Recently, Rosendo Fraga published an interesting article about the bicentenary of the Latin American independences. In fact, from 1810 to 1825 almost all territories ruled by Iberian Empires (Spain and Portugal) in the Americas broke up the bonds that linked them to their metropolis. Cuba and Puerto Rico were the exception that had to wait until 1898 to change their status. The closeness of the dates may open a debate around the consequences of emancipation, a process that paved the way for the new republics and also the representative systems they are based on. We may well say that the roots of democracy in the region are related to independence.

In general, the different national histographies depict their respective emancipating processes as unique events that hold the true reason d’etre of the new nationalities. Here can be traced the existing trend of Latin American countries to look at their own business and not compare themselves with neighbors who are of course inferior to the nationality of the observer. This trend is reinforced in what is known as nation-building. To that end, the colonial backgrounds are traced for they explain the rise of the Mexican nation, the Argentine, Colombian and many other nations considering the unit existing before independence was the Americas and that the lay-out of the current republics was not written down before 1810.

At the same time, it is worth mentioning the importance of the metropolis political events to the development of emancipating processes beginning with the impact of the power emptiness in Spain that fostered the creation of government councils in the different colonies and the first call for elections to choose Court representatives. However, the passage of the clearly liberal Cadiz Constitution of 1812 had drastic consequences in the Empire despite some regions had broken ties with the metropolis and so it was not directly enforced.

Not all the colonial elites accepted the constitutional legacy the same way as it was strongly rejected in Mexico and Peru, the major political hubs of the colonial times. In 1814 the absolutist restoration took place and Ferdinand VII returned causing mixed reactions according to the central or peripheral nature of the colonies. The return to liberalism during the Constitutional three-year period (1820-1823) and the new absolutist relapse ended up by convincing Americans of the advantages of emancipation in view of the great uncertainty in Spain.

Emancipating processes are usually portrayed as revolutions and independence movements as revolutionary although few take some time to define the type of revolution they speak of. Even the Argentine histography usually alludes to the May Revolution, a popularized term in the national ideology of the Rio de la Plata country through school manuals. Paraguayans also speak of their Revolution of May 14 and 15. Now, in view of the deep ideological indecision in this regard and the non-materialization of the anti-colonial revolution concept we should wonder whether there was a revolution and in case the answer was ‘yes’ we should determine what revolution are we talking about.

It is clear that due to its characteristics it was not an economic or social revolution. It was not economic since production systems remained the same despite the rupture of colonial spaces. The agricultural system continued being the major economic activity both due to its contribution to the regional revenues as well as the number of workers it included. It was not a social revolution either. Despite elites were totally renewed in the most diverse places the truth is the social structure remained unchanged despite the large popular movement spurred by the independence wars that were true civil wars in many cases.

This leads us to speak of the revolutions in the Americas as the true political revolutions. Thanks to them subordinate societies changed into societies of citizens and we were able to abandon the corporate scheme of societies of the Old Regime to adopt another based on people’s individuality and development. At the same time, the monarchic systems characteristic of Iberian Empires was replaced with the new republics based on representative governments to such an extent that there are several authors that fir the emancipating processes into the revolutionary democracies of the late XVIII and early XIX centuries. This last idea leads us to think of the early importance elections had in the new republics of the Americas.

The elections enabled to choose new authorities and endow them with legitimacy. According to the national peculiarities, the elections imposed as the preferred mechanism to renew elective offices and throughout time they grew increasingly competitive. It is true that in the bellicose environments that accompanied independence conflicts and in the post-war atmosphere not everything was favorable for the unfolding of normal electoral processes.

Now, it would be unfair to wonder what people understood by electoral normality at the beginning of the XIX century. It must be considered that the British elections of that time were characterized by corruption and sometimes scandals too. We should also add the not at all despicable fact that at that time elections were held in few European countries and the United States, to what Latin America should be added as well. The question at this stage remains why so little progress has been made compared to other countries that achieved more stable and deeper democratic developments and why today democracy is so undervalued in many countries of the region.