ABSTRACT
The United Nations designated Cusco a World Heritage site in 1983, and this has encouraged its citizens to preserve and thus capture the city in a snapshot that reaches back to the colonial period. This chapter introduces the concepts of state and nation and explains their relevance to democratic politics. It provides the historical development of states and nations in Latin America that preceded the struggles for democracy that would ensue at independence. The constant battle to secure monarchic authority played itself out in colonial institutions up to the moment of independence. The impact of the Spanish in the Caribbean was immediate and lasting. Brazil did not experience the instability seen in Spanish America during the nineteenth century. The governors set the early groundwork for settling the Americas, but as the monarchy consolidated its power at home, it formed new institutions to ensure its authority abroad.
