ABSTRACT
Many factors combined to cause the Latin American wars of independence. Simon Bolivar led the struggle for independence in northern South America, and Jose de San Martin directed the military efforts of the patriots to the south. For Argentines the figure of Jose de San Martin has the same heroic and legendary quality that Bolivar possesses for the peoples of northern South America. The revolutionary fervor that fueled Latin American independence movements sparked more than political passions. Equally important for Latin American independence, which occurred a few decades after the revolutions in the United States and France, was a European aesthetic movement known as Romanticism. The Mexican Revolution, initiated in 1810 by the Creole priest Miguel Hidalgo, was continued after his death by another liberal curate, Jose Maria Morelos. These men attempted to combine the Creole ideal of independence with a program of social reform to benefit the Indian and mixed-blood masses.
