How Did Latin America Fight In The 19th Century

Since the discovery of Latin America by Columbus in 1492, the continent was colonized, conquered and torn apart for its resources. The native people were killed by the thousands, treated like animals and used for labor. The turn of the nineteenth century saw a wave of enlightenment thinkers throughout Europe and reaching the Americas, that disagreed with these tactics and pushed for sovereign states, which led to much of Latin America rebelling and escaping colonial rule. This paper will argue how the wars for independence themselves set Latin America up to struggle in the nineteenth century because of leadership, economic and sociological issues. Between 1808-1826 all Spanish colonies in Latin America, other than Puerto Rico and Cuba, freed themselves of the Spanish and their rule through revolutions that spanned across the continent. These …show more content…
Although the independence movement was based off a promise of equality, many of the new citizens still faced systemic racism. In Nicaragua racial tensions brewed under the surface and “colonial officials worried about the size of Nicaragua’s African descended population, which accounted for upward of 50 percent of the provinces inhabitants”. The capital city of Leon had been racially segregated as a result of this and despite independence there was still a divide between Afro-Nicaraguans and other races. What had been a collective movement for independence for all of Latin America resulted in a continent where the “rallying call ‘Americanos!’ was no longer sufficient, as Spanish America shattered into a dozen national pieces”. Post Colonial Latin America struggled to find an identity and “it became much harder to sell the idea of a common political purpose uniting all”. The structure of the colonial system did not prepare the continent for self governance and because of this post colonial governments struggled to maintain peace and