Yet LEV was one of the first latam teams to have an academy team investing in the long term.What is killing Latam is not the change from LEV to an international roster, is the fact that Riot has the league in NA making it way more difficult for latam players to have good scrims/trials if you are from South America and not having an easy way to make quick changes mid season without having to sign an American player. Look how Kru had to sign Heat last year cause he already had his Visa and did not have to wait 3 months between trialing someone from LATAM then paying 10k USD for the working visa and lastly wait for it to be issued.
The only way VCT LEV is hurting latam is by not having a "guaranteed" latam player spot like BR teams mostly do for their teams, where they only sign BR players and even then, who says next year they dont come back to a core latam team as this year the best latam player (Dantedeus) wasnt 18 yet and the other players did not meet the expectations.