Title: What were the long term effects of the Latin American revolutions? - eNotes.com
Headings: What were the long term effects of the Latin American revolutions?
Latin American History
What were the long term effects of the Latin American revolutions?
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Content: By the century's end, Spain controlled only a small percentage of its former empire (mostly in Africa) with no land under its control in the Americas. By 1824, most of the Americas (besides Canada) was free of European rule. This firmly enshrined the notion of popular sovereignty in the hemisphere. Despite Simon Bolivar's vision of a united South America, the region quickly established itself into individual independent states, illustrating how people in the region developed identities of themselves as distinct nations and populations in a very short amount of time. Further Reading
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv105bb41
Last Updated by eNotes Editorial on February 26, 2021
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If the short-term effects of the Latin American revolutions of the nineteenth century were generally positive, the long-term consequences were somewhat less so. In the short-term, countries on the continent had freed themselves from the yoke of imperialist oppression, becoming independent nations in their own right, able to take their rightful place within the international community. But in the long-term, it became clear that Latin America had simply traded one form of oppression for another. The form of Spanish colonial governance may have been dismantled, but the substance remained largely intact. The system of caudillismo, in which authoritarian regimes were based on the charisma of strongman political and military figures, became the norm throughout the continent, entrenching the economic and political power of a narrow social elite. Beyond this, an additional long-term consequence of the Latin American revolutions was the militarization of political power.