Latin America is a relatively young player base to the Play! Pokémon circuit of events. Their first sanctioned tournaments came only in 2015, but since then they have been present at Worlds and at the main stage. In their debut year, Mexico’s Genaro Vallejo bubbled out Worlds top cut in 9th place, and the same happened to Argentina’s Sebas Escalante in 2016.

Team Latin America broke its 9th place curse with the introduction of generation 7, which brought many new players to the competitive scene and allowed them to get stronger as a region: out of the 19 players in cut in Anaheim, 5 of them came from Latin America. Ecuador’s Paul Ruiz, Argentina’s Sebas Escalante and Peru’s Dorian André Quiñonez all had a spot in the top 8 as well.

And then, it happened. In 2018, after only 4 seasons of official events, Latin America took their first championship home in Nashville, where Paul Ruiz soared higher. He was not the sole latino to stand out: Argentina’s Fede Turano and El Salvador’s René Alvarenga both fought in top cut. In this article, we’ll introduce some of the Latin America representatives willing to keep the Worlds trophy at home.