The wars of independence

Las guerras de independencia hispanoamericanas

1808–1826. When Napoleon imprisoned the Spanish king in 1808, towns across Spanish America formed juntas to govern in his name.

Draft: not yet checked against its sources.

What happened

When Napoleon imprisoned the Spanish king in 1808, towns across Spanish America formed juntas to govern in his name. Within two years those juntas were on the road to independence: Caracas and Buenos Aires in 1810, the priest Hidalgo's rising in Mexico the same year. The wars that followed lasted until 1826, with Bolívar and Sucre in the north and the Andes, San Martín from the Río de la Plata across the Andes to Chile and Peru, and in Mexico a late compromise under Iturbide in 1821. Cuba and Puerto Rico stayed Spanish. The new states kept Spanish as their language of government and law, but divided a continent that had been ruled as four viceroyalties.

Its events

1. 6 September 1815: Bolívar writes the Jamaica Letter
2. 17 December 1819–17 November 1831: Gran Colombia, Bolívar's republic

Sources

1. 25 May 1810: 214 years after the May Revolution — Casa Rosada
2. Biblioteca Nacional del Perú recuerda gesta histórica de la Batalla de Ayacucho — Biblioteca Nacional del Perú