Below you’ll find a cursory list of books and articles on revolutions in Latin America. Roberto Breña wrote a critical bibliographic essay on the Latin American Revolution, with emphasis on the Spanish-language literature. 

***It is also important to note that these Latin American Revolutions also form an important side of a much larger hemispheric and Atlantic revolutionary tradition. With this in mind, many of these works should be read alongside other works listed in our American Revolution, Haitian Revolution, and Atlantic Revolutions bibliographies. ***

Jeremy Adelman, “An Age of Imperial Revolutions” American Historical Review 113:2 (2008).

Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton University Press, 2006.

Anna, Timothy E. Spain and The Loss of America. University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

Arana, Marie. Bolívar: American Liberator. Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Archer, Christon, I. The Wars of Independence in Spanish America. Routledge, 2000.

Arrom, Silvia. The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857.  Stanford University Press, 1985.

Aviña, Alexander. Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Bethell, Leslie, ed. The Independence of Latin America. Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Blanchard, Peter. Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru. Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.

—. Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America. University of Pittsburg Press, 2008.

Borucki, Alex. From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Rio de la Plata. University of New Mexico Press, 2015.

Borucki, Alex, David Eltis and David Wheat. From the Galleons to the Highlands: Slave Trade Routes in the Spanish Americas. University of New Mexico Press, 2020.

Brading, David. Classical Republicanism and Creole Patriotism: Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) and the Spanish American Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Breña, Roberto. El imperio de las circunstancias. Marcial Pons/El Colegio de México, 2012.

Brewster, Claire. “Women and the Spanish-American Wars of Independence: An Overview.” Feminist Review 79 (2005): 21-35.

Brown, Matthew. “Adventurers, Foreign Women and Masculinity in the Colombian Wars of Independence.” Feminist Review 79 (2005): 36-51.

—. Adventuring Through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations. Liverpool University Press, 2006.

Bushnell, David. The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself. University of California Press, 1993.

—, ed. Frederick H. Fornoff trans. El Libertador: Writings of Simon Bolivar. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Bushnell, David and Neill Macaulay. The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century 2nd Ed.Oxford University Press, 1994.

Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, ed.  Nature, Empire and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World. Stanford University Press, 2006.

Chambers, Sarah C.  From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780-1850. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

—. “Republican Friendship: Manuela Sáenz Writes Women into the Nation, 1835-1856.” Hispanic American Historical Review 81, 2 (2001): 225-57.

Chambers, Sarah C. and John Charles Chasteen. Latin American Independence: An Anthology of Sources. Hackett, 2010.

Chasteen, John Charles. Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Cherpak, Evelyn, “The Participation of Women in the Independence Movement in Gran Colombia, 1780-1830.”  In Latin American Women, ed. Asunción Lavrín.  Greenwood Press, 1978.  Pp. 219-234.

Chust, Manuel and José Antonio Serrano, Debates sobre las independencias iberoamericanas. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2007.

Connaughton, Brian F. Clerical Ideology in a Revolutionary Age: The Guadalajara Church and the Idea of the Mexican Nation (1788-1853).  University of Calgary Press and University Press of Colorado, 2003.

Costeloe, Michael P. Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and the Spanish American Revolutions, 1810-1840. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Davies, Catherine, Claire Brewster, and Hilary Owen. South American Independence: Gender, Politics, Text. Liverpool University Press, 2011.

Domínguez, Jorge I. Insurrection or Loyalty: The Breakdown of the Spanish American Empire. Harvard University Press, 1980.

Echeverri, Marcela. Indian and Slave Royalists in the Age of Revolution: Reform, Revolution, and Royalism in the Northern Andes, 1780-1825. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

—. “Popular Royalists, Empire, and Politics in Southwestern New Granada, 1809-1819,” Hispanic American Historical Review. 91, no. 2 (2011); 237-269.

Ferreira, Roquinaldo. Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Fowler, Will. Independent Mexico: The Pronunciamiento in the Age of Santa Anna, 1821-1858. University of Nebraska Press, 2016.

French, William E. and Katherine Elaine Bliss. Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence. Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.

French, William E. The Heart in the Glass Jar: Love Letters, Bodies, and the Law in Mexico. University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Galindo, David Rex. To Sin No More: Franciscans and Conversion in the Hispanic World, 1683-1830. Stanford University Press, 2017.

von Germeten, Nicole. Profit and Passion: Transactional Sex in Colonial Mexico. University of California Press, 2018.

Gilbert, Dennis. The Oligarchy and the Old Regime in Latin America, 1880-1970. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Gobat, Michel. Empire by Invitation: William Walker and Manifest Destiny in Central America. Harvard University Press, 2018.

Green, James N. Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary. Duke University Press, 2018.

Guedea, Virginia.  “The Process of Mexican Independence.” AHR 105 (Feb 2000): 116-130.

Hamnett, Brian R.  “Process and Pattern: A Re-examination of the Ibero-American Independence Movements, 1808-1926,” Journal of Latin American Studies. 29, no. 2 (May, 1997); 279-328.

—. The End of Iberian Rule on the American Continent, 1770-1830. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Hanley, Anne G. The Public Good and the Brazilian State: Municipal Finance and Public Services in São Paulo, 1822-1930. University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Harvey, Robert. Liberators: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence. Overlook Press, 2000.

Jaffary, Nora E. Reproductions and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905. University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Jones, Cameron D. In Service of Two Masters: The Missionaries of Ocopa, Indigenous Resistance, and Spanish Governance in Bourbon Peru. Stanford University Press, 2018.

Karasch, Mary C. Before Brazília: Frontier Life in Central Brazil. University of New Mexico Press, 2016.

Kars, Marjoleine. Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast. The New Press, 2020.

Karl, Robert A. Forgotten Peace: Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Culture. University of California Press, 2017.

Keller, Renata. Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution. Duke University Press, 2015.

Kelly, Patrick William. Sovereign Emergencies: Latin America and the Making of Global Human Rights Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Kiddle, Amelia M. Mexico’s Relations with Latin America during the Cárdenas Era. University of New Mexico Press, 2016.

Kinsbruner, Jay. The Colonial Spanish American City: Urban Life in the Age of Atlantic Capitalism. University of Texas Press, 2005

Kinsbruner, Jay. Independence in Spanish America: Revolutions, Civil Wars, and Underdevelopment. University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Lane, Kris. Postozí: The Silver City That Changed the World. University of California Press, 2019.

Langley, Lester. The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1850. Yale University Press, 1996.

Lasso, Marixa. Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795-1831.  University of Pittsburg Press, 2007.

Lavrin, Asunción. Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives. Greenwood Press, 1978.

Leavitt-Alcántara, Brianna. Alone at the Altar: Single Women and Devotion in Guatemala, 1670-1870. Stanford University Press, 2018.

Lentz, Mark W. Murder in Mérida, 1792: Violence, Factions and the Law. University of New Mexico Press, 2018.

Lindsay-Poland, John. Plan Colombia: U.S. Ally Atrocities and Community Activism. Duke University Press, 2018.

Lipsett-Rivera, Sonya. Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856. University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

López-Portillo, José-Juan. Another Jerusalem: Political Legitimacy and Courtly Government in the Kingdom of New Spain (1535-1568). Brill, 2017.

Lynch, John. Simón Bolívar: A Life. Yale University Press, 2006.

Lynch, John. The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808–1826. 2nd ed. W.W. Norton, 1986.

MacLachlan, Colin M. Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture. Harvard University Press, 2015.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. The General in His Labyrinth. Vintage, 1990.

Maxwell, Kenneth R.  Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750-1808. Routledge, 2004.

McEnroe, Sean F. From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico: Laying the Foundations, 1560-1840. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

McFarlane, Anthony and Eduardo Posada-Carbó (eds.), Independence and Revolution in Spanish America: Perspectives and Problems. Institute of Latin American Studies, 1999.

McFarlane, Anthony, “Rebellions in Late Colonial Spanish America: A Comparative Perspective” Bulletin of Latin American Research. 14:3 (1995); 313-338.

McKinley, Michelle A. Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Melvin, Karen and Sylvia Sellers-García, eds. Imagining Histories of Colonial Latin America: Synoptic Methods and Practices. University of New Mexico Press, 2017.

Melton-Villanueva, Miriam. The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799-1832. University of Arizona Press, 2016.

Mendiola García, Sandra C. Street Democracy: Vendors, Violence, and Public Space in Late Twentieth-Century Mexico. University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

Miki, Yuko. Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Monteiro, John M. Blacks of the Land: Indian Slavery, Settler Society, and the Portuguese Colonial Enterprise in South America. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Morales, Edgardo Pérez. No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions. Vanderbilt University Press, 2018.

Murillo, Dana Velasco. Urban Indians in a Silver City: Zacatecas, Mexico, 1546-1810. Stanford University Press, 2016.

Murray, Pamela S. For Glory and Bolívar: The Remarkable Life of Manuela Sáenz. University of Texas Press, 2008.

Naish, Paul D. Slavery and Silence: Latin America and the U.S. Slave Debate. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

Nesvig, Martin Austin. Promiscuous Power: An Unorthodox History of New Spain. University of Texas Press, 2018.

Neufeld, Stephen B. The Blood Contingent: The Military and the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911. University of New Mexico Press, 2017.

O’Hara, Matthew D. The History of the Future in Colonial Mexico. Yale University Press, 2018.

Pardo, Osvaldo F. Honor and Personhood in Early Modern Mexico. University of Michigan Press, 2015.

Porter, Susie S. From Angel to Office Worker: Middle-Class Identity and Female Consciousness in Mexico, 1890-1950. Duke University Press, 2018.

Prados de la Escosura, Leandro. “Lost Decades? Economic Performance in Post-Independence Latin America” Journal of Latin American Studies, 41, no. 2 (2009); 279-307.

Premo, Bianca. The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Racine, Karen. Francisco de Miranda: A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Ramírez, Paul. Enlightened Immunity: Mexico’s Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason. Stanford University Press, 2018.

Rausch, Jane M. Santiago Pérez Triana (1858-1916): Colombian Man of Letters and Crusader for Hemispheric Unity. Markus Wiener, 2017.

Richmond, Douglas W. Conflict and Carnage in Yucatán: Liberals, the Second Empire, and Maya Revolutionaries, 1855-1876. University of Alabama Press, 2015.

Ristow, Colby. A Revolution Unfinished: The Chegomista Rebellion and the Limits of Revolutionary Democracy in Juchitán, Oaxaca. Duke University Press, 2018.

Robins, Nicholas A. Of Love and Loathing: Marital Life, Strife, and Intimacy in the Colonial Andes, 1750-1825. University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Rodriguez, Jaime E. “The Emancipation of America.” The American Historical Review 105, no. 1 (2000): 131-52.

—. The Independence of Spanish America. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Roller, Heather F. Amazonian Routes: Indigenous Mobility and Colonial Communities in Northern Brazil. Stanford University Press, 2014.

Roybal, Karen R. Archives of Dispossession: Recovering the Testimonios of Mexican American Herederas, 1848-1960. University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Ruiz, Jason. Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and the Cultural Politics of Empire. University of Texas Press, 2014.

Russell-Wood, John, ed. From Colony to Nation: Essays on the Independence of Brazil. John Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Sabato, Hilda. Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Princeton University Press, 2018.

Salas, Elizabeth, Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and History. University of Texas Press, 1990.

Salcedo-Bastardo, J.L. Bolivar: A Continent and Its Destiny. Richmond Publishing, 1977

Sarzynski, Sarah. Revolution in the Terra do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil. Stanford University Press, 2018.

Schaefer, Timo H. Liberalism as Utopia: The Rise and Fall of Legal Rule in Post-Colonial Mexico, 1820-1900. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. The Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories in the 19^th Century.  University of Pittsburg Press, 2006.

Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. “Continuity and Crisis: Cuban Slavery, Spanish Colonialism, and the Atlantic World in the Nineteenth Century.”  In Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, eds. The Atlantic in Global History, 1500-2000. Pearson, 2007.

Schoultz, Lars. In Their Own Best Interest: A History of the U.S. Effort to Improve Latin Americans. Harvard University Press, 2018.

Schulze, Jeffrey M. Are We Not Foreigners Here? Indigenous Nationalism in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

Seijas, Tatiana and Jake Frederick. Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics: The Money that Made Mexico and the United States. Rowman Littlefield, 2016.

Sierra Silva, Pablo Miguel. Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico: Puebla de los Ángeles, 1531-1706. Duke University Press, 2018.

Simon, Joshua. The Ideology of Creole Revolution: Imperialism and Independence in American and Latin American Political Thought. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Smith, Stephanie J. The Power and Politics of Art in Postrevolutionary Mexico. University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Smith, Theresa Ann.  The Emerging Female Citizen: Gender and Enlightenment in Spain.  University of California Press, 2006.

Stephens, Michele McArdle. In the Lands of Fire and Sun: Resistance and Accommodation in the Huichol Sierra, 1723-1930. University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

Sullivan-Gonzalez, Douglass. Piety, Power, and Politics: Religion and Nation Formation in Guatemala, 1821-1871. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.

Summerhill, William R. Inglorious Revolution: Political Institutions, Sovereign Debt, and Financial Underdevelopment in Imperial Brazil. Yale University Press, 2015.

Tavárez, David, ed. Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America. University of Colorado Press, 2017.

Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio. Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea. University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Thurner, Mark and Andrés Guerrero, eds. After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas. Duke University Press, 2003.

de la Torre, Oscar. The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945. University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

Tortorici, Zeb. Sins against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain. Duke University Press, 2018.

Truitt, Jonathan. Sustaining the Divine in Mexico Tenochtitlan: Nahuas and Catholicism, 1523-1700. Duke University Press, 2018.

Tutino, John. Making a New World: Founding Capitalism in the Bahío and Spanish North America. Duke University Press, 2011.

—, ed., New Countries: Capitalism, Revolutions, and Nations in the Americas, 1750-1870. Duke University Press, 2016.

—. Mexico City, 1808: Power, Sovereignty, and Silver in an Age of War and Revolution. University of New Mexico Press, 2018.

Uribe-Uran, Victor M. “The Birth of a Public Sphere in Latin America during the Age of Revolution.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 2 (2000): 440–448.

—, ed. State and Society in Spanish America during the Age of Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.

Valdes-Ugalde, Francisco. “Janus and the Northern Colossus: Perceptions of the United States in the Building of the Mexican Nation.” Journal of American History 86, no. 2 (1999): 568-600.

Valiant, Seonaid. Ornamental Nationalism: Archaeology and Antiquities in Mexico, 1876-1911. Brill, 2017.

Van Young, Eric. “Millennium on the Northern Marches: The Mad Messiah of Durango and Popular Rebellion in Mexico, 1800-1815,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28:3 (1986); 385-413.

—. The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821. Stanford University Press, 2002.

Vázquez, Juan José Ponce. Islanders and Empire: Smuggling and Political Defiance in Hispaniola, 1580-1690. Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Velasco, Alejandro. Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela. University of California Press, 2015.

Villella, Peter B. Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500-1800. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Vinson III, Ben. Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Voekel, Pamela. Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

Vrana, Heather. This City Belongs to You: A History of Student Activism in Guatemala, 1944-1996. University of California Press, 2017.

Walker, Charles F. Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath. Duke University Press, 2008.

Wallace Fuentes, Myrna Ivonne. Most Scandalous Woman: Magda Portal and the Dream of Revolution in Peru. University of Oklahoma Press, 2017.

Whigham, Thomas L. The Road to Armageddon: Paraguay versus the Triple Alliance, 1866-70. University of Calgary Press, 2017.

Whitacker, Arthur P. The United States and the Independence of Latin America, 1800-1830.  WW Norton & Co, 1964.

Wolfe, Mikael D. Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico. Duke University Press, 2017.

Yannakakis, Yanna. The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca. Duke University Press, 2008.

Young, Kevin A. Blood of the Earth: Resource Nationalism, Revolution, and Empire in Bolivia. Duke University Press, 2017.

Title image: Antonio Jose Páez at the battle of Las Queseras del Medio, 1819, 1889.

*The above list was compiled by the editors of Age of Revolutions with further assistance from Kristen Block, William Booth, and Suzanne Marie Litrel.*

**Think we should add a specific text to the above list? Send us a message in the comment section below.**