THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS FOR SOCIO-HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PROCESS OF FORMATION OF LATINAMERICAN STATES

Abstract

In Latin America in the early nineteenth century, the process of breaking with the respective metropolises opened a quadruple process which resolution, in almost all new countries, took a long time. These processes were the construction of the State, the Nation, the conditions to enable the inclusion of Latin American economies in the world economy and a new social structure (stratified society to class society). This process took place in a context marked, in most countries, by a combination of economic uncertainty, regional fragmentation, internal political instability and wars between some of the new countries and the major powers. During the nineteenth century, wars helped to cement, while uneven, a sense of belonging and national identity. Already in the first decades of the twentieth century was primarily the convergence toward conflict with foreign domination and the element that asserted the consolidation of the nation. Beyond the differences between countries, it is clear that the overall process of state and nation formation was far from moving in the direction of a radical transformation of Latin American societies and was far from being an inclusive historical movement and finished. The change was directed "from above", with an explicit renunciation to the mobilization and participation of the lower classes, which resulted in some weak states, generally, oligarchic.