What Holds a Country Together or Tears it Apart? Crash Course Geography #36

Today we’re going to talk about the forces that affect a country’s stability. We’ll take a closer look at Costa Rica, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil and examine how the cohesiveness of these Latin American countries varies dramatically even though they are in a region with similar characteristics. As you’ll see, a country is like a figure skater, and maintaining peace and stability is much like a pair performing a “death spiral” balancing the forces attempting to pull a country apart and keep it together. Sources General CIA Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/docs/one_page_summaries.html Getis, Bjelland, and Getis. Introduction to Geography, 15 ed. McGraw-Hill Education. 2017. ISBN: 978-1-259-57000-1 Gregory, Derek, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore, eds. 2009. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Willey-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-4051-3288-6 For a free and open source option for Intro to Human Geography: https://humangeography.pressbooks.com/ For a free and open source option for World Regional Geography: https://worldgeography.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction/ Cracking the AP Human Geography Exam: 2020 edition. The Princeton Review. Checkerboards and Shatterbelts: The Geopolitics of South America by Philip Kelly https://fragilestatesindex.org/analytics/fsi-heat-map/ Costa Rica https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/costa-rica/#government . https://fragilestatesindex.org/country-data/ Venezuela https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/venezuela/#people-and-society https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/venezuelan-crisis-explained https://thesolutionsjournal.com/2016/02/22/the-venezuelan-food-sovereignty-experiment/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-gasoline-explainer-idUSKBN22V32G https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF10715.pdf Brazil https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/brazil/ https://theconversation.com/populism-in-brazil-how-liberalisation-and-