A History of Latin America

179

Latin America in the

Nineteenth Century

Coff ee Plantation, 1935, by Candido Portinari/Museo Nacional Bellas Artes, Rio de

Janeiro, Brazil/Index/Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

NDEPENDENCE LEFT MUCH of the colonial social structure intact. This

fact was very apparent to liberal leaders of the postindependence

era. “The war against Spain,” declared the Colombian liberal

Ramón Mercado in 1853, “was not a revolution.... Independence only scratched

the surface of the social problem, without changing its essential nature.” After

winning their independence, the new Latin American states began a long, uphill

I