Marx wrote in Chapter 3 of the first volume of Capital: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.”
Marx claims that the plunder of Latin America is what started the era of capitalist production - this shows that the exploitation of the global south and specifically the Latin American peoples has much more significance and goes back much further than is often mentioned
