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The Wars of Independence, 1808-26
During 1808–10 they arose together to govern in the name of Fernando VII. In Mexico City and Montevideo, provisional governments were the work of loyal peninsular Spaniards eager to tackle Creole threats. In Santiago, Caracas, Bogotá and other cities, on the other hand, it was the Creoles who controlled the provisional boards. Not all of these governments lasted long; Loyalist troops quickly put down the Creole-dominated junta in La Paz and Quito. -
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Population and social change
In some countries, the lives of the majority of the inhabitants seemed little changed in 1945, at the end of World War II, than it had been in 1910. This was the case in Paraguay, still overwhelmingly rural and isolated, and Honduras, except for its coast. banana enclave. Even in Brazil, the sertão, or semi-arid backcountry, was hardly affected by changes in coastal cities or the fast-growing industrial complex of São Paulo. -
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The Independence Of Latin America
The reforms imposed by the Spanish Bourbons in the 18th century caused great instability in the relations between the rulers and their colonial subjects in America. Many Creoles (those of Spanish descent but born in America) felt that Bourbon politics was an unjust attack on their wealth, political power, and social status. -
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Mexico and Central America
The independence of Mexico, like that of Peru, the other major central area of the American empire from Spain, came late. As in Lima, Mexican cities had a powerful segment of peninsular Creoles and Spaniards whom the old imperial system had served well. Mexican Creoles, like those in Peru, had the specter of a great social uprising to persuade them to hold on to Spain and stability for a while longer. For many of the powerful in Mexican society, -
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Building New Nations, 1826-1850
Although Brazil maintained its territorial integrity after independence, ancient Spanish America was divided into more than a dozen separate countries, following the administrative divisions of the colonial system. However, the difficulty for the inhabitants of these units was not as simple as the demarcation of the geographical limits. Rather, the recently emancipated Latin American countries faced the much more daunting challenge of defining and consolidating new nations. -
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Constitutions
Particularly in the first heady years of independence, elites throughout Latin America displayed the influence of the Enlightenment in their propensity to produce constitutions. Those documents demonstrated not only attempts to impose rational plans on new nations, but also the changing attitudes of elites towards their societies. -
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Disorder and caudillismo
However, the written constitutions were not enough to enforce order in the new countries of the region. Particularly in the period 1825-1850, Latin America experienced a high degree of political instability. National governments changed hands rapidly in most areas, which only prolonged the weakness and ineffectiveness of emerging political systems. -
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Economic obstacles
Complicating the construction of stable constitutional governments in the decades after independence were the economic circumstances that prevailed in the period. Creoles who hoped that the dismantling of colonial restrictions on Latin American economies would produce a wave of new wealth had their hopes dashed in the 1820s. -
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Mobility and hierarchy
The Creole elites who had spearheaded the independence cause throughout Latin America had no intention of losing their social, economic and political power in the construction of new nations. Managing to solidify and even expand their influence after the removal of the colonial administration, these elites emerged as the great beneficiaries of independence. -
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Social institutions
Both as part of their ideological commitment to liberal individualism and as a means of increasing the power of their new states, leaders in the post-independence years sought to establish their control over the formidable colonial institutions of the Roman Catholic Church and the military. . Success came more easily in the case of the military. Only in Mexico and, to a lesser extent.in peru -
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Political and economic transitions, 1850-1870
The first decades of the second half of the 19th century represented the beginning of a fundamental change in the still young nations of Latin America. At the center of this transition was a growing orientation of the region's economies toward world markets. As Europe and North America experienced a second wave of industrialization, they began to reassess the economic potential of Latin America; The region increasingly seemed to them a vital source of raw materials for the expanding . -
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The liberal oligarchic era, 1870-1910
The order that took shape in the last decades of the 19th century is often termed neocolonial, as a way of suggesting that the internal and external structures that characterize the region maintained general similarities to those of the period of Iberian colonial rule. By far this is a useful description -
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Export economies
In the mid-nineteenth century, many Latin American interests had doubts about the advisability of opening their economies to the world. In countries like Peru and Colombia, artisans and other producers, as well as some merchants, persuaded their governments to establish barriers to entry from foreign competition. However, in the 1860s and 70s, such protectionism was swept away by a wave of free trade deliberalism. -
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Capitalism and social transitions
The social ramifications of the rise of export economies were enormous. The acceleration of exporting economies and related trade fostered a trend towards urbanization. The period was one of general population growth in much of Latin America, most dramatically in the temperate and staple-producing zones of South America. -
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Oligarchies in power
Along with the export economies came political transitions. The increased income provided by burgeoning trade enabled elites to consolidate more orderly political systems in some countries. Political unrest continued, however, in others; Colombia, for example, experienced a series of civil wars towards the end of the 19th century. -
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Emergence of a New Order, 1910-1945
The advances in economic growth and political stabilization that were evident in most of Latin America in the early 20th century faced a number of challenges as the century progressed. The forward momentum was not necessarily lost, -
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World War and World Trade
Few Latin Americans felt a strong emotional identification with any of the contending alliances in World War I (1914-18), except for the immigrant communities in southern South America and the generally Francophile ranks of liberal intellectuals. -
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Challenges to the political order
The economic and social changes taking place in Latin America inevitably provoked demands for political change as well; political change in turn affected the course of socioeconomic development. As the 20th century opened, the most prevalent types of regimes were the military dictatorship - exemplified by that of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico and after 1908 Juan Vicente Gómez in Venezuela - and the civil oligarchy - as in Chile, Argentina, Brazil or Colombia. -
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the mexican revolution
The immediate challenge to existing regimes in country after country generally came from disgruntled members of traditional ruling groups and expanding middle sectors resentful of their exclusion from a fair share of power and privilege. This was evident at the beginning of the bloodiest civil conflict in Latin America of the 20th century, the Mexican Revolution of 1910, -
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Expansion of political participation
The Mexican Revolution elicited widespread admiration elsewhere in Latin America, especially for its commitment to reform, but the Mexican political system had few imitators. In the Southern Cone, a common pattern was the expansion of participation within a more conventional democratic system where at least the middle sectors obtained a significant share of power and benefits.