ABSTRACT
Latin America was exploited and pillaged by the colonial powers. Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, and most recently the United States have all taken advantage of Latin America. Colonialism and imperialism devastated the area. At many levels and throughout history, Latin America was brutalized, exploited, and robbed of its resources. It was an isolated dependency of the great powers, an exploited periphery kept apart from global modernizing movements, with a history of suffering. The institutions that Spain and, less aggressively, Portugal brought to the New World reflected the institutions that had developed in the mother countries during their centuries-long struggles against the Moors and their efforts to form unified nation states out of disparate social and regional forces. The independence movements in Latin America had almost all been conservative movements of separation from the mother countries rather than full-scale social or political revolutions.
