6 PART ONE
it relied on them for security against internal and external threats, and this dis-
posed the crown to make major concessions to them. Against this background,
there developed a continual struggle, sometimes open, sometimes muffl ed, be-
tween the Spanish crown and the conquistadors and their descendants for control
of indigenous labor and tribute. In that struggle the colonists gradually gained the
upper hand.
Spain’s seventeenth-century decline contributed to this shift in the balance of
power in favor of the colonists. The emergence of a hereditary colonial aristocracy
rich in land and peons represented a defeat for the crown and for indigenous com-
munities whose interests, however feebly, the crown defended. When in the late
eighteenth century Spain’s kings sought to tighten their control over the colonies,
exclude creoles (American-born Spaniards) from high offi cial posts, and institute
reforms that sometimes clashed with creole vested interests, it was too late. These
policies only alienated a powerful colonial elite whose members already felt a
dawning sense of nationality and dreamed of the advantages of a free trade with
the outside world.
A parallel development occurred during the same period in relations between
Portugal and Brazil. Between 1810 and 1822, American elites, taking advantage
of Spain’s and Portugal’s distresses, seized power in most of Spanish America and
Brazil. These aristocratic rebels wanted no radical social changes or economic di-
versifi cation; their interests as producers of staples for export to western Europe
required the continuance of the system of large estates worked by peons or slaves.
As a result, independent Latin America inherited almost intact the colonial legacy
of a rigidly stratifi ed society and an economy dependent on foreign countries for
capital and fi nished goods.