180 PART TWO
struggle to achieve economic and political stability. They faced immense obsta-
cles, for independence was not accompanied by economic and social changes that
could spur rapid progress—for example, no redistribution of land and income in
favor of the lower classes took place. The large estate, which generally relied on
primitive methods and slave or peon labor, continued to dominate economic life.
Far from diminishing, the infl uence of the landed aristocracy actually increased
as a result of the leading military role it had played in the wars of independence
and the passing of Spanish authority. However, we should not minimize the extent
and importance of the changes that did take place. Independence may not have
produced a major social upheaval, but it did produce a minor one. It opened wide
fi ssures within the elite, dividing aristocratic supporters of the old social order from
others who wanted a more democratic, bourgeois order. Their struggle is an inte-
gral aspect of the fi rst half-century after the end of Spanish and Portuguese rule.
Independence also enabled such formerly submerged groups as artisans and gau-
chos to enter the political arena, although in subordinate roles, and even allowed a
few to climb into the ranks of the elite. The opening of Latin American ports to for-
eign goods also established a relatively free market in ideas, at least in the capitals
and other cities. With almost no time lag, such new European doctrines as utopian
socialism, romanticism, and positivism entered Latin America and were applied
to the solution of the continent’s problems. These new doctrinal winds, blowing
through what had lately been dusty colonial corridors, contributed to the area’s
intellectual renovation and promoted further social change.
Verbally, at least, the new republican constitutions established the equal-
ity of all before the law, destroying the legal foundations of colonial caste soci-
ety. Because little change in property relations took place, however, the racial,
ethnic, and social class lines of division remained essentially the same. Wealth,
power, and prestige continued to be concentrated in the hands of a ruling class
that reproduced colonial racial structures and identifi ed itself with whiteness; in
some countries, such as Venezuela, however, it included individuals of darker
skin who had managed to climb the social ladder through their prowess in war
or politics.
Of all the groups composing the old society of castes, the status of indígenas
changed least of all. Mexican historian Carlos María Bustamante was one of the
few creole leaders who recognized that independence had not freed them from
their yoke. “They still drag the same chains,” he wrote, “although they are fl at-
tered with the name of freemen.” Even native tribute and forced labor, abolished
during or after the wars of independence, soon reappeared in many countries un-
der other names. Still worse, indigenous communal landholding, social organiza-
tion, and culture, which Spanish law and policy had to some extent protected
in colonial times, came under increasing attack. Liberals especially believed that