Modern Latin America Midterm Exam (Key Terms and Concepts)

Cacique

An Indigenous local leader or chief who governed a village or region and became a key intermediary between European conquerors and Native communities after conquest. Spanish rulers used caciques to mobilize labor, collect tribute, and enforce colonial demands, effectively turning them into brokers of colonial rule, though many also tried to protect parts of their people’s autonomy.

Bourbon Reforms

18th‑century efforts by the new Bourbon dynasty in Spain to recentralize control over American possessions by overhauling administration and taxation. They brought more peninsular officials, tightened revenue collection, and tried to treat American realms more like colonies than kingdoms, provoking widespread discontent, elite resentment, and uprisings like those led by Tupac Amaru II and Túpac Katari. Second conquest of Latin America. Reinforcing trade monopolies that are rooted in Spain’s colonial relationship. Only trading with Spain.

Transatlantic Slave Trade (TAST)

The massive forced movement of about 12 million Africans across the Atlantic over roughly three centuries to labor in the Americas. Driven by European demand for plantation crops like sugar and coffee, it turned enslaved Africans into chattel property and produced unprecedented mortality, with about 1.3 million dying during the Middle Passage alone.

Middle Passage

The sea voyage that transported enslaved Africans from African ports to the Americas under horrific conditions of overcrowding, disease, violence, and terror. It was the deadliest leg of the triangular trade, with high death rates and extreme dehumanization, making it a central symbol of the brutality of Atlantic slavery.

Chattel Slavery

Treated enslaved people as movable property that could be bought, sold, inherited, and exploited indefinitely, with no recognized rights. Unlike coerced Indigenous labor under encomienda, which theoretically carried obligations of care and conversion, chattel slavery assumed full ownership of persons, racialized Blackness, and deeply shaped property law and social relations.

Slave Society vs. Society with Slaves

One where slavery is the dominant labor system and central to social, economic, and political organization (like Brazil or Saint‑Domingue), whereas the other uses enslaved labor but is not fundamentally structured around it (like much of Mexico). This distinction helps explain why slavery persisted longer and more deeply in some Latin American regions than others, and why abolition took different paths.

British abolition of transatlantic slave trade in 1807

In 1807 the British Parliament outlawed its participation in the transatlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships and subjects to transport enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. This did not end slavery itself in the British Empire, but it marked a major turning point: the leading slave‑trading power now redeployed its naval strength to suppress the trade, reshaping Atlantic routes and putting pressure on other states to follow.

Spanish abolition of transatlantic slave trade in 1807

In 1807, Spain formally agreed to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, largely under British diplomatic and naval pressure, though enforcement lagged badly. Your notes emphasize that Spanish involvement in the trade continued illegally for decades—with evidence of slave ships still arriving as late as 1872—showing the gap between legal abolition on paper and the persistence of clandestine trafficking.

Age of Revolutions

The late 18th–early 19th century period of interconnected upheavals in the U.S., France, Haiti, and Spanish America. That Haiti’s slave revolution, which toppled colonial slavery and created a Black republic, formed a crucial—often marginalized—part of this broader revolutionary moment.

Creoles

Are people of European descent born in the Americas, distinct from peninsulares born in Europe. They often led independence movements, balancing resentment of European control with their own investments in slavery and hierarchy, and in Haiti some free people of color also claimed creole identities while facing discrimination.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)

This French revolutionary document proclaimed universal principles of liberty and equality but left open who counted as a citizen. Debates over whether free people of color and enslaved people in Saint‑Domingue could claim these rights fueled political conflict, helped trigger the Haitian Revolution, and forced France to confront the contradiction between republican ideals and colonial slavery.

1793 Emancipation Decree

In 1793, under pressure from massive slave uprisings and international war, French commissioners in Saint‑Domingue abolished slavery in the colony, a measure ratified empire‑wide in 1794. This decree turned former slaves into French citizens and aimed to secure their military support for the Republic, even as plantation labor was reorganized under new forms of coercion.

Bois Caïman Ceremony (1791)

Refers to a clandestine Vodou ceremony in August 1791 near Cap-Français, often remembered as the symbolic spark of the Haitian slave revolt. Accounts describe a priest, an oath, and a sacrificial pig, and while historians debate details, your notes stress it as a powerful story of spiritual and political organization preceding the uprising.

Haitian Independence (1804)

After years of war against France, Spain, and Britain, revolutionary forces under leaders like Dessalines defeated Napoleon’s expedition and declared Haiti independent on January 1, 1804. The new state abolished slavery permanently, reclaimed an Indigenous name, and faced diplomatic isolation and crushing indemnity demands from France that severely constrained its economic future.

Toussaint Louverture

A formerly enslaved man who rose to lead the revolution in Saint‑Domingue, first as a general allied with Spain, then as governor under the French Republic. He championed emancipation while insisting on plantation labor to rebuild the economy, crafted a 1801 constitution, and became the first major Black political leader in the Americas before dying in a French prison.

Jean‑Jacques Dessalines

A key military commander under Louverture, took over leadership against Napoleon’s forces and ultimately declared Haitian independence. As head of state, he pursued a hard line against remaining French influence, ordered massacres of many whites, and epitomized both the radical anti‑colonial break and the harsh realities of post‑revolutionary state‑building.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Rose to power in France in 1799, sought to restore imperial control over Saint‑Domingue and potentially re‑enslave its population. His massive expedition under Leclerc and Rochambeau temporarily regained territory but ultimately failed, suffering devastating losses and leading indirectly to Haitian independence and the sale of Louisiana.

Haitian Indemnity to France (1825)

In 1825, France agreed to recognize Haitian independence only if Haiti paid a massive indemnity to compensate former slaveholders, backed by French warships. The resulting debt—financed by French loans at high interest—absorbed the bulk of Haiti’s budget for over a century, siphoning wealth abroad and severely limiting development.

Napoleonic Wars

(1803–1815) Destabilized Europe and triggered a crisis of legitimacy in Iberia when Napoleon invaded, dethroned Spanish and Portuguese monarchs, and installed Joseph Bonaparte. This vacuum opened space for juntas and independence movements across Spanish America and pushed the Portuguese court to relocate to Brazil, reshaping imperial geographies.

Charles IV of Spain

The Spanish king who abdicated in favor of his son Ferdinand VII under pressure and was then effectively sidelined when Napoleon intervened. His weakness and abdication contributed to the legitimacy crisis that led Spanish American elites to form their own governing bodies claiming to rule in the name of the captive king.

Ferdinand VII

Briefly king before Napoleon deposed him, became a symbolic focus for loyalist juntas in Spanish America. After his restoration in 1814, he abolished the liberal Cádiz Constitution and attempted to restore absolutism, prompting renewed independence struggles.

Joseph Bonaparte

Napoleon’s brother, was installed as king of Spain, but many Spaniards and Spanish Americans refused to recognize him. His rule deepened the legitimacy crisis and justified the formation of alternative sovereignties in both Spain (Cádiz) and the Americas.

Cádiz Court / Constitution of 1812

Was a liberal assembly formed in Spain during the French occupation that drafted the Constitution of 1812. The constitution proclaimed national sovereignty, equal legal status for Spanish Americans and peninsulares, and citizenship for Indigenous peoples (but not most people of African descent), offering a reformist alternative to both Napoleon and absolutism.

Liberalism

A political philosophy stressing popular sovereignty, equality before the law, separation of church and state, federalism, and free trade. Latin American liberals sought to build constitutional republics with elections and civil liberties, though in practice they often limited suffrage and were wary of full popular participation.

Simón Bolívar

“El Libertador,” was the leading military and political figure in northern South America’s wars of independence, helping liberate Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. He combined Enlightenment‑inspired republican ideals with a willingness to use strong executive power, advocated continental unity (Gran Colombia, Andean Federation), and struggled with regionalism and fragmentation. Witnesses the coronation of Napoleon and dedicated his life to liberating Spanish Americas.

Gran Colombia

Was Bolívar’s large republic formed after independence, encompassing present‑day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. It soon fractured under regional rivalries, tensions between centralists and federalists, economic strain, and resistance to Bolívar’s increasingly authoritarian turn.

Andean Federation

Is the name given to Bolívar’s late project of linking Peru and Bolivia into a unified, strongly led Andean bloc. It reflected his desire for larger, more stable republics under firm executive control but, like Gran Colombia, proved unsustainable amid regional differences and resistance.

Pan‑Latin Americanism / Panama Congress (1826)

The idea of political and diplomatic solidarity among the new Latin American republics to resist foreign intervention. Bolívar’s Panama Congress of 1826 was an early attempt to institutionalize this vision, proposing a league of American states, though it achieved limited concrete results.

Caudillo

A regional strongman, often a landowning military leader, who wielded power through personal charisma, patronage networks, and control of armed followers. In the early national period, caudillos filled the vacuum left by weak central states, shaping politics via alliances, coups, and shifting loyalties rather than stable institutions.

Liberal–Conservative Divide

Defenders of traditional hierarchies, Catholic Church primacy, centralism, and restricted participation, and liberals as advocates of secularism, legal equality, and broader (but still limited) citizenship. This ideological divide structured much 19th‑century Latin American politics, often overlapping with regional and class interests and expressed through caudillo‑led parties.

Industrialization

The historical process by which economies shift from predominantly agrarian, hand‑craft production to mechanized, factory‑based production concentrated in urban centers. It involves new technologies, capital investment, and transport networks (like railroads), and in Latin America it was uneven and late, often tied to export booms and foreign capital rather than an autonomous, nationally controlled transformation.

Development

Deliberate efforts—usually by states and elites—to transform “backward” or primary‑export economies into more diversified, industrial, and “modern” societies. In the Latin American context it became a contested project: liberal and later nationalist leaders invoked development to justify railways, export enclaves, and technocratic rule, but these strategies frequently deepened dependency and inequality even as they promised progress.

Empire of Brazil (independence 1822)

Emerged when Dom Pedro, son of the Portuguese king who had relocated his court to Rio during Napoleon’s invasion, refused to return to Lisbon and instead declared Brazilian independence in 1822. Brazil thus became a separate monarchy—unlike the Spanish American republics—with a constitution by 1824 and an imperial order that preserved slavery and large landholding until both the Golden Law (1888) and the 1889 coup ended the empire and created a republic.

Golden Law (1888)

The brief Brazilian statute that abolished slavery outright, making Brazil the last country in the Americas to end the institution. It capped a gradual process (including the Free Womb Law of 1871 and restrictions on the slave trade) and freed hundreds of thousands of enslaved people, but without compensation, land, or large‑scale integration policies, leaving deep racial and social inequalities intact.

Second Slavery

19th‑century expansion and intensification of slavery in places like Cuba, Brazil, and the U.S. South at the same time abolitionist ideas were spreading elsewhere. As Haiti abolished slavery and sugar production collapsed there, sugar and slave labor boomed in Cuba and Brazil; despite legal bans on the transatlantic trade, millions more enslaved Africans arrived and the total enslaved population in the Americas grew from 2.3 million in 1800 to about 6 million by 1860.

Monroe Doctrine (1823)

Articulated in President James Monroe’s 1823 message, drafted with John Quincy Adams, declaring the Western Hemisphere closed to future European colonization and warning that European attempts to extend their system into the Americas would be considered a threat to U.S. peace and security. While it promised non‑interference in existing colonies, it also asserted that events anywhere in the Americas concerned U.S. “peace and happiness,” effectively reserving for Washington a special right to intervene and setting the template for later hemispheric claims.

Ripe Fruit Theory

Held that Cuba, once severed from Spain, would “inevitably” fall into the U.S. orbit by the laws of political gravitation. This metaphor dismissed Cuban self‑determination, framed annexation as a matter of timing rather than choice, and underpinned a U.S. strategy of preventing other powers—especially abolitionist Britain—from taking Cuba while preserving a status quo favorable to U.S. slaveholding and commercial interests. From John Quincy Adams.

James Monroe

U.S. president (1817–1825) whose 1823 address laid out the principles later called the Monroe Doctrine. In your notes he appears as the political figurehead of a policy that, while presented as protecting Latin American independence, also advanced U.S. territorial expansion, maritime security, and long‑term ambitions toward places like Cuba.

John Quincy Adams

Monroe’s Secretary of State, was the chief architect of U.S. hemispheric foreign policy in this period and the intellectual author of the Monroe Doctrine’s strategic logic. He combined concern over European intervention, interest in controlling key maritime zones (like the Gulf of Mexico and Florida), and expansionist ideas such as the ripe fruit theory to shape a doctrine that excluded European empires while quietly accommodating U.S. expansion and second‑slavery interests in Cuba.

José Martí

The exiled Cuban intellectual and organizer who became the “apostle” of Cuban independence, founding the Cuban Revolutionary Party from New York and crafting a vision of a racially inclusive, republican Cuba. His writings, including Nuestra América, warned against U.S. expansionism and insisted that a genuine republic must be built on local realities and racial equality; he died early in the 1895 war but remained a central symbolic figure.

Antonio Maceo

Nicknamed “The Bronze Titan,” was a key Afro‑Cuban general in the independence wars, rising from ordinary soldier to second‑in‑command of the Liberation Army. He embodied the linkage between abolition and independence and famously envisioned a Cuba with no racial divisions—“no whites, nor blacks, only Cubans”—before being killed in battle in 1896.

USS Maine

A U.S. battleship that exploded in Havana harbor in February 1898 under disputed circumstances. Its destruction became the immediate pretext for U.S. intervention in Cuba, helping launch the Spanish‑Cuban‑American War and enabling Washington to reshape Cuban independence on its own terms.

Cuban Abolition of 1886

In 1886 Spain finally decreed full abolition of slavery in Cuba, after years of gradual measures like the 1880 patronato law and wartime pressures. This ended nearly 400 years of slavery on the island but left racial and social inequalities intact and fed elite fears of Black political power as independence struggles intensified.

Platt Amendment

(1901) Was a U.S. law inserted into Cuba’s constitution as a condition for ending military occupation, limiting Cuba’s treaty‑making and debt, granting the U.S. a right to intervene, and securing naval bases like Guantánamo. It turned Cuba into a formal republic with deeply curtailed sovereignty, making it a U.S. protectorate and symbol of informal empire.

1917 Jones‑Shafroth Act

Granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans and restructured the island’s civil government. While it allowed some local self‑government, ultimate authority remained in U.S. hands, and Puerto Ricans could not vote in federal elections, reinforcing their status as colonial subjects.

Gunboat Diplomacy

Describes U.S. use of naval and military power—or the threat of it—to secure political and economic concessions in the Caribbean and Central America. It became a standard tool after 1898, underpinning interventions in Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, and elsewhere as Washington enforced its regional hegemony.

1903 Hay–Bunau‑Varilla Treaty / Panama Canal Zone / Article 136

Signed between the U.S. and a newly independent Panama, granted the United States control over the Panama Canal Zone “in perpetuity.” Article 136 of Panama’s 1903 constitution echoed Platt‑style language by allowing U.S. intervention, making Panama another Caribbean protectorate whose sovereignty was subordinated to U.S. strategic and commercial interests.

Early National Period

(1825-1850) This is the era immediately following independence when new Latin American states struggled to build institutions amid caudillo politics, civil wars, and competing liberal and conservative projects. Economies remained largely agrarian, and external trade patterns from the colonial era persisted even as formal ties to Spain and Portugal were severed.

Neocolonial Period

(1870–1929) Saw renewed foreign dominance—not through direct rule but via economic dependency—as European and U.S. capital financed railroads, mines, plantations, and ports. Export booms enriched domestic elites and foreign investors while reinforcing primary‑export structures, uneven development, and vulnerability to external shocks.

Positivism (Order and Progress)

A European intellectual current emphasizing scientific methods and measurable progress, was adopted by many Latin American elites as a state ideology of “order and progress.” It justified strong, technocratic governments and social engineering, often at the expense of democratic participation, and even appears on Brazil’s flag as “Ordem e Progresso.”

Export Boom

Refers to the late 19th‑century surge in Latin American exports like coffee, sugar, nitrates, rubber, beef, and minerals, enabled by steamships, railways, and foreign investment. It produced impressive growth rates and urban modernization in some areas, but deepened dependence on volatile world markets and strengthened oligarchic export elites.

United Fruit Company

A powerful U.S. corporation that controlled vast banana plantations, railroads, and ports across Central America and the Caribbean. It exemplified neocolonial control, shaping local politics (banana republics), labor regimes, and land tenure while funneling profits abroad.

Roosevelt Corollary (to Monroe Doctrine)

(1904) Reinterpreted the Monroe Doctrine to justify U.S. intervention in Latin American countries that, in Washington’s view, could not maintain order or meet financial obligations. It formalized a policing role for the U.S. in the hemisphere, legitimizing occupations and protectorates as supposedly preventive measures.

Pan‑American Congress / Pan‑American Union

(founded 1889) Were inter‑American diplomatic bodies promoting hemispheric cooperation under strong U.S. influence. They institutionalized meetings among American republics but often served as vehicles for U.S. economic and political agendas.

Liberal–Conservative Divide

The core 19th‑century ideological split in Latin America between liberals, who pushed for constitutional republics, secularism, legal equality, and often federalism and free trade, and conservatives, who defended strong central authority, the Catholic Church’s privileged role, corporate fueros, and traditional hierarchies. This divide structured post‑independence politics, with each side rallying caudillos and regional elites, fueling civil wars and shifting coalitions as new states struggled to define sovereignty, citizenship, and the social order.

Benito Juárez

Was Mexico’s first Indigenous president and a key liberal reformer who championed equality before the law, secularism, and the 1857 Constitution, which abolished corporate landholding by the Church and Indigenous communities. His long tenure, including re‑election and centralization of power, created tensions that Porfirio Díaz exploited under the banner of “no re‑election,” turning liberalism toward authoritarian rule.

Porfirio Díaz / Porfiriato

Seized power in 1876 under the slogan “no re‑election” and then ruled, directly or through allies, until 1911, in a period known as the Porfiriato. His regime prioritized “order and progress”: courting foreign capital, building railroads, and modernizing cities while systematically repressing dissent, expropriating communal lands, empowering jefes políticos and rurales, and leaving most rural families landless.

Jefes políticos

Were local strongmen and administrators appointed by Díaz to control municipalities and regions, functioning as mini‑dictators loyal to the central regime. They enforced order through fines, land seizures, and everyday coercion—often enriching themselves at the expense of campesinos—making Porfirian power felt in daily village life.

Rurales

Were a national mounted police force created under Díaz to crush banditry and political dissent, notorious for their brutality. Operating across rural Mexico, they used summary executions and terror to enforce Porfirian “peace,” helping maintain a veneer of stability that masked deep social grievances.

Campesinos

Rural peasants—often Indigenous or mixed‑race—whose livelihoods depended on access to communal lands, subsistence crops, and seasonal wage labor. Under the Porfiriato, land laws, survey companies, and railroad concessions dispossessed about 98 percent of rural families, forcing campesinos into dependence on haciendas and fueling revolutionary demands for “land and liberty.”

Ricardo Flores Magón / Magonistas

A radical journalist and leader of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), whose Magonista movement pushed beyond elite reform to demand secularism, revival of the 1857 Constitution, and social justice. His writings and organizing in exile helped articulate early revolutionary critiques of Díaz, including calls for land restitution and workers’ rights that later influenced broader revolutionary agendas.

Francisco Madero

A wealthy northern landowner who broke with Díaz and became the unlikely political face of opposition by calling for democratic elections and an end to re‑election. Jailed during the 1910 election, he issued the Plan of San Luis Potosí from exile, sparked armed revolt, toppled Díaz, won the 1911 presidency, and was then overthrown and murdered in Huerta’s 1913 coup.

Plan of San Luis Potosí (1910)

Issued by Madero from exile in San Antonio, rejected Díaz’s fraudulent 1910 election, called for armed uprising on November 20, 1910, and promised the restoration of lands taken from peasants by científicos, caciques, and hacendados. While not a full agrarian program, it explicitly linked political democracy to correcting Porfirian land theft, helping mobilize rural and regional forces behind Madero.

Pancho Villa

From Chihuahua, led the División del Norte, the most famous revolutionary army of the north, composed largely of cowboys, miners, and peasants. Initially allied with Madero and later with Carranza’s constitutionalists, he eventually broke with them, joined Zapata in a Conventionist bloc, and was defeated militarily by Obregón’s modern tactics, symbolizing the eclipse of more radical social projects.

Emiliano Zapata

Was the leading peasant revolutionary of Morelos, whose slogan “Tierra y Libertad” expressed a demand for the restoration of village lands and local autonomy. Distrustful of Madero’s moderation, he issued the Plan of Ayala, denouncing Madero and calling for expropriation of a third of large estates (and all of those opposing the revolution), making agrarian reform the core of his project.

Plan of Ayala (1911)

Repudiated Madero as a traitor to the revolution and laid out a radical agrarian program centered on returning stolen lands, waters, and forests to pueblos. It authorized the expropriation of large haciendas, beginning with a portion and extending to full confiscation if owners resisted, and became the foundational document of Zapatista agrarianism.

Venustiano Carranza

A regional elite from Coahuila, emerged as leader of the Constitutionalist movement against Huerta after Madero’s assassination. He combined moderate liberalism with selective social reforms, oversaw the 1916–1917 constitutional convention, and became president after the 1917 Constitution, though he repressed more radical forces like Zapata and was himself overthrown and killed in 1920.

Victoriano Huerta

A Porfirian general whom Madero trusted to command federal forces, but he conspired with conservative elites and U.S. diplomats to overthrow Madero in a 1913 coup. His brief dictatorship relied on brutal repression and triggered a massive, nationwide revolutionary mobilization by Constitutionalist, Villista, and Zapatista forces that toppled him in 1914.

Álvaro Obregón

From Sonora, was a key Constitutionalist general who introduced trench warfare and modern tactics to defeat Villa’s División del Norte. He later broke with Carranza, led a revolt that toppled him, and became president in 1920, representing a more pragmatic revolutionary leadership that was somewhat more responsive to labor and agrarian demands.

Mexican Constitution of 1917

Synthesized liberal principles with radical social demands, establishing secular education, an eight‑hour workday, the right to strike, and mechanisms for land redistribution. It asserted national ownership of subsoil resources and gave the state power to limit private property in the public interest, making it one of the most socially progressive constitutions of its time.

(1917 Constitution) Article 27

Article 27 declared that the nation owns all subsoil resources (like oil and minerals) and has the right to regulate and redistribute land in the public interest. It provided the legal basis for agrarian reform and future nationalizations, directly challenging foreign investors and large hacendados by subordinating property rights to social needs.

(1917 Constitution) Article 123

Recognized labor unions, established the right to organize and strike, and set basic protections like an eight‑hour workday and limits on child labor. It symbolized the incorporation of urban workers into the revolutionary settlement and made social rights central to the Mexican state’s post‑revolutionary legitimacy.

Economic Nationalism

A project of major state intervention in the economy to secure national control over key resources and industries, reduce foreign dependency, and pursue development through state planning. It includes nationalizing major sectors (like Cárdenas’s 1938 oil expropriation and PEMEX), integrating organized labor via protective legislation and welfare programs, and framing these measures as anti‑imperialist defenses of economic sovereignty against U.S. and European dominance.

Import‑Substitution Industrialization (ISI)

Defined (via Werner Baer) as an attempt by less‑developed countries to break out of a world division of labor that locked them into exporting primary goods and importing manufactures. By restricting imports, protecting nascent industries with tariffs, and investing in domestic production of previously imported goods, Latin American states sought to industrialize inwardly—especially during the Depression and World War II when global trade and shipping were disrupted.

Mass Politics

Refers to the new mid‑20th‑century situation where leaders addressed and mobilized broad popular sectors—especially urban workers and migrants—rather than just elite factions. For the first time, “the people” became explicit addressees of political discourse and policy, with demands that politics serve them, not just notables, which in turn provoked authoritarian reactions and shaped the rise of populism.

Populism

A political style and regime type characterized by mass clientelism (loyalty and patronage), a claim to represent “the people” against corrupt elites, and a tendency toward popular authoritarianism. Populist governments weaponize law against opponents, build cults of personality, restrict media and civil society, and insist that only their supporters count as the “authentic” people who deserve the regime’s benefits.

Getúlio Vargas

Seized power in Brazil in 1930 and ruled until 1945 (and again by election 1950–1954), using populist authoritarianism and economic nationalism to modernize the state and economy. He created corporatist labor structures, nationalized key industries (including oil), promoted industrialization, and in 1937 established the Estado Novo, an authoritarian regime that dissolved parties, censored opposition, and cultivated his image as “father of the poor.”

Estado Novo (Brazil)

Proclaimed by Vargas in 1937, was an explicitly authoritarian, highly nationalist regime that centralized power in the executive and curtailed democratic institutions. It abolished political parties, tightly controlled unions and civil society, flirted with both Axis and Allied powers before joining the Allies in World War II, and used state‑led economic modernization and social legislation to legitimize its rule.

Juan Perón

Rose from army officer to labor secretary and then to president of Argentina (1946–1955, 1973–1974), crafting a political project known as Peronism. He built his base among urban workers (los descamisados) by raising wages, expanding union rights and welfare, nationalizing key industries and railways, and presenting himself as a charismatic leader offering a “third path” between capitalism and communism.

Eva Perón (Evita)​

Born poor and illegitimate, became a famous actress and then first lady after marrying Perón in 1945, quickly assuming a powerful but unofficial political role. She acted as a conduit between the Peronist state and the masses, championed women’s suffrage (won in 1947) and “equal pay for equal work,” organized domestic workers, and became a central figure in the cult of Peronism—even as she framed herself as merely her husband’s “shadow.”

Peronism

The heterogeneous political movement and ideology built around Juan and Eva Perón, presented as a “third path” alternative to both liberal capitalism and Marxist communism. It fused economic nationalism (nationalization of major industries, ISI), expansion of the welfare state, and formal incorporation of unions into a corporatist state with authoritarian controls on opposition, a strong cult of personality, and rhetoric of social justice and anti‑imperialism.

Peninsulares

People born in Spain (the Iberian Peninsula) who lived in the Spanish colonies in the Americas, Philippines, or other territories during the 16th to early 19th centuries.

Annexation of Texas (Tejas)

In 1845 the United States annexed Texas, a former Mexican province heavily settled by Anglo‑American slaveholders that had declared independence from Mexico in 1836. This move—driven by U.S. expansionism and the desire to add another slave state—turned a long‑simmering border dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande into a direct confrontation with Mexico, providing the immediate pretext for the U.S.–Mexican War and resulting in massive territorial loss for Mexico.