Every deck I've seen for a LATAM expansion starts with the same slide: a map of the region, a market size number, and a growth curve pointing up and to the right. It's not wrong. It's just not the hard part.
The hard part is that LATAM isn't a market. It's fourteen or fifteen markets wearing the same trench coat. Argentina's inflation dynamics have nothing to do with Colombia's regulatory posture. Brazil runs on relationships built over years. Mexico moves at a different institutional speed than either. A strategy built for "the region" is, in practice, built for none of them.
The second thing people underestimate is how long trust takes to build here. In markets with a history of instability, institutions and press are appropriately skeptical of companies that show up loud and leave quiet. Credibility isn't a launch event. It's a track record of showing up again the following month.
If there's one thing I'd tell any company planning to enter the region, it's this: pick one country, get it right, and let the rest of the region watch you do it. Region wide launches are how budgets disappear.