Application and Reflection Questions
1
.
What might have happened if the peninsulares and creoles had given the castas what they wanted? Why was the Spanish government willing to give the castas the right to purchase the legal status of Whiteness?
2
.
Explain the main causes of division between the creoles and the castas.
3
.
Should Vicente Guerrero have agreed to help Agustín de Iturbide? By doing so, was he betraying the interests of his followers? Why or why not?
4
.
What role did religious authorities play in Mexico’s revolutionary movements?
5
.
What were some similarities between the U.S. struggle for independence and the South American revolutionary wars of independence? What were some differences between them?
6
.
What were the consequences of South American liberation in the larger geopolitical sphere?
7
.
What did the Spanish American independence movements have in common? What made them different from each other?
8
.
Given that the Congress of Cúcuta established a government in which only property owners could vote and slavery was abolished only gradually, to what extent can Simón Bolívar truly be thought of as a “liberator”? How “revolutionary” was Bolívar’s movement?
9
.
How did events in early nineteenth-century Western Europe, Spanish America, and the United States affect Brazilian independence?
10
.
In what ways were the Portuguese American and Spanish American struggles for independence similar? How and why did they differ?
11
.
Is it reasonable to say that Brazil became independent when it remained a monarchy? Who was liberated by the Grito do Ipiranga, Brazil’s people or its ruler? Why?