Why no United States of Latin America?

I need y’all to help a clueless gringo out - I have a massive historical blind spot when it comes to the past of those south of the border and beyond into South America.

When the Spanish Empire collapsed like a flan in a cupboard in the early 19th century, why did their former colonies split up into myriad independent countries rather than following the model of a federated republic like the Thirteen Colonies after their rebellion against the British Empire? They have language, religion, origin and culture in common, after all.

I know they tried a short-lived Empire, which included Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras etc. on a monarchical model, but was a unified federal republic between all the old colonies ever considered? Why didn’t it work in the small attempt they did make?

Good question. I’ll let others give more complete answers, but I can provide two overlapping causes:

  1. The lands between Mexico and Tierra del Fuego are vast and generally rugged. It was not easy to get (people, information, goods, armies) from one part of this region to another back then. Remember, the US was just the Eastern Seaboard back then. We might have developed differently were there already large English-speaking colonial entities in California, Montana, etc. As it is, we only created an unusually loose federation of states – and even THAT had the seeds of a North-South division which exploded seventy years later.

  2. The Spanish colonies were LONG governed by separate administrations (viceroyalties, audencias, etc.), each larger and better-developed (in certain ways), with self-identities if its residents, than any one US state.

Culturally, the countries in Latin America are all pretty distinct, with their own cuisines, dialects, and other quirks. Even between Mexico and the rest of Central America there are significant differences.

The United States had the option of having a lot of open, sparsely populated land to settle in at the right time, allowing us to be one big country and not a balkanized mishmash of little countries. Central America may not have had these advantages.

Maybe Malaria had a factor too? The closer you get to the equator, the more nasty bug-related diseases there seem to be. This seems to have an effect on many equatorial regions.

Well put, Incubus. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond discusses how having a lot of space to expand to east or west is more conducive to spreading culture than having space to expand north or south. The former tends to have fewer natural (climate/ecology) barriers and changes than the latter.

The examples from Latin America which come closest to the US example actually do parallel the US in some ways, and it’s no coincidence they’re the largest Latin American countries in land area: Argentina and Brazil. Both started as coastal colonies which expanded as far as they could into hinterlands. Argentina’s example is more like the US, thanks to the temperate climates, the near-absence of indigenous peoples (thanks partly to eradication efforts), and the fact that the original, coastal colonies were close together and small. Brazil’s hinterland takeover took longer, because of differences in all three respects – indeed, it’s just reaching a kind of true consolidation just now.

But to expect that, say, these two countries could have emerged from early-19th-C de-colonization as a single nation is way too much to expect. For one thing, Spanish is the dominant language in one country, and Portuguese in the other!

I should add that, by “almost no indigenous population” in Argentina, I meant that, like in nearly all of the US, there was no advanced, unified indigenous civilization there. (I mean no disrespect to US tribes, mind you).

Indeed, this is an important and often overlooked factor in answering the OP’s question. The presence of very distinct, powerful, relatively advances indigenous civilizations, especially in Mexico (Aztec) and Peru/Bolivia/Ecuador (Inca), helped to shape the different forms of the colonial and post-colonial political entities which developed.

Well, there was Gran Columbia. Didn’t last long, mostly due to the problems mentioned above.

It might also be pointed out that in the US colonies, the bulk of the population was in the lowlands along the eastern seaboard. Few people settled in the more rugged areas inland, at least at first. Communication was relatively easy by ship or by road.

Major colonization beyond the Appalachians didn’t start until just around the time of the Revolution. The country had a chance to become consolidated before any large population centers developed in isolated areas. In fact, all the western lands claimed by the 13 Colonies were turned over to the federal government after independence.

In the Andean region, and also in parts of Mexico and Central America, the densest populations were in the highlands, and there was relatively little settlement in coastal areas. There was obviously no communication by sea, and road travel through the mountains was difficult or non-existent. It was far far more difficult to travel between Bogota and Quito that it was between, say, Boston and Savannah.

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Gran Colombia. (Sorry to nitpick, but it’s a pet peeve.;))

Most of Central America was also briefly united with Mexico after independence, and then formed a short-lived Central American Republic before breaking into the current countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

True. This is why many “coastal” Spanish accents/dialects (Cuba, northernmost Colombia, Veracruz in Mexico…) are rather similar to each other, but are quite different from their inland, mountain-region counterparts. For a long time, many coastal areas maintained closer contact (by ship) with Spain than with their mountain hinterlands (by mule, typically).

Yes. The Panamanian accent is much closer to Puerto Rican or Cuban than it is to Costa Rican or highland Colombian.

An overlooked factor is that the American Revolution was largely a “white” movement, due differences in how the British and Spanish settled lands.

The Spanish were partially motivated by evangelizing for the Catholic Faith, thus they were more willing to integrate the native populations. The British, however, were more interested in economic development or escaping persecution, and thus more insular.

Taking Connecticut as an example, Colonial Connecticut originated as three separate settlements; Hartford, New Haven, and Saybrook. The colonies traded with the Indians, but did not attempt to govern them, broadly speaking.

In Spanish territories, missionaries were often sent in first, followed by traders and administrators. While Spanish rule was by no means gentle, the Indians were specifically incorporated into the society, and intermarriage and other integration occurred. When massacres did occur, such as against the Aztecs, the Spanish were motivated at least in part to defend the various tribes oppressed by the Aztecs (from which the Aztecs held ritualistic wars to capture thousands of prisoners for human sacrifice).

The allied tribes often maintained a large degree of autonomy under Spanish administration. Thus, when independence occurred, the various Spanish colonies reflected nations that predated the colonial times by hundreds or thousands of years. Each nation had distinct cultures and historical baggage.

The United States, by contrast, had a largely homogenous White population which chose to split from an oversees White administration. The Indian Tribes were split on the issue, because they were separate parallel societies looking out for their own interests. Some allied with Colonists, others with the King, others fought both sides, and others stayed neutral.

The United States had a fairly small population, and the British Empire was at the height of its strength. Unifying helped pool their resources to fend off the British and other potential plunderers. The American Revolution had a homogenous population with shallow roots in the area, making federal integration an obvious solution.

The South American nations, however, reflected ancient tribes and national identities, which did not beg for integration. They became independent as teh Spanish Empire was waning, and the United States was growing in power. Under the Monroe Doctrine, the United States considered itself to be the protector of the Americas, and continued European intervention was unwelcome. Rather than unite to fend of hostile outsiders, they had theoretically benevolent outsiders to keep them relatively protected. These nations became self governing under vastly different circumstances than the United States, and forming a federation or confederation was not as compelling a solution.

Hey, and the short-lived Guanacaste, which voluntarily joined Costa Rica. Don’t license plates for (several of?) those countries still say “Republica Centro Americana”?

The Latin American Revolution was also largely a “white” movement (specifically, upper-class white), runningdude, the earliest cases aided by the Napoleonic wars - quite a few of the Latin American Wars of Independence (Mexico for example) started as Independence from the French, ended as Independence from the “Mother Country”. The lower classes lived the same before and after that first Revolución… which is one of the reasons some of those countries have had so many.

The differences in “how the British and Spanish settled lands” is extremely important, but I’d emphasize another aspect of it.

The British colonies in what became the U.S. were settler communities. Both men and women emigrated with the object of replicating the patterns of British life. They created little British towns. A British governor oversaw the colonies but the individual towns were mostly autonomous and created their own political environment.

The Spanish colonies in what became Latin America were exploitation communities. They weren’t designed to replicate Spain, but more to be outposts that collected wealth and shipped it back home. This required fewer overall numbers of settlers and far fewer women. It also was hierarchical, with the central administrators having more power and each level having an administrative head who decided things with little autonomy allowed. It was effectively a conquering army rather than emigrating settlers.

Britain, though a narrow monarchy by modern standards, was still more liberal in laws and customs than the rigidity of Spain. When the Revolution came, the settlers had a body of philosophy, customs, and examples to look to that emphasized equality under the law as well as an educated citizenry. Spanish colonies had little to none of that. They traded distant hierarchies for localized hierarchies dominating a peasant population deliberately kept dumb and docile. A group of local fiefdoms don’t join together into a nation unless one grows dominant and conquers the others or they are forced to band together against a common enemy. Neither happened in Latin America.

The cultures of the parent nations were far more important, IMO, in creating the cultures of the nations that developed in the New World than the European/Indian dichotomy. But the cultures of the colonies are also crucial. The British acted as conquering army with no intent of permanently settling in places like India and Egypt and those nations had huge difficulties in creating a united democracy later.

And Chiapas, or parts of it, were at times an independent state or part of the Central American Republic, until it was finally incorporated into Mexico.

Not exactly. They all say “Centroamerica” or “Centro America,” however (or have at one time). And the flags of all five are similar in being pale blue and white (though Costa Rica adds a red stripe).

Panama declared independence separately from Colombia in 1821, but decided to join Gran Colombia voluntarily. It periodically tried to secede for much of the rest of the century without success until US intervention in 1903.

Thank you, I thought I wasn’t remembering correctly but the problem with not remembering correctly is that you also can’t figure how to search.

The OP did specify the collapse of the Spanish Empire, which would exclude Brazil. As it happens, Brazil does go some way towards being a US of Latin America, in that it forms a federal republic that is larger than the lower 48 of the USA.

Just a nitpick, but it would probably be more accurate to say they were looking for a place where they could be free to persecute.

Estados Unidos Mexicanos

This has been a very interesting thread - I know nothing of Central and South American history - thanks to all for contributing!