon for the admixture in their mestizos to lean more towards the European element, as opposed to a relatively equal amount of both in the rest of Latin America, and in some cases it is the only discernible element. This situation has led to the often contentious question on the proportion of white people. Paraguay has an undetermined number of unmixed Europeans, as well as a visible Amerindian minority. The number of people of European descent in Paraguay is not greater than 20% and the vast majority of Paraguay is not inhabited by peoples of European descent.
==Geography==
The climates are mostly temperate, but include humid subtropical, Mediterranean, highland tropical, maritime temperate, sub-Antarctic temperate, highland cold, desert and semi-arid temperate regions. Except for northern regions of Argentina (thermal equator in January), the whole country of Paraguay, the Argentina-Brazil border and the interior of the Atacama Desert, the region rarely suffers from heat. In addition to that, the winter presents mostly cool temperatures. Strong and constant wind and high humidity is what brings low temperatures in the winter. The Atacama is the driest place on Earth.
One of the most peculiar plants of the region is the Araucaria tree, which can be found in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. The only native group of conifers found in the southern hemisphere had its origin in the Southern Cone. Araucaria angustifolia, once widespread in Southern Brazil, is now a critically endangered species, protected by law. The prairies region of central Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil is known as the Pampas.
Central Chile has Mediterranean vegetation and a Mediterranean climate, grading southward into an oceanic climate. The Atacama, Patagonian and Monte deserts form a diagonal of arid lands separating the woodlands, croplands and pastures of La Plata basin from Central and Southern Chile. Apart from the desert diagonal, the north–south running Andes form a major divide in the Southern Cone and constitute, for most of its part in the southern cone, the Argentina–Chile border. In the east the river systems of the La Plata basin form natural barriers and sea-lanes between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.