Most Latin Americans worked for huge landowners before and after independence.
Employers compensated employees with coupons that could only be redeemed at their own supply outlets.
- Workers ran into debt because salaries were low and prices were high.
Latin America's economies remained reliant on exports, regardless of who they traded with.
- Each country concentrated on one or two products, as it did throughout the colonial era.
- Latin America's exports, on the other hand, increased as technology advanced.
Latin American countries spent very little of their export revenue on infrastructure such as roads, schools, and hospitals.
- They also did not sponsor programs that would assist them in becoming self-sufficient.
- Instead, they frequently took out high-interest loans to create infrastructure for their export industries.
- Countries including the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Germany were eager to lend.
By the early 1800s, most Latin American colonies had attained independence. However, their situation was precarious.
Many Latin Americans were concerned that European countries might attempt to reclaim the newly formed republics.
- This was something that the United States, as a fledgling nation, feared as well.
Cuba was one of Spain's final colonies in the Americas, located in the Caribbean. Cuba gained independence from Spain in 1868 and fought a ten-year war against it.
- The Cubans gave up the war in 1878, with the island in ruins. However, some Cubans pressed for independence from Spain.
In the early twentieth century, the United States expanded its influence in Latin America in a variety of ways, including the construction of the Panama Canal.
- Its presence in Cuba, as well as its substantial investments in a number of Central and South American countries, bolstered its position.
- President Roosevelt declared a corollary, or extension, to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904 to preserve such economic interests.
