192 PART TWO
of dependency, or colonialism, had arisen, called neocolonialism, with Great
Britain and later the United States replacing Spain and Portugal as the dominant
powers in the area.
The new economic order demanded peace and continuity in government, and
after 1870 political conditions in Latin America did, in fact, grow more stable. Old
party lines dissolved as Conservatives adopted the positivist dogma of science and
progress, whereas Liberals abandoned their concern with constitutional meth-
ods and civil liberties in favor of an interest in material prosperity. A new type
of liberal caudillo—Porfi rio Díaz in Mexico, Rafael Núñez in Colombia, Antonio
Guzmán Blanco in Venezuela—symbolized the politics of acquisition. The cycle of
dictatorship and revolution continued in many lands, but the revolutions became
less frequent and less devastating.
These major trends in the political and economic history of Latin America
in the period extending from about 1820 to 1900 were accompanied by other
changes in the Latin American way of life and culture. In Part Two, we present
short histories of Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Cuba, the United Prov-
inces of Central America, and Gran Colombia in the nineteenth century. All
these histories contain themes and problems common to Latin America in that
period, but each displays variations that refl ect its distinctive struggle to defi ne
the nation.