Latin American independence

Between 1808 and 1833 most of Spanish America became independent, and the wars that brought it about reshaped the map of the western hemisphere. The trigger was Napoleon's occupation of Spain in 1808 and the fall of the Bourbon king, which left colonies refusing to accept a ruler imposed by France. Juntas formed first in Caracas, Buenos Aires and Bogota, and the fighting that followed lasted fifteen years in some regions. Simon Bolivar, the Liberator, crossed the Andes, won at Boyaca in 1819 and created Gran Colombia; Jose de San Martin led the army of the Andes from Argentina to Chile and then to Lima, which he took in 1821. Mexico, led first by the priest Hidalgo and then by Iturbide, broke away in 1821, and Brazil separated peacefully from Portugal in 1822 with an emperor of its own. Royalist holdouts in Peru and Upper Peru were defeated at Ayacucho in 1824, and Central America separated in 1823. The new republics inherited economies built on exports and deep inequality, and their first decades brought caudillos, civil war and the loss of unity; Bolivar's dream of a single Spanish America died in 1830. Independence did not bring equality: the land and the mines stayed in a few hands.