The State, Society, and Politics in Peru and Mexico in the Late Colonial and Early Republican Periods

Abstract

The central feature that united the late colonial period, the Wars of Independence, and the early republican decades in Latin America was the destruction of the colonial political and economic order by a combination of world events and internal forces, clearing the path for capitalist development. The events of this era are part of protracted bourgeois revolutions. This statement does not imply that the political struggles of the early 19th century were led by unified bourgeoisies with clear visions of what changes they desired, nor that the transformations were rapidly successful. The absence of a revolutionizing bourgeoisie does not suggest a contrast with contemporaneous events in Europe. Many Latin Americanists implicitly compare events in Latin America with an idealized vision of European transitions. They telescope European events, emphasizing a class-conscious bourgeoisie at the forefront of successful political and economic revolutions. They then present the lack of a strong, unified bourgeoisie in post-Independence Latin America as the cause of political instability and economic underdevelopment. However, in Europe as in Latin America, complex, multiclass alliances both promoted and opposed these changes.Peter Guardino is a visiting fellow at

Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies

“…During the 18th century, Bourbon monarchs implemented modernizing reforms in Spanish America that helped trigger the reversal of levels of economic development (Andrien 2001;Cotler 1978;Guardino and Walker 1992). After the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1713), the Bourbon rulers began to allow European allies intermittent access to trade in the New World.…”

Doing Surveillance Studies in Latin America: Social sorting in contexts of violence

“…Currently, the violence and insecurity in Latin America is not the consequence of a defect in the institutional design of its democracies, or its strengths of order and justice systems, rather they exist more as a result of its social organization (Bobea 2010;Landman 2010). This has particularly been demonstrated in countries such as Colombia (Ramírez 2010), Argentina (Auyero 2010;Stanley 2010), Brazil (Gay 2010), Mexico (Guardino and Walker 1992), Peru and Bolivia (Maldonado 2010a).…”