Nostromo is a political novel by the Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad, published in 1904, which deals with the affairs of a fictitious Republic of South America, called "Costaguana". It was originally published in two volumes in T.P.'s Weekly. The novel is developed in the imaginary port Sulaco whose economy depends on the silver mining. It draws the characteristics of internal and international politics in the Latin American countries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the intervention of the United States to secure their economic interests. The civil wars of the Creole elites, the intrigues and the supposedly "incorruptible" popular leader, finally determine the secession of Sulaco that declares itself independent of Costaguana, in order to secure the San Tome silver mine to the Americans and their associates in the local elite.
