South America’s cone ranks second in the Americas for living standards
Called Cono Sur in Spanish and Cone Sul in Portuguese, the Southern Cone takes in South America's southernmost lands, mostly below the Tropic of Capricorn, and traditionally means Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, squeezed between two oceans. After Northern America, it enjoys the highest living standards and human development in the Americas.
Argentina has about 40 million people, Chile 16.8 million and Uruguay 3.6 million. Greater Buenos Aires holds 13.1 million and Santiago 6.4 million, while Montevideo, with 1.8 million, lies about 200 kilometres across the Río de la Plata by ferry. Patagonia, by contrast, averages fewer than two people per square kilometre. Paraguay is sometimes counted but usually excluded: it is landlocked, subtropical, poorer and rooted in Guaraní culture, which is also its most widely spoken language.
The Andes form most of the Argentina–Chile border, and a diagonal of desert, the Atacama, Patagonian and Monte, separates the La Plata basin from central and southern Chile. The Atacama is the driest place on Earth, with some spots that have never recorded rain. The Pampas grasslands cover central Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil, and the araucaria, a southern conifer, grows in Chile, Argentina and parts of Brazil, where Araucaria angustifolia is now critically endangered.
Massive European and Middle Eastern immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reshaped these societies. Italian settlers in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Montevideo gave River Plate Spanish an intonation resembling Neapolitan dialects, while Chileans famously drop their final s. German is spoken in southern Chile and southern Brazil, Welsh in Patagonia and Yiddish in Buenos Aires. Gauchos and huasos, the region's horsemen, are national icons, and asado barbecue and mate tea are shared rituals.
Argentina has won the World Cup three times and Uruguay twice. Religion matters less here than elsewhere in South America: only 28 percent of Uruguayans call it very important, against 77 percent of Colombians. Buenos Aires-born Pope Francis, elected in 2013, was the first pope from the Western Hemisphere.
Source: Southern Cone
