The Raging Earth
The environmental upheavals which battered the world around the time of the Great Mistake weren't kind to South America. While nuclear fire raged in other parts of the planet, widespread droughts savaged the once fertile plains of the Pampas and lands as far north as Paraguay. Unrest ensued as famine set in across Argentina and most of its neighbors. In the west, an unusually active Ring of Fire of the Pacific produced tsunamis which regularly ravaged Chilean coasts and ports already besieged by the rising sea levels. On the Atlantic coast, the rise was no gentler, submerging cities like Mar del Plata and parts of Buenos Aires which would take decades to fully reclaim. But the worst didn't come until a significant portion of the Andean Southern Volcanic Zone erupted with literally earth-shattering fury. Santiago was virtually destroyed, consumed by relentless lava flows like countless smaller towns. The lasting calamity, however, were the massive roaming clouds of silicate ash which darkened the sky. A major health hazard for years even thousands of miles away from the eruptions, they made it even harder for crops to grow and cattle to subsist. Air transport was non-existent for just as long, and maintenance costs for any and all sorts of heavy machinery skyrocketed. By the time the proverbial dust had settled, millions had died, and millions more had been deprived of their homes and forced to seek a fresh start in less affected areas.
Prosperity amidst Adversity
The great volcanic eruptions had the side-effect of revealing previously undiscovered mineral deposits, and even through a new civil war, Argentina was quick to seize them and begin their exploitation. Once the ash clouds dispersed, new and old Patagonian riches served to bring wealth to the nation, put an end to internal strife and usher a period of unprecedented affluence. The country and especially Buenos Aires grew, fed by the immigration of not only refugees and expatriates, but also opulent investors and discerning entrepreneurs from around the world. By the eve of the twenty-third century, the Buenos Aires Metroplex would become an economic powerhouse like few on the planet. The megacity would sprawl to encompass formerly separate urban areas such as Rosario and even Montevideo, across the Río de la Plata yet connected via high-speed rail bridges and underwater tunnels. Though at an impressive rate, Argentina flourished in the shadow of Brasilia, an expanded and reformed Brazil turned giant of the region. When the time came and cooperation made sense, an alliance was made in the form of the Organization of South American States.
A United South
For a time, it was good. Though Brasilia's influence made it the defacto leader of the OSAS, for years its constituent members retained their individual sovereignty and control over their internal affairs. The region enjoyed reinvigorated trade, peace and unity. However, as newer, honed incarnations of the "O Caridade" doctrine projected Brasilia's power across the globe, it began to demand more and more from its South American allies to support its operations. Buenos Aires contributed with its remarkable soldiers, among the finest in Brasilia's ranks, at first doing so freely and later being required to. As Brasilia's veritable empire spread its resources thin, it began to use its influence in increasingly heavy-handed ways to procure more, aiming to exert unreasonable degrees of control over partners who were supposed to be its equals. Under threat of overpowering military might and industrial superiority, the nations of the region repeatedly submitted with gritted teeth. For a time.
Operation Southern Lance
Relations between Brasilia and the rest of the OSAS nations were already strained around the time of the Seeding. The demands reached their harshest point as the superpower took it upon itself to be the first to complete the monumental undertaking. Critical mass was reached not long after the launch of Seeding One, when Argentina set in motion events planned in utmost secrecy: with the forming of the Nuevos Aires Coalition, Buenos Aires and regional allies openly challenged the Brasilian hegemony and immediately seceded from the Organization of South American States. What followed was a war of liberation characterized as order within chaos: the secession had suddenly divested Brasilia of much of the southern regions, and Brasilian military units with a majority of Coalition-aligned servicemen defected, sending the giant's armed forces into near-complete disarray. In this context of absolute strategic superiority, the bulk of Nuevos Aires' carefully assembled forces launched what was called "Operación Lanza del Sur", or Operation Southern Lance. Its primary objective: to penetrate deep into Brasilia's southern industrial heartland, seize or cripple critical complexes, and with them, the superpower's war-making capacity.
Libertad
Deprived of the Lion, their greatest general, and some of their best command cadres, the disorganized Brasilians suffered major defeats in their own core territory as the Southern Lance drove through Paraná and into São Paulo and Minas Gerais. By the time the enemy had managed to rally and present some form of defense, Coalition trucks and airlifters were already transporting all kinds of precious equipment and starship parts out of captured aerospace industries and back to allied territories. Peru, the northernmost country at least nominally committed to the Nuevos Aires Coalition, was chosen to erect the required launch sites to begin putting into orbit the shuttles expeditiously assembled and ferried there. Said spacecraft carried the components and later the staff and colonists which would populate and crew the Coalition's first seedship, the Libertad. Brasilia's opposition began to stiffen eventually, but too late to stop those brave pioneers which had already darted into the void.
