What led to the creations of latifundios in Latin America? And why that didn't happen in the first world countries?

by confused1968
Bodark43

Not sure what you mean by "first world countries". But perhaps you mean different from the JNorth Atlantic colonies, like Massachusetts? They were largely colonized by displacement. Settlers , mostly from England, arrived in large numbers. Because of the great population losses caused by imported European diseases, it was relatively easy for them to displace the remaining Native American tribes. With occasional delays from starvation, King Philip's War, etc. those settlements grew and that displacement increased until there was little or no Native American influence left.

In a Latin American region like Mexico, on the other hand, the invaders came much earlier. Conquistadors arrived in Mexico to find a very large and well-established Mexica civilization, and though disease made their conquest easier, great numbers of Spanish settlers did not arrive. Instead, the immigrants did not displace the native population so much as form an elite to rule it, work it, and exploit its resources. That Spanish population did somewhat mix with the Mexica ( there were more men than families, arriving to make their fortunes ), and a caste system resulted. Very basically, at the top were the peninsulars, from Spain. Below them were the criollos, who might have a small amount of Indian ancestry, and then at the bottom the indios ( a good description of this caste system is here ). The ownership of land before the Conquest was largely communal and so title to land was often vague. This helped to allow the Spanish elite to concentrate their land holdings, and more and more of the native population went from being communal-farming villagers to immensely poor farm workers on large haciendas. And, later, of course those dispossessed farm workers would be major drivers of the Mexican Revolution.

There were slight similarities to haciendas to be found in some of the North Atlantic colonies. The Hudson river valley was pretty much controlled by large landowners by 1700 ( many with Dutch names and rather lovingly described by Washington Irving) , and some of the plantations around the Chesapeake Bay were quite large. But, of course, the Dutch farmers were hiring their labor, and the Chesapeake Bay plantations were importing their labor from Africa, not enslaving tribes like the Pamunkey, Mattaponi.

Bailyn: The Barbarous Years

Burkholder: Colonial Latin America