The conquest of Spain by Napoleon and the imposition on the throne of Spain of Napoleon's brother, Louis Napoleon aroused a great deal of resentment among the Creole elite's of the Spanish colonies of Latin America. Creoles were either Spaniards who lived a long time in Latin America or children of Spaniards. Mestizos were people of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage. The Creoles were at the top of the social pyramid in colonial Spanish America.
The Creoles were upset with the Spanish government even before the dynastic crises because they resented continental Spaniards being continually sent over from the mother country to get the best jobs and because the Spaniards tried to control trade to the advantage of Spain rather than the colonies. This state of resentment had many layers to it. The example of the United States forty years before left the home elite's anxious to have their own independence from Spain. Finally, many liberal ideas of the enlightenment had permeated some of members of the upper and middle classes of Latin America.
So, the colonials set out to organize a rebellion and, after much bloodshed, succeeded in driving the Spanish Army out of the colonies and gaining independence from Spain. A critical factor in the success of the colonial armies under victorious generals like Simon Bolivar was the support of the British Navy which made re-supply of the imperial troops very difficult for the continental Spanish. The British aim in this policy was to open Latin America to trade with Great Britain. In that, the British were entirely successful and benefited greatly throughout the century from 1815 to 1914 from trade with Latin America.
Since this was a revolution from the top, the Creole elite determined the nature of the new national societies. While racial codes codified by law were abolished, racial prejudices remained virulent. The Creoles discriminated against people with substantial amounts of Indian blood and blacks. The right to vote had a property classification and the vast majority of the people (non-Creoles) were excluded from voting. The ruling classes of all of the newly independent countries protected the interests of landholders. With the exception of Mexico, no Latin American country experienced a fundamental social and economic revolution from the time of independence to the 1950's. When the revolutions occurred, they tended to be very violent and the revolutionaries were almost all socialists or sympathizers with socialism.
The landowners ruled their estates as small domains and held de facto political and judicial as well as economic power. Resistance or even disagreement was often met with violent repression. There was much inter-marriage among the rather isolated 'hacienda' families and their counterparts in the cities and in the army. The entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church was Creole. During the second half of the 19th Century, there was a substantial growth of urbanization due to the emerging export economies based on raw materials. Power gradually shifted to the cities and, with it, urban conflicts between the elite and the growing numbers of urban proletariat.
The politics of the new Latin American countries tended to reflect political thought in Europe. So, there was a strong but not often dominant tendency to advocate liberal policies (such as secular education) and representative voting. However, the dominant philosophy that fit the Creole outlook on life was the Positivist philosophy of Auguste Compte (the French originator of positivism). Compte advocated the cult of science and technological progress. Socially, it was very conservative in that positivists in Latin America at least favored technocratic government often backed up by military dictatorships to rapidly achieve modernization. Positivism was especially popular among the members of the Officer Corps of the national armies. The Creoles widely accepted the late 19th Century theories of 'scientific' racism to justify their continued stranglehold on power and exclusion of the vast majority of the population from political participation. This outlook spilled over into the 20th Century when military groups tended to think of themselves as guarantors of the social order. This justified their intervention in political affairs in a long series of military coups. This produced in the opposition a tendency for radical left politics and the democratic center often did not exist or was very weak.
The main economic consequence of political independence from Spain was the elimination of the colonial trade monopolies. The principal beneficiary of this elimination was Great Britain who proceeded to dominate the foreign trade of most of Hispanic America between Independence and World War I. One reason for the utter dependence of Hispanic America was the geography of South America. A combination of the Amazon Basin and the Andes Mountains proved to be impenetrable barrier for this entire period of time. So, each Latin American country faced outward towards the sea-lanes dominated by the English. The English interest was to provide a domestic market for Hispanic American raw materials and to sell as much manufactured goods to the Latin Americans as possible. Capital was provided only to develop exploitable natural resources from mines and plantations plus some amenities in the national capitals. This generally fit well with the Creole desire for a comfortable life based on exploitation of Mestizo and Indian labor and the importation of luxury goods from the Continent. It also provided many opportunities to easily control the two-way trade in ways profitable to the Creoles. The disadvantages were that the prices of raw materials did not keep pace with those of manufactures between Independence and the first World War and that gradually European and North American companies seized control of corporations that dominated the trade and carried off the profits to their home countries. But, while it lasted, the combination of political independence with economic dependency was profitable both to the Creoles and to the foreigners.
From the 1920's onward to end of World War II in 1945, this colonial economy went into a terminal crisis. During the 1920's, commodity prices were highly unstable due to economic turmoil in Europe. But the real crisis occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930's and World War II. Markets collapsed in the 1930's and prices plummeted. Crops rotted on the ground and mines stopped working. Even the minimum cash required to maintain essential machinery and imported consumer goods often was not available. During World War II, goods were not available at any price. There grew up a conviction among Latin American both urban workers and elite that their countries must industrialize in order to achieve prosperity and stability.
It is well to remember that the monarchical ideal survived in Latin America after Independence. Iturbide, the first Mexican president, declared himself an Emperor. Jose de San Martin favored the establishment of monarchical government in Latin America and he with Simon Bolivar were the leading generals in the war against the continental Spaniards. These were very conservative people. As already mentioned, Latin American political elites tolerated when they were not actively supporting military rule under strong personal leadership. This tendency towards dictatorship even had a special Spanish name, "Caudillismo" in the 19th Century. Caudillos could either favor Church intervention (conservatives) or secularization (liberals) but they all believed in one-man rule. They suppressed dissent and ensured stability so that the Creoles could continue their privileged lives. Even when Caudillos were succeeded by Parliamentary regimes, the repressive nature of the state did not change simply because the status quo was supported by the elite. Because there was never a popular basis for the regimes and because there were always contending figures for the position of Caudillo, political stability was never actually achieved and one government after the other was overthrown. So, the dictator was strong and the government was weak.
Argentine history between 1810 (Independence) and 1946 can be conveniently periodized into three phases. In the first phase, a central government slowly evolved and achieved control over the rest of the country. In the second phase, a long period of rapid economic expansion occurred that was accompanied by large-scale immigration that transformed who the Argentines were. In the last phase, Argentines went through an extended period of instability and internal revolt accompanied by long-term economic decline.
In 1910, a junta (a committee of army officers) overturned the Spanish government in Buenos Aires, the capital city. Other regions refused to recognize the Buenos Aires junta and confusion and civil war prevailed. Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia (then called Upper Peru) went their own way and became independent governments. The citizens of Buenos Aires became known as 'portenos' (people of the port) and the remaining citizens of Argentina were referred to either by the name of their province or as 'provinciales' (provincials). Between 1821 and 1827, a guy by the name of Rivadavia tried to establish a liberal political state but could not convince the provinces to joint Buenos Aires. In 1823, he had established a commercial treaty with Great Britain that made the British the dominant economic force in Argentina. After 1827, Juan Manuel de Rosas became the quintessential Caudillo. In 1831, he negotiated the Pact of the Littoral which gave Buenos Aires the right to conduct foreign relations, trade and customs but allowed the other provinces to conduct their own internal affairs. Inside Buenos Aires, Rosas exercised unlimited dictatorship. He used a secret terrorist group under his control to enforce his absolute rule.
In 1852, Urquiza, a caudillo from the state of Entre Rios (between the rivers separating Argentina from Brazil and Paraguay), overthrew Rosas. Later another Caudillo, Julia Roca carried a campaign of extermination against the Indians of the Pampas (plains surrounding Buenos Aires) that was called the Conquest of the Desert.
Soon thereafter, the British began a long period of building railroads in the Pampas that allowed for the rapid growth of agriculture (wheat) and cattle ranching (for refrigerated beef). This enormous growth in Beef and Wheat exports attracted a large number of Italian and German immigrants in the forty years between 1870 and 1910. The City of Buenos Aires also prospered multiplied its population by four times during this period. Even Patagonia, which is a sparsely settled, semi-desert province lying south of the Pampas and extending almost to the tip of South America received a fair number of settlers who established sheep ranches.
The formally liberal (in the 19th Century sense) so-called Radical Party had been the dominant political movement during the period of economic expansion. However, it became corrupt and lost popular support by the late 1920's. Army officers staged a coup in 1930 and ruled Argentina throughout most of the Great Depression. Eventually, they returned rule to the Parliament but the government remained weak and dependent upon British support.
A fascist movement group up in Buenos Aires that resented British domination of both the economy and politics of Argentina. It rejected secular liberalism, embraced Catholicism and was strongly anti-Semitic. The fascist advocated social reforms that recognized the needs of workers and the poor. However, they favored some form of social harmony that avoided the nationalization programs of socialism. They were anti-imperialistic, embraced nationalism and was sympathetic to the rule of a strong Caudillo.
When World War II broke out, the Argentine fascists in the army were deeply impressed by Hitler and Mussolini and favored the axis powers. Between 1943 and 1956, one of the colonels who conducted the military coup of 1943 gradually consolidated power and became the dominant figure in Argentine politics. He was greatly aided by his wife, Eva Duarte ("Evita") who enjoyed charismatic support among trade-union members and the working class. He was ousted in 1956 and went into exile in Spain.
Between 1810 and 1911, Mexico's history closely resembled that of Argentina in many important respects. However, starting in 1911 under Francisco Madera, the Mexicans engaged in a thorough revolution that wiped out the Mexican Creoles and established a Mestizo government for the first time in Latin American history. The other major difference between Mexican history and Argentine history is that Mexico lost one-third of its land to the United States first in the 1836 independence of Texas and second in an all out war with the United States in 1845. The following summary talks about Mexican history between 1810 and the rise of the great Caudillo Porfirio Diaz in the 1870's. The second segment discusses the Diaz regime and the third the revolution and its aftermath up until the Second World War.
Father Hidalgo and Jose Maria Morelos led a social revolution both against the continental Spanish and the Creoles in the 1811 - 1815 period. In 1820, the Creoles staged a political coup against the weakened but potentially liberal Spanish crown and seized control of the country for the next 90 years. The years between 1820 and 1876 were tumultuous because the dictators came and went without much if any popular support. In fact, the first conservative Creole to become President of Mexico was Agustin de Iturbide (1820 - 1823) who declared himself Emperor of Mexico. When he was overthrown, there followed a succession of army officers who held the Presidency for rather short periods of time. The most persistent and famous of these was Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana who was a terrible general but a great politician. He was always willing to modify him political positions and principles to maintain power and returned to office after being driven from it again and again. By and large, Santa Ana was a Creole politician with Creole ideas of a social hierarchy, an export based economy and a dictatorial government. He was ousted for the last time in 1855 and exiled to Cuba.
Around the middle of the 19th Century, a political movement called La Reforma gained a good deal of popular support. La Reforma advocated an economic policy that would attract foreign capital and industry. The Mexican Congress passed legislation that attempted to break up the large estates that formed the basis for 19th Century Creole power. Due to corruption, the actual law passed allowed the Creole to enlarge their estates thus frustrating reform. There was a legislative attack on the privileges of the Catholic Church and this lead to Civil War between 1857 and 1860. The revolutionary leader, Benito Juarez, entered Mexico City at the head of a peasant army and, temporarily, ruled Mexico until betrayed by more sophisticated enemies. Throughout all of this time, the Mexican economy stagnated and even basic raw material exports did not grow very much. The economic condition of the country was terrible.
In 1876, General Diaz (a liberal politician) led a revolt on the grounds that he was restoring a true republic. He lied. For the next 35 years, Diaz become the most powerful dictator in Latin American history. He was a clever politician who favored first the right, then the left and then the right again. He used terror, bribery and flattery to cement the loyalty of his followers. Foreign companies were made welcome and a very large investment was made in Mexico during this period. Diaz built the national railroad system (the only effective means of transport for most of the country until after World War II). Diaz curried favor with the landowners and they grew richer at the expense of the peasants or 'campesinos'. Food production actually fell as did urban wages. Finally, the country had had enough and Diaz's opponent in the 1910 'election' (which, naturally, Madero lost due to corruption of the ballot) raised the standard of revolt and Diaz was overthrown.
Madero was a liberal who was very cautious about land reform. He made it possible for the trade unions to strike but made very little progress on distributing land to the peasants. And, most Mexicans were peasants. Two more radical leaders emerged in the turmoil. One was Pancho Villa who led a peasant army from the north. The other was Emiliano Zapata who led an peasant army from the south. Squeezed from both sides, another general Victoriano Huerta overthrew Madero. Huerta, who was basically a dictator, waged war on Zapata with a great loss of life. Carranza, a wealthy landowner, raised a private army and sided with Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Together, they overcame the resistance of the Mexican army and conquered Mexico City. Carranza shrewdly outmaneuvered the two peasant leaders and emerged as the new President of Mexico. President Wilson intervened by sending US Marines to Veracruz. Carranza played the outraged patriot and denounced the Americans who then withdrew. With that, Carranza had achieved some popular support in Mexico City. Then, Carranza waged waron the peasant armies of Villa and Zapata and, after two years of vicious fighting from 1915 to 1917, managed to break both armies. Both Zapata and Villa were assassinated. In 1917, Carranza proclaimed a new constitution for Mexico (it was called the Constitution of Aguascalientes). It had two famous clauses. The first provided that the nation as a whole was to become the owner of natural resources in Mexico. The second guaranteed certain rights for organized labor. Together, they provided the basis for land redistribution and labor organization. However, it took some time before the provisions of the constitution were put into effect. Carranza was assassinated. His generals ruled very cautiously during the 1920's. In 1930, President Calles organized the PRI (Party of the Institutionalized Revolution) and it became the dominant force in Mexican politics until the 1990's. In 1934, a left leaning politician by the name of Lazaro Cardenas became President and gave a great deal of land back to the village communities ('ejidos'). However, in 1940, a much more conservative President was elected and ended the period of revolutionary government.
When Napoleon invaded Portugal, the Portuguese royal court fled to Brazil. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the King returned to Lisbon and left Pedro I as regent. Pedro I put himself at the head of the independence movement and served as Brazil's first Emperor from 1822 to 1831. Pedro I was both high handed and persisted in patronizing Portuguese courtiers at the expense of native Brazilians. They deposed him in 1831 and appointed his fifteen year old son, Pedro II as King under a regency controlled by the Brazilians. Pedro II ruled Brazil from 1841 (when the regency ended) to his death in 1889. Pedro II established a constitutional monarchy and shrewdly appointed both conservative and liberal Prime Ministers as the occasion demanded.
The key issue in 19th Century Brazil was slavery. The key crop was sugar and it was grown in the northeastern seven states of Brazil. Poor farmers, the sugar plantation owners needed the cheap labor supply represented by the African slaves to profit from the crop. From about 1850, coffee gradually succeeded as the principal export crop. It was grown in two states in the southeast of Brazil (Sao Paulo and Parana). Coffee was grown with free labor on small farms. The situation was analogous to the United States with the north-south directions reversed. As early as 1826, the Brazilian government agreed to suppress the slave trade in a treaty with Great Britain who was the principal force for abolition of slavery at the time. However, Brazil took a long time to honor its treaty obligations and it was not until 1850 that the importation of new slaves from West Africa finally stopped. Conditions were so bad on Brazilian sugar plantations that the slaves failed to reproduce themselves and so, when the slave trade ended, the number of slaves gradually diminished.
The slavery issue was postponed when the Paraguayan War of 1865 - 1870 occurred. The war pitted Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil against Paraguay over some disputes about borderlands. The Paraguayan fought ferociously and little Paraguay held off three much larger opponents for five years and was defeated only when more than half of the male population were killed.
At the end of the Paraguayan War, the issue of slavery came back to haunt Brazilian politics. Throughout the 1870's and 1880's the abolition movement grew in urban and southern Brazil. In 1888, Pedro II went to Europe for medical treatment and his daughter became regent. She was an abolitionist and a lousy politician. She approved a law abolishing slavery without compensation to the sugar plantation owners. They then rose in revolt and overthrew the monarchy.
The first Brazilian Republic lasted from 1891 to 1930. The Republic was dominated by a small group of very wealthy people. The political arrangement was strange but worked more or less for nearly forty years. The president was chosen alternately from the big states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. The other eighteen governors were, in turn, given a very large amount of autonomy to run their individual states. By 1900, Brazil was producing more than three fourths of the world's coffee and the politics of coffee dominated the internal economy. But coffee growing and exporting was confined to about a tenth of Brazil. Jealousy and greed motivated much of the opposition to the dominance of Sao Paulo (the "Paulistas"). Gradually discontent built up in the 1920's and there were strikes that were suppressed by the army. The Parliamentary system became thoroughly corrupt and public was cynical about the government. Support for the first Brazilian republic evaporated.
In 1929, the Great Depression came early to Brazil and millions of bags of unsaleable coffee rotted in wharehouses. The government went bankrupt trying to maintain the price of coffee. In 1930, General Getulio Vargas was installed in a military coup. He ruled Brazil until 1945. Like Pedro II, Vargas was a nimble politician who maneuvered from right to left in the currents of domestic politics as the occasion demanded. He recognized new forces emerging in the national economy and promoted industry and trade in more general ways. However, he ruled by military force and, therefore, his regime was unstable. Basically, Vargas promoted the internal demand for goods manufactured domestically and this really helped to economically develop Brazil. By 1937, Vargas faced an active opposition from the political left led by the Communists. He turned decisively to the right and promoted a form of fascism. This included mass propaganda and a secret police and government sponsored terrorism. Brazil participated in World War II on the side of the allies. After the war, Brazilians were fed up with the repression of the Vargas regime and established the Second Brazilian Republic. Vargas had promised open elections in 1945 but his military colleagues believed that he intended to manipulate the elections and forced him to retire temporarily from political life. In 1950, Vargas was elected President in an honest election. By 1954, there was much criticism of the corruption of his appointments and the military once again demanded that he resign. Instead, he committed suicide.
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