Latin American liberators interpret U.S. Revolution in distinct ways, analysis says

The American Revolution influenced Latin America’s independence leaders, but not as uniformly as the French Revolution or the ideas of European Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Serqueira wrote.

The Spanish American wars of independence lasted from roughly 1809 to 1824, more than three decades after the United States declared its independence. By then, Latin American leaders could study the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, but faced a different structural challenge, the analysis says.

The United States emerged from 13 colonies with experience in elected assemblies and local government, Serqueira wrote. Spanish America inherited a more centralized colonial system. Its territories were separated by vast distances, and its independence wars were exceptionally destructive — conditions that help explain why admiration for the American Revolution did not always lead Latin American leaders to embrace the U.S. constitutional model.

Francisco de Miranda, born in Caracas in 1750, occupied a unique place in the revolutionary history of the Americas, according to the analysis. As an officer in the Spanish army, he fought in the 1781 Siege of Pensacola and later met George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. He also participated in the French Revolution, rising to the rank of general, and was nearly executed during the Jacobin Terror.

That experience revealed an essential difference between the two revolutions, Serqueira wrote: a republic could proclaim liberty yet still descend into violence when political power ceased to recognize legal limits. Miranda drew a clear conclusion — he admired representative government, freedom of the press, religious liberty and an independent judiciary.

Simón Bolívar had a more ambivalent view of the United States, the analysis says. In his 1819 Address at Angostura, he acknowledged the success of the U.S. constitutional system yet rejected the idea it could simply be copied in Spanish America. Laws and institutions, Bolívar argued, had to correspond to each society’s conditions.

Bolívar’s search for stability gradually led him toward centralized authority, exposing a contradiction in his legacy, according to the commentary. He liberated nations from Spanish rule but grew increasingly doubtful that political liberty could survive without a strong executive. Near the end of his life, in an 1829 letter to British diplomat Patrick Campbell, he warned the United States appeared “destined to bring misery to the Americas in the name of liberty.”

Manuel Belgrano, one of the principal leaders of Argentine independence, was among the strongest Latin American admirers of George Washington, the analysis states. He regarded Washington as a model of public morality and was especially impressed that the victorious general did not convert military success into permanent personal rule. Belgrano translated Washington’s Farewell Address into Spanish and published it in Buenos Aires.

José Gervasio Artigas, Uruguay’s national hero, was perhaps the independence leader whose political program most closely resembled U.S. federal and republican principles, according to Serqueira. His Instructions of the Year XIII, given to delegates representing the Eastern Province at the 1813 assembly in Buenos Aires, called for independence and a confederation among the provinces, defended civil and religious liberty, and demanded a separation of powers. His federal project was defeated, and he spent the final decades of his life in exile in Paraguay.

Serqueira wrote that the American founding contained profound contradictions — a declaration proclaiming equality and natural rights coexisted with slavery, indigenous peoples remained outside the political community, and women were denied participation in public life — but those principles eventually provided powerful arguments for challenging slavery and expanding civil rights.

Latin America’s independence movements contained their own contradictions, according to the commentary. They ended Spanish rule, but independence did not automatically create stable republics. Colonial inequality survived, regional conflicts continued, and military leaders frequently dominated political life.

“Their experiences demonstrate that declaring independence is easier than building a republic,” Serqueira wrote. “Constitutions alone cannot restrain power; they must be supported by citizens and leaders who respect their limits.”