ABSTRACT
W hen most Latin American countries achieved political independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century, the ideas of nationalism and the formation of na-
tional states were just beginning to emerge as central forces in Western thinking. Under the influence of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, leaders of independence movements in Latin America were clearly inspired more by concepts of liberty and sovereignty than by the ideal of creating a "cultural nation-state" that fired the imaginations and struggles of the romantic European nationalists in later decades. Once independence had been obtained by force of arms (Bolivar, O'Higgins and Hidalgo), the rulers of the new states were faced with the daunting task of building new nations. Forging viable polities that might serve the interests of the new ruling groups out of the fragmented remains of the Spanish empire was no small matter, particularly in view of the highly stratified and hierarchical nature of the social system inherited from the colonial period and the ethnic and racial diversity of the population. Thus it became necessary to invent and create nations and to construct national identities. The intellectuals set this task for themselves in
the nineteenth century: By some accounts it has not yet been completed, for the search for national identity is still a principal concern of Latin American intellectuals to this day.2
