THE FRUITS OF INDEPENDENCE 195
gained control of the all-important customhouse
(which collected duties on imports and exports)
and other offi cial sources of revenue, could reward
themselves and their followers with government
jobs, contracts, grants of public land, and other
favors. This reliance by members of the elite on
political and military activity as a career and on
the customhouse as a source of government rev-
enue had two negative results. One was the rise of
bloated military and bureaucratic establishments
that diverted resources from economic develop-
ment, and the other was a stress on foreign trade
that intensifi ed the trend toward dependency.
POLITICS: THE CONSERVATIVE AND
LIBERAL PROGRAMS
The political systems of the new states made large
formal concessions to the liberal ideology of the
nineteenth century. With the exception of Brazil,
all the new states adopted the republican form of
government (Mexico had two brief intervals of im-
perial rule) and paid their respects to the formulas
of parliamentary and representative government.
Their constitutions provided for presidents, con-
gresses, and courts; often they contained elaborate
safeguards of individual rights.
These façades of modernity, however, poorly
concealed the dictatorial or oligarchical reality
behind them. Typically, the chief executive was a
caudillo whose power rested on force, no matter
what the constitutional form; usually, he ruled
with the support of a coalition of lesser caudillos,
each more or less supreme in his own domain.
The supposed independence of the judicial and
legislative branches was a fi ction. As a rule, elec-
tions were exercises in futility. Because the party in
power generally counted the votes, the opposition
had no alternative but revolt.
Literacy and property qualifi cations disfran-
chised most natives and mixed-bloods, and if they
had the right to vote, the patrón (master) often
herded them to the polls to vote for him or for his
candidates. The lack of the secret ballot (voting was
usually open, with colored ballots) made coercion
of voters easy. Whether liberal or conservative, all
sections of the ruling class agreed on keeping the
peasantry, gauchos, and other “lower orders” on
the margins of political life, on preventing their
emergence as groups with collective philosophies
and goals. The very privileges that the new creole
constitutions and law codes granted indigenous
peoples—equality before the law, the “right” to
divide and dispose of their communal lands—
weakened their solidarity and their ability to resist
the creole world’s competitive individualism. But
especially gifted, ambitious, and fortunate mem-
bers of these marginal groups were sometimes co-
opted into the creole elite and provided some of its
most distinguished leaders; two examples are the
Zapotec Benito Juárez in Mexico and the mestizo
president Andrés Santa Cruz in Bolivia.
At fi rst glance, the political history of Latin
America in the fi rst half-century after indepen-
dence, with its dreary alternation of dictatorship
and revolt, seems pointless and trivial. But the
political struggles of this period were more than
disputes over spoils between sections of a small up-
per class. Genuine social and ideological cleavages
helped produce those struggles and the bitterness
with which they were fought. Such labels as “con-
servative” and “liberal,” “unitarian” and “federal-
ist,” assigned by the various parties to themselves
or each other, were more than masks in a pageant,
although opportunism contributed to the ease
with which some leaders assumed and discarded
these labels.
Generally speaking, conservatism refl ected
the interests of the traditional holders of power and
privilege, men who had a stake in maintaining the
existing order. Hence, the great landowners, the
upper clergy, the higher ranks of the military and
the civil bureaucracy, and monopolistic merchant
groups tended to be conservatives. Liberalism, in
contrast, appealed to those groups who in colonial
times had little or no access to the main structures
of economic and political power and were naturally
eager to alter the existing order. Thus, liberalism
drew much support from provincial landowners,
lawyers and other professionals (the groups most
receptive to new ideas), shopkeepers, and artisans;
it also appealed to ambitious, aspiring indígenas
and mixed-bloods. But regional confl icts and clan
or family loyalties often cut across the lines of