Independence

Colombia celebrates 200 years of independence on July 20, 2010.

Between 1776 and 1825, one of the most important social and political movements in the history of the world took place, which culminated in the independence of the countries of the Americas. The concept itself was novel in those days of European colonial expansion, a time when terms such as government by the people, sovereignty and nation-state did not yet exist.

The movement of continental emancipation began in the United States with the Declaration of Independence in 1776; for the first time, concepts such as individual liberty, constitution, civil rights, freedom of expression, congress and separation of powers came to the fore.

Fourteen years later, the French Revolution erupted, influenced by the events in North America, and under the flag of liberty, equality and fraternity, eliminated the long-standing absolute monarchy. Power to the people. In Spanish America as well, there had been social uprisings against the crown, such as the rebellion of the comuneros in Colombia, the rebellion of Tupac Amaru in Peru, and other similar movements across the length and breadth of the continent, all brutally repressed by the Iberian authorities. The great European colonial powers, England, France and Spain, were confronting each other on the old continent as well as in their colonies, and America became one of the theaters of this conflict. France supported the independence of the North American colonies by sending a contingent of 4,000 men, as well as financial support. England, as described in Simon Bolivar’s “Letter from Jamaica,” supported the independence of the South American nations — support that waned when Spain was invaded by Napoleon, an enemy of Great Britain.

The independence movement in America was strongly influenced by the French Revolution and U.S. independence, and helped along by a geopolitical situation in which monarchies were falling, the colonial powers were at war, and in the colonies, the people were rising up against abuse and exclusion. Inspired by the rights of man, leaders rose up.

In 1804, Haiti was the first country south of the Rio Grande to obtain its independence in a rebellion of black slaves against French domination.

Things were easier in Portuguese America because the reigning dynasty in Portugal was expelled upon the arrival of Napoleon and established itself in Brazil, which they liberated from the mother country.

Between 1809 and 1824, all the countries of continental America would obtain their independence. Vice-royalties, captaincies and royal courts became the free nations of America, along the borders previously established by the crown.

In any case, the great majority of these new countries fell into a long period of endless, cruel civil wars among the new figures thrown into the limelight by independence: Federalists, centralists, land-owners, urban bourgeoisie, militias, slaves, indigenous people, separatists, clerics, adventurers, etc. With the lack of a unifying national project, these civil wars and internecine conflicts truncated the construction of strong, democratic, representative and egalitarian states, and would instead give rise to authoritarian regimes, countless military dictatorships and to the general institutional instability that for decades characterized the countries of the continent.

Only in the last few years is the long road of national construction coming to fruition for the countries of Latin America — 200 years after independence.