Un’altra ribellione? La partecipazione dei settori popolari alle guerre di indipendenza ispano-americane

The participation of the subaltern groups to the Spanish-American independent movements is at the centre of this article. Though historiography has always underestimated their contribution to the wars that liberated Spanish American territories from Spain, subaltern sectors (indigenous, free people of colour and slaves) played indeed a very important and active role during the this period. Not only they participated to the armies that defeated the Spanish, but they had significant political objectives to attain. Like the elites, they understood that the collapse of the Spanish monarchy had opened some possibilities of action, unimaginable before 1808. Wars implied de facto an improvement of the social and political conditions of popular groups: for the free coloureds meant the access of citizenship; for slaves, the acquisition of freedom; for the indigenous people, the defence of their lands.