Summary

The first Latin American subway opened in 1913 in Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires underground railway reflected the rapid urban growth and immigration to Argentina at the turn of the 20th century. By the 1940s and 1950s, population growth and increasing street congestion in many Latin American cities prompted public discussion about the need to modernize urban transportation infrastructure. Although there were many proposals for urban mass transit systems, these languished for decades due to financing challenges. By the late 1960s, however, the availability of capital and political interest in ordering and modernizing the rapidly growing metropolises enabled a boom in subway construction. Mexico City, São Paulo, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, and Caracas opened metro systems between 1969 and 1983. Critics argued that these systems encouraged capital city growth at the expense of regional cities and thus contributed to the overcentralization of populations and resources. Their high costs have also sparked long-running debates about how these systems can best serve the public in the context of scarce resources. On the other hand, supporters argued that metro systems were crucial for preventing congestion, structuring and modernizing the urban transportation system as a whole, and promoting circulation as car use rapidly increased. Although metro and subway systems account for a minority of overall trips in these cities, they have had outsized political and symbolic roles due to their association with national modernization. In addition, they have become crucial to the day-to-day life of many Latin American metropolises.