Latin American independence movements

Between about 1808 and 1826, most of Spain's and Portugal's American colonies won independence. Enlightenment ideas and the American, French, and Haitian revolutions inspired independence leaders, many of them creoles, people of European descent born in the Americas who resented the privileges of officials born in Spain. Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 weakened royal authority and gave colonial movements an opening. Simon Bolivar led independence wars across northern South America, in lands that became Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, while Jose de San Martin led campaigns in Argentina, Chile, and Peru. In Mexico, the priest Miguel Hidalgo launched a revolt in 1810 that drew many Indigenous and mestizo followers, and Mexico gained independence in 1821. Brazil broke from Portugal in 1822 with little fighting, becoming an empire under Dom Pedro I. Independence often left creole elites in power, so the old racial and social hierarchies largely continued, and Bolivar's hope of uniting the new states, as in Gran Colombia, soon broke apart.

This explanation is AI-generated and can occasionally be wrong. 🚩 Report