Stanfords Blog

Writer and journalist Laurence Blair shares the inside story behind Patria: Lost Countries of South America, a dazzling history of the continent available now.

-by Laurence Blair

In eastern Peru, where the Andes crumple into the Amazon, lies Espíritu Pampa: a labyrinth of jungle-shrouded chambers, temples and tombs. Though rarely visited today, this was the capital of The Vilcabamba: a fragment of the Inca Empire where four emperors held out for a generation after the Spanish landed in Peru. “Imagine,” says Jorge Cobos, whose family helped explorers identify the ruins just decades ago. “There are lots of buildings left to discover in the forest. And beyond, in the mountains: who knows?”

The Vilcabamba is just one of the vanished kingdoms, nations and territories featured in my non-fiction debut PATRIA: Lost Countries of South America, which hit bookshelves across the UK last week. In my decade covering the continent as a foreign correspondent – rafting down Amazonian rivers with Colombian rebels, helicoptering into marijuana plantations with Paraguayan special forces, and following Venezuelan refugees into the lawless Darien jungle – I’ve witnessed South America’s fragile natural beauty and searing inequality up close. Stretching from the edge of Antarctica to the shores of the Caribbean, it’s a cultural, culinary, and economic powerhouse that feeds, fuels and cools the planet.