Augusto Pinochet

Latin America Timeline

1487: The Aztecs sacrifice 20,000 people to inaugurate their new temple in Tenochtitlan
1492: Cristoforo Colombo (Columbus) lands in the island of Hispaniola
1494: Pope Alexander VI brokers an agreement dividing the Americas between Spain and Portugal (“Treaty of Tordesillas”)
1494: Colombo captures 1,500 slaves on Hispaniola
1496: The Spanish found Santo Domingo in the island of Hispaniola, the first Spanish town in the Americas
1498: Colombo explores the coast of Venezuela
1499: Amerigo Vespucci travels to South America
1499: Colombo authorizes slavery in Santo Domingo
1500: Portuguese explorer Alvares Cabral lands on the coast of Brazil
1500: About 65 million Native Americans live in Central and Latin America, of which 25 million in Mexico
1501: The Spanish colonists of Hispaniola begin importing African slaves
1502: Spain sends Ovaldo to Santo Domingo to enforce the Spanish language and the Catholic religion among the natives (birth of the “encomienda” system)
1503: Jews escape the Portuguese Inquisition by emigrating to Brazil
1503: Spain establishes the “Casa de Contratacion” to guarantee a Spanish monopoly of trade with the Americas
1503: Spain builds the first sugar mill in Hispaniola
1507: Martin Waldseemller draws a world map on which he names the new continent America after Amerigo Vespucci
1507: Smallpox outbreak in the Caribbeans
1509: The Spanish colonize Jamaica
1503: Hernan Cortez arrives in Hispaniola
1510: Spaniards (Vasco Nunez de Balboa) found Santa Mar¡a la Antigua del Darien (Panam ), the first permanent European settlement on the mainland of the Americas
1510: Bartolome` de las Casas, a member of the Ovaldo expedition, becomes the first priest to be ordained in the New World
1511: Spain institutes an “audience” (supreme court) in Santo Domingo to control the work of the conquerors
1511: Spain institutes an audiencia (high court) in Santo Domingo
1511: Diego Velasquez begins the conquest of Cuba for Spain
1512: Gold rush in Cuba
1512: The first bishop of the Americas arrive from Spain and settles in Puerto Rico
1513: Francisco Pizarro lands in Panama and joins Vasco Nunez de Balboa’s expedition across the Isthmus of Panama, becoming the first European to see the Pacific Ocean
1516: Juan Solis is the first European to see the Rio de la Plata/ River Plate (the confluence of the rivers Parana and Uruguay)
1516: Bartolome` de las Casas pushes legislation for the protection of the natives
1516: Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba leads the exploration of Mexico
1517: Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba leads a Spanish expedition to Yucatan
Feb 1519: Hernan Cortez sails from Cuba and lands onto the mainland of Mexico and Spaniards found the city of Panama
Nov 1519: Hernan Cortez reaches the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, and captures the emperor, Montezuma
1520: Ferdinand Magellan sails the Straits of Magellan, the first European to see the Tierra del Fuego
1520: Bartolome` de las Casas creates a utopian farming community in Venezuela but is expelled by the Spanish encomenderos
1520: Smallpox outbreak in Mexico
Jun 1520: Cortez is defeated by the Aztecs
1521: A colonist plants sugar in Brazil
Aug 1521: Cortez defeats the Aztecs and conquers their capital Tenochtitlan
1522: The Spanish king appoints Cortes governor of Mexico
1522: Pascual de Andagoya explores South America and learns about the Inca gold
1522: Spanish explorer Gil Gonzalez de Avila “discovers” Nicaragua
1522: Ferdinando Magellan’s expedition concludes the first circumnavigation of the Earth (Magellan being already dead) after a journey of three years
1523: The first Franciscan friar, Pedro de Gante, arrives in Ciudad de Mexico
1523: Cortez is appointed governor of Nueva Espana (Mexico)
1524: Pizarro, the priest Hernando de Luque and the soldier Diego de Almagro organize an expedition in Panama to explore and conquer South America
1524: Smallpox outbreak in Peru
1524: Cortes’ lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado founds the city of Guatemala
1524: Spain establishes the “Consejo de las Indias” to govern the American colonies
1524: Franciscan friars begin evangelizing in Nueva Espana
1526: The Spaniards (Rodrigo de Bastidas) establish their second settlement in South America, Santa Marta (Colombia)
1527: Francisco de Montejo begins the Spanish conquest of the Yucatan
1527: Spain institutes the audiencia of Nueva Espana
1528: Holy Roman emperor and Spanish king Karl V grants Venezuela to the Augsburg banking family Welser
1528: Spain institutes an “audience” (supreme court) in Mexico City
Dec 1530: Pizarro leaves Panama for South America
1531: The king of Portugal dispatches a convoy to Brazil under the command of Martin Afonso de Sousa
Sep 1532: Fracisco Pizarro conquers Ecuador and establishes the the first Spanish settlement in Peru (and third in South America) and begins the conquest of Peru
1532: Martin Afonso de Sousa founds Sao Vicente in Brazil
Nov 1532: Francisco Pizarro defeats the Inca army led by Atahuallpa at Cajamarca after the Inca Empire has been decimated by smallpox and takes the emperor hostage
Jul 1533: Pizarro executes Inca emperor Atahuallpa
1532: Vasco de Quiroga founds the hospital of Santa Fe in Ciudad de Mexico, a utopian community
Nov 1533: Pizarro takes Cuzco, the Inca capital
1533: Spaniards found Cartagena (Colombia)
1534: Pizarro’s lieutenant Sebastian de Belalcazar conquers Quito
1534: The king of Portugal grants the first capitania to a donatario in Brazil (colossal hereditary landholdings)
1535: Pizarro founds Lima, the Spanish capital of Peru
1535: Vasco de Quiroga denounces the Spanish-American encomienda system in “Informacion en Derecho”
1535: Spain establishes the viceroyalty of Nueva Espana (Mexico, Arizona, Texas, California) with governor Antonio de Mendoza (that relieves Cortes of all power) and capital in Tenochtitlan that is renamed Ciudad de Mexico
1535: The Portuguese colony of Pernambuco of Nova Lusitania (Brazil) is granted to Duarte Coelho
1536: Spaniards (led by Pedro de Mendoza) found Nuestra Senora de Santa Maria del Buen Ayre (Buenos Aires) on the Rio de la Plata
1536: Pizarro’s lieutenant Sebastian de Belalcazar founds Popayan in Nueva Granada (Colombia)
1536: Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada explores Nueva Granada (Colombia)
1536: Diego de Almagro explores Chile
1537: Vasco de Quiroga is appointed the first bishop of Michoacan (Mexico)
1537: Domingo Mart¡nez de Irala becomes governor of Rio de la Plata
1537: Duarte Coelho founds the town of Olinda in Brazil
1537: Pope Paul III issues a Papal Bull to affirm that the Indios of Latin America are equal to Europeans and therefore entitled to receive Christianity
1537: Spaniards found Asuncion (Paraguay)
1538: Jimenez de Quesada establishes the colony of New Granada (Colombia) and its capital Santa Fe de Bogota
1538: A civil war erupts between followers of Almagro and followers of Pizarro, won by the latter
1538: Panama gets its own audiencia
1538: The first university in the Americas opens in Santo Domingo
1538: African blacks are shipped as slaves to Brazil
1539: The first printing press opens in Ciudad de Mexico
1540: Pedro de Valdivia explores Chile
1541: Spaniards (Pedro de Valdivia) found Santiago de Chile
1541: Buenos Aires is abandoned and its horses spread in the wild
1541: Spanish explorer Francisco Orellana sails from Ecuador to the Atlantic and names a tribe of female fighters “Amazons”, thus giving the name to the entire region and its vast river
1541: Pizarro is assassinated by an Almagrista
1542: Spain establishes the viceroyalty of Peru with capital in Lima
1542: Bartolome` de las Casas frames new laws that are approved by the Spanish king to protect the natives from exploitation by the Spanish colonists/encomenderos, but they are largely ignored
1542: Francisco de Montejo the Young (son of the Elder) conquers most of Yucatan for Spain and founds a new capital, Merida
1543: Lima (Peru) gets its own audiencia
1544: Bartolome` de las Casas is named bishop of Chiapas (Guatemala)
May 1544: Blasco Nunez become the first viceroy of Peru
1545: Silver is discovered in Potosi (Bolivia)
1546: Spain completes the conquest of Yucatan
1546: Bartolome` de las Casas’ laws are repealed after strong opposition by the encomiendas
1546: Gonzalo Pizarro leads an insurrection of encomenderos and defeats and kills Nunez, the viceroy of Peru
1546: Youstol Dispage Fromscaruffi dies
1546: Silver is discovered in Zacatecas (Mexico)
1547: The Spanish king’s representative, Pedro de Gasca, defeats the Pizarristas
1548: Spaniards found LaPaz is Bolivia
1548: Gonzalo Pizarro surrenders and is beheaded
1548: The population of Santo Domingo has declined from 100,000 in 1492 to 5,000
1549: The Spanish king’s representative, Pedro de Gasca, leaves Peru
1549: The Catholic bishop Diego de Landa begins destroying all Maya manuscripts (only four will survive)
Mar 1549: Portugal appoints the first governor of Brazil, Thome de Sousa, who founds the capital of Salvador/Bahia, and arrives with 1,000 colonists and six Jesuits, including Manoel de Nobrega
1550: Portugal ships female orphans and African slaves to the colonists of Brazil
1550: Antonio de Mendoza is succeeded as viceroy of Mexico by Luis de Velasco, who frees thousands of “Indians”
1551: Spanish colonists from Peru found Santiago del Estero, the first permanent European settlement in Argentina
1551: The university of San Marcos at Lima is founded in Peru
1551: The university of Ciudad de Mexico is founded
1551: Antonio de Mendoza is appointed viceroy of Peru
1552: Antonio de Mendoza dies and the audience rules Peru
1552: The Portuguese Jesuits found an “aldeia” (shelter) for Indios in Salvador
1552: Bartolome` de las Casas’s “Brevisima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias” is published in Europe, accusing Spain of having killed 12 million “Indians” since 1492
1552: Cattle is imported into Paraguay by Portuguese colonists and spread to Argentina
1553: Chile’s governor Valdivia is defeated and killed by the Araucanian Indios
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1554: Jesuits led by Jose de Anchieta found the mission and school of Sao Paulo (Brazil)
1555: French colonists build a fort in the bay of Rio de Janeiro (France Antarctique)
1555: Portuguese sailors transmit smallpox to Brazil, that exterminates the Indios of the coast
1556: The Welser are stripped of their rights on Venezuela
1558: Portugal appoints the second governor of Brazil, Mem de Sa
1559: Charcas/La Plata (Bolivia) gets its own audiencia
1561: Colonial trade is restricted to two convoys of privately-owned ships a year, leaving from Sevilla or Cadiz, landing in Vera Cruz (Mexico) or Portobello (Panama)
1562: The Portuguese annihilate the rebellious Caete in Brazil, while smallpox and plague begin to spread among Indios of Brazil
1565: The Portuguese expel the French from the bay of Rio de Janeiro
1565: Pedro Menendez founds San Agustin in Florida
1567: Portuguese (Estacio de Sa) founds Sao Sebastiao do Rio de Janeiro 20 (Brazil)
1567: Spaniards found Caracas in Venezuela
1569: Francisco de Toledo is appointed viceroy of Peru
1569: Santa Fe de Bogota becomes the capital of the captaincy-general Nueva Granada
1569: Don Francisco de Toledo is appointed viceroy of Peru
1570: A tribunal of the Inquisition is instituted in Lima, Peru
1571: The Inca leader Tupac Amaru rebels in Peru but he is captured and beheaded
1572: British pirate Francis Drake raids Panama
1572: The Jesuits arrive in Ciudad de Mexico
1574: There are 160,000 Spaniards in America
1576: A smallpox epidemics in Mexico kills more than a million people
1577: British pirate Francis Drake raids Valparaiso (Chile)
1578: Juan de Garay is appointed governor of Rio de la Plata
1579: Jesuits found utopian missions in Paraguay and northern Argentina
1580: Juan de Garay refounds Buenos Aires (Argentina)
1580: British pirate Francis Drake concludes the second circumnavigation of the Earth
1580: Spain and Portugal are united and therefore Brazil is Spanish too
1580: Spain forbids the American colonies from conferring any public office to mestizos (mixed-blood people)
1581: Peru’s viceroy Francisco de Toledo is deposed by Spain
1581: Brazil has a population of 57,000, of which 20,000 Portuguese, 18,000 Indios, 14,000 African slaves, and 5,000 mamelucos/mestizos
1584: Martin Ignacio de Loyola circumnavigates the Earth
1585: Black slaves constitute about 25% of Brazil’s population
1586: British pirate Francis Drake raids Santo Domingo and Cartagena (Colombia)
1586: Juan Ramirez de Velasco is appointed governor of northern Argentina with capital in Santiago del Estero (that has a population of 48 encomenderos and 12,000 Indios)
1589: Martin Ignacio de Loyola is the first man to circumnavigate the Earth twice
1596: Juan Ramirez de Velasco is appointed governor of Rio de la Plata with capital in Buenos Aires, having greatly improved the infrastructure of Argentina
1595: British explorer Walter Raleigh visits “Guiana” (the land of the confluence between the Amazon and the Orinoco, believed to hide the “El Dorado”)
1597: Juan Ramirez de Velasco dies
1600: The population of Sao Paulo is 2000
1600: Only one million Native Americans survive in Mexico
1600: Pernambuco produces 60% of Brazil’s sugar
1605: The population of Mexico has declined from 25 million (1490) to 1 million (1605), mostly due to diseases
1605: Escaped black slaves of Brazil found the Quilombo dos Palmares, a confederacy ruled according to Central African customs
1606: In retaliation to their guerrilla warfare, Spain authorizes the slave trade of Araucanian Indios in Chile
1606: Portugal creates the relacao (high court) of Bahia
1613: Smallpox outbreak in Brazil
1616: Dutch explorer Willem Corneliszoon Schouten finds the route around Cape Horn, a faster way to reach the Western coast of South America
1617: Paraguay is separated from Argentina
1618: In Europe Spain fights against France, Holland and England in the “Thirty Years’ War”
1621: Holland forms the Dutch West India Company to invade the Spanish and Portuguese colonies and takes control of Guyana (colonies of Demerara, Essequebo, and Berbice)
1621: The state of Maranhao is separated from Brazil with a governor in Sao Luis
1623: The Dutch seize Bahia from Portuguese Brazil with help from the Portuguese Jews and expand in the Northeast
1624: The Catholic Church foments anti-government riots in Ciudad de Mexico
1624: Dutch colons colonize north-eastern Brazil
1624: England takes St Kitts from Spain
1627: England takes Barbados from Spain
1628: The West India Company seizes 170 thousand kgs of silver from Spanish ships at Cape Matanza in Cuba
1629: Brazilian paulistas/mamelucos (slave gatherers) attack the Jesuit missions
1629: The Dutch conquers Pernambuco from Portugal
1631: To escape the Brazilian paulistas/mamelucos, the Jesuit missions of Paraguay/Argetina move inland and found Candelaria
1634: Holland takes Curacao from Spain
1635: France conquers Martinique, Guadeloupe and Dominique from Spain
1639: The Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira explore the interior of Brazil and expand its border 2500 kms west of the Tordesillas limit
1640: Portugal regains its independence and Brazil returns Portuguese
1642: British colonists settle in Honduras
1643: Sugar is planted in Barbados
1647: Earthquake in Santiago de Chile
1648: End of the “Thirty Years’ War” in Europe
1651: Jews found Curacao
1651: English colonists from Barbados found a colony along the Suriname River
1653: The Jesuit missionary Antonio Vieira arrives in Maranhao to fight against enslaving Brazilian Indios
1653: A Brazilian-born white is appointed desembargador (high-court judge)
1654: The Brazilians expel the Dutch from Pernambuco
1655: Britain conquers Jamaica from Spain
1658: Buenos Aires has a population of 1,500
1661: Buenos Aires gets its own audiencia
1661: The colonists of Sao Luis revolt against the Jesuits who protect Brazilian Indios from slavery, causing the expulsion of Vieira
1665: France turns the pirate island of Tortuga into its colony of St Dominique
1667: British pirate Henry Morgan raids Portobello (Panama)
1667: Britain surrenders Surinam to Holland in return for New Amsterdam (in New York)
1671: British pirate Henry Morgan raids Panama
1674: Spain abolishes the slave trade of Araucanian Indios in Chile
1679: There are 22 utopian Jesuit missions in Paraguay and northern Argentina
1680: Portuguese colonist Manuel de Lobo founds the colony of Sacramento inside Spanish territory of Uruguay, that competes with Buenos Aires via contraband
1683: An international group of pirates raids Vera Cruz (Mexico)
1692: The poor riot in Ciudad de Mexico against state and Church
1693: Gold is discovered in Minas Geraes, Brazil, causing a gold rush in the West, and the center of power shifts from the Northeast towards Rio de Janeiro
1695: The Portuguese exterminate the Quilombo dos Palmares
1695: Gold is discovered in Minas Gerais, Brazil
1697: Spain cedes the western part of Hispaniola to France, renamed Saint-Dominique (Haiti)
1697: An international group of pirates raids Cartagena (Colombia)
1700: Potosi has 14 dancehalls, 36 gambling houses and a theater
1702: Due to the blockade of Spain by England and Holland during the “War of Succession”, Spain authorizes French ships to trade with its American colonies and therefore removes the ban on all non-Spanish trade with the American colonies
1703: Spain authorizes the colonies to confer public office to mestizos
1711: War of the Mascates in Brazil, a rebellion by landholdes of Recife
1713: The peace of Utrecht allows Britain to export African slaves to Spanish America (1,200 a year to Buenos Aires)
1717: Spain establishes the vice-royalty of Nueva Granada (Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela) with capital in Bogota
1720: Spain abolishes the encomienda
1720: Antonio de Albuquerque is appointed first governor of Minas Gerais, Brazil
1720: Portugal establishes the captaincy of Minas Gerais with capital in Sao Paulo
1721: Jose de Antoquera jails the governor and seizes power in Paraguay
1722: Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovers the Easter Islands
1722: The first newspaper of Spanish America is published in Mexico, the “Gaceta de Mexico”
1729: Montevideo (Uruguay) is founded by Spaniards across from the Portuguese colony of Sacramento
1729: Diamonds are found in Minas Gerais
1731: Jose de Antoquera is arrested and executed in Paraguay
1739: Panama is added to Nueva Granada
1743: The university of Santiago is founded in Chile
1748: Portugal creates the captaincy of Mato Grosso
1750: The treaty of Madrid recognizes Brazil’s borders, and hands Sacramento to Spain in return for Jesuit missions (that have to be evacuated by the combined Spanish and Portuguese armies)
1752: Portugal creates the relacao (high court) of Rio de Janeiro, the second in the colony
1759: The Jesuits are expelled from Brazil
Sep 1759: Portugal expels all Jesuits from its colonies
1763: The seat of the viceroy of Brazil is moved from Bahia to Rio
Feb 1763: France surrenders Canada (except for Saint Pierre and Miquelon), Dominica, Grenada, and eastern Louisiana to Britain, Spain surrenders western Louisiana to France and Florida to Britain
1764: Cuba is made a seat of governorship, ruling over Louisiana
1765: Cuba begins an export boom of sugar
1767: The Jesuits are expelled from the Spanish empire, ending their 57 missions that counted 113,716 Indios
1767: The Franciscan friar Junipero Serra inherits the missions of Baja California when the Jesuits are expelled
1768: Gaspar de Portola is appointed governor of Las Californias
1769: Junipero Serra founds the mission of San Diego (California)
1770: Junipero Serra founds the mission of Montery (California)
1770: Buenos Aires has a population of 22,000, including 4,000 African slaves, thousands of free Africans, and an equal number of mestizos and Indios, which makes Buenos Aires the fourth largest Spanish city in South America (after Lima, Cuzco, Santiago)
1770: Port-au-Prince is chosen as the new capital of the colony of Saint-Domingue
1772: The state of Maranhao is incorporated into Brazil
1776: Spain creates the new viceroyalty of La Plata (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia) under Pedro de Cevallos, with capital in Buenos Aires although most of the population lives in Bolivia, one fourth in Paraguay and only one fourth in Argentina and Uruguay
1776: Spain institutes the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata with capital in Buenos Aires
1777: Cevallos leads a Spanish incursion into Brazil that secures Sacramento (Uruguay) once and for all, and opens up Argentina to free trade, initiating Buenos Aires’ boom
1777: Venezuela becomes a captaincy-general
1778: Chile becomes a captaincy-general
1779: Brazil founds the “Academia Real das Sciencias”
1780: Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui stages a revolt of the Indios in Peru
1783: The Indio rebellion is defeated in Peru
1788: Spain appoints Irish-born Ambrosio O’Higgins as governor of Chile in the viceroyalty of Peru
1789: Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier “Tiradentes” leads a failed independence movement in Minas Gerais against Brazil
1791: African slaves led by Toussaint L’Ouverture rebel in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), causing the collapse of the coffee economy
1791: Chile’s governor Ambrosio O’Higgins outlaws the forced labor of the encomiendas
1792: The French wars stimulate Brazil’s exports
1792: Brazil provides 30% of the cotton to Britain
1792: Cuba as become the third exporter of sugar after Jamaica and Brazil
1793: Cuba opens the first public library of Spanish America
1795: Spain is forced to cede Santo Domingo (half of Hispaniola) to France
1796: Spain appoints Ambrosio O’Higgins viceroy of Peru
1796: Gold only accounts for 17% of Brazil’s exports to Portugal compared with 51% of agricultural exports
1797: Britain defeat Spain at Cape St Vincent, conquers Trinidad from Spain and cut off trade between Spain and Spanish America
1798: The population of Brazil is three million, of which 50% are black slaves
1799: Brazil has produced about 80% of the world’s gold during the 18th century (about 1,000 tons)
1800: Spain surrenders Louisiana to France
1800: The population of Spanish America is 12.6 million of which 5.84 are in Mexico and 1.1 in Peru
1800: The population of Chile is mostly made of mestizos (300,000 out of 500,000 people)
1800: There are 550,000 black slaves in Spanish America, notably 212,000 in Cuba, 88,000 each in Peru and Venezuela, and 70,000 in Colombia
1800: Peru’s population has declined to one million from the five million of Inca Peru
1801: Spain deposes Peru’s viceroy Ambrosio O’Higgins for his revolutionary leanings
1801: A constitution is adopted in Haiti, where there are virtually no whites left with Toussaint president for life
1802: France invades Haiti and deports Toussaint
1803: France tricks and kills Haiti’s rebel Toussaint L’Ouverture
1804: Haiti (the former French colony of Saint-Dominique) declares independence from France, the second colony after the USA to become independent in America, and the first black slave revolt to triumph against the white masters, and Toussaint L’Ouverture’s lieutenant Jean-Jacques Dessalines becomes its “emperor”, but no European or American country recognizes it
1805: The population of Mexico is 5.8 million
1806: Venezuelan hero Francisco Miranda fights against the Spanish government in Nueva Granada
1806: Rio is the largest city in Brazil with 50,000 people and most people live in the countryside (only 165,000 out of 3 million live in cities)
1806: British troops seize Buenos Aires (Argentina) from Spain
1806: Haiti’s “emperor” Jean-Jacques Dessalines is overthrown by the army
1807: Local militiae expel the British from Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Nov 1807: Napoleon invades Portugal while the British ship Portugal’s king to Brazil
1807: The population of Brazil is 3.5 millions, of which 2 millions are African slaves and 500,000 are Indios
1807: Haiti splits in two
1808: Napoleon’s France invades Spain and Portugal
1808: The “Gazeta de Rio de Janeiro” is published in Brazil
1808: A popular insurrection returns Santo Domingo to Spain
1808: Dom Joao VI of Portugal moves the capital of Portugal to Rio in Brazil after Napoleon invades Portugal, and transforms Rio into one of the most modern capitals of Latin America
1808: The viceroy of Nueva Espana declares independence from Napoleon’s Spain
Sep 1810: The Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo issues his “grito de dolores” and leads a failed insurrection by Indios against white people in which thousands die
1810: Criollos establish anti-Spanish juntas in Venezuela (april, Simon Bolivar), Argentina (may, Mariano Moreno), Nueva Granada/Colombia (july, Simon Bolivar), Ecuador (august), Chile (september, Bernardo O’Higgins),
May 1810: The viceroy of Argentina is ousted by a junta faithful to Ferdinando VII and Mariano Moreno assumes power
Apr 1810: A junta including the creole Simon Bolivar in Venezuela begins an independence war against Napoleonic Spain
1810: Brazil signs a trade treaty with Britain that de facto grants Britain a monopoly in Brazil
1810: Buenos Aires has 50,000 people, the largest in Argentina
1811: The gaucho Jose Artigas starts a revolutionary movement in La Banda Oriental/Uruguay
1811: Nueva Grenada issues a constitution but civil war breaks up between the various parties
Jan 1811: Miguel Hidalgo is defeated and executed in Mexico
Jul 1811: A congress led by Bolivar and Miranda declares the independence of Venezuela
1811: A junta led by Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia declares Paraguay’s independence from Argentina
Dec 1811: Jose Miguel Carrera seizes power in Chile
1811: Argentina is ruled by a triumvirate including Bernardino Rivadavia
1812: Argentinian general Manuel Belgrano defeats Spain at in the battle of Tucuman
1812: Britain exports more goods to Brazil than to all of Asia combined
Mar 1812: Spain accepts a liberal constitution for Spanish America
Jun 1812: Spain defeats Miranda in Venezuela
1813: Colombian hero Antonio Narino fights against the Spanish government in Nueva Granada
Apr 1813: Hidalgo’s follower Jose Maria Morelos tales Acapulco
Sep 1813: Followers of Jose Maria Morelos at Chilpancingo draw a charter for Mexico’s independence
Nov 1813: Jose Maria Morelos is captured by Mexican troops
1813: Ferdinand VII is restored king of Spain by British intervention
1813: Bolivar invades Venezuela from Nueva Grenada
1813: Argentina extends the vote to mestizos and indios, and outlaws torture, slavery and the Inquisition
Mar 1813: The viceroy of Peru launches an offensive against Chile
Jan 1814: Bolivar is proclaimed dictator of Venezuela
Mar 1814: Bernardo O’Higgins replaces Carrera as the leader of the Chilean rebels
Sep 1814: Bolivar is defeated and expelled from Venezuela
Sep 1814: Jose de San Martin is put in charge of Argentina’s army
Oct 1814: O’Higgins is defeated in Chile and flees to Argentina
1814: Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia is appointed dictator of Paraguay and creates an egalitarian society
1814: Britain occupies Guyana
1814: France returns Santo Domingo to Spain
1815: Jose Artigas controls all of La Banda Oriental/Uruguay with capital in Montevideo
1815: Ferdinand VII sends Spanish troops led by general Pablo Morillo to restore order in Nueva Grenada
1815: Jose Maria Morelos is executed in Mexico
Dec 1815: Joao declares the “United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves”
Jan 1816: The Congress of Tucuman (shunned by Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) proclaims the independence of the United Provinces of The Rio de la Plata (Argentina) with capital in Buenos Aires but local caudillos in the countryside resist the central government
1816: Nueva Granada/Colombia abolishes slavery
1816: Brazil invades Uruguay
Dec 1816: With help from Haiti, Bolivas invades Venezuela’s Orinoco region
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Feb 1817: O’Higgins defeats the Spanish troops at Chacabuco
1817: The USA helps Colombian revolutionaries against Spain
Jan 1817: Argentinian general Jose de San Martin crosses the Andes and invades Chile
Feb 1818: Chile declares its independence from Spain, with O’Higgins as its first president
May 1818: San Martin leads the Chilean troops to win a battle against the Spanish troops at Maipu
1818: Brazil has 3.8 million people, of which 2 million are blacks, 1 million white, 600,000 free mestizos and 200,000 indios
Aug 1819: Bolivar defeats the Spanish at the battle of Boyaca near Bogota (Colombia)
Dec 1819: Nueva Granada is dissolved and Gran Colombia (Colombia, Panama, Venezuela) is born wth three million people (2 million in Colombia)
Dec 1819: Buenos Aires writes a constitution but the other provinces of Argentina oppose it
Aug 1820: Troops under Jose de San Martin including many British volunteers under Thomas Cochrane invade Peru from Chile to liberate it from Spanish rule
1820: Sugar, cotton and the coffee are the main exports of Brazil
1820: Portugal defeats and exiles the gaucho caudillo Artigas, and Uruguay is reconquered by Brazil
1821: Uruguya is turned into the Provincia Cisplatina of the kingdom of Portugal and Brazil
1820: Haiti is reunited under Jean Boyer
1820: Argentina is devasted by civil war, and Juan Manuel de Rosas leads a regiment of gauchos (the “colorados”)
1820: Jean-Pierre Boyer unifies Haiti and becomes its dictator
Feb 1821: The creole Augustin de Iturbide and the mestizo Vicente Guerrero declare the independence of Nueva Espana, and declares a Mexican Empire (Mexico, California, Texas, Central America) that has six million people
Apr 1821: Dom Joao returns to Portugal and leaves his son Pedro as governor of Brazil
Jul 1821: Spanish troops depose the viceroy of Nueva Espana
Sep 1821: The creole Augustin de Iturbide and the mestizo Vicente Guerrero enter the liberated Mexico City
Sep 1821: Simon Bolivar is elected first president of Gran Colombia
1821: Guatemala declares its independence from Spain
1821: The USA citizen Moses Austin obtains Spain’s permission to establish a colony of Anglosaxons in Texas
Jul 1821: Jose de San Martin liberates Lima from the Spaniards and declares Peru’s independence, a country with one million people
1821: The Congress of Cucuta declares the union of Venezuela and Colombia, abolishes slavery and choose a republican government under Simon Bolivar with Francisco Jose de Paula Santander as his vicepresident (and de facto ruler of Colombia)
Jun 1821: Bolivar defeats the Spanish at Carabobo
Jul 1821: San Martin enters Lima, but Spain still controls most of Peru
1821: The Dominican Republic (Spanish half of Hispaniola) declares its independence from Spain
1821: Bernardino Rivadavia dominates Argentinian politics, but Buenos Aires has little control over the “guacho” provinces
May 1822: Venezuela general Antonio Jose de Sucre defeats Spain at the Battle of Pichincha and, joining Bolivar, liberates Ecuador
May 1822: The creole Augustin de Iturbide declares himself emperor Agustin I of Mexico
Jul 1822: Bolivar and San Martin meet in Ecuador to decide the future of Peru and Ecuador
Jul 1822: Bolivar incorporates Ecuador into Gran Colombia
Sep 1822: Prince Pedro declares Brazil’s independence
1822: Haiti invades the Dominican Republic
1822: Ecuador achieves independence from Spain
Sep 1822: San Martin resigns in Peru
Dec 1822: Pedro I, under pressure from the Brazilian scientist Jose Bonifacio, declares Brazil (4 million people of which half are slaves) independent from Portugal and himself emperor
1822: Haiti’s Jean Boyer coquers Santo Domingo from Spain
Mar 1823: Augustin de Iturbide is overthrown and the United Provinces of Central America secede from Mexico
Jan 1823: Bernardo O’Higgins is overthrown as president of Chile by general Ramon Freire opening a rift between conservatives and liberals
Jan 1823: Pedro of Brazil hires Cochrane to fight the last remaining Portuguese troops
Aug 1823: Cochrane expels from Brazil the last remaining Portuguese troops
1823: Former regions of Nueva Espana (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua) declare the United Provinces of Central America
1823: Slavery is abolished in Chile
1823: Ramon Freire Serrano becomes president of Chile
Sep 1823: Bolivar arrives in Lima
1823: The USA intervenes in defence of the Latin American states (“Monroe Doctrine”) against the Holy Alliance (Austria, Prussia, France, Russia, Spain) that wants to restore the monarchies
Feb 1824: Peru appoints Bolivar dictator
Mar 1824: Brazil enacts a monarchical constitution
Aug 1824: Simon Bolivar defeats Spanish troops at the battle of Junin
1824: The USA becomes the first country to recognize the independence of Brazil
1824: Augustin de Iturbide tries to regain power in Mexico but is executed
Oct 1824: A liberal constitution is enacted in Mexico, with the abolition of the Inquisition and of torture, and with Guadalupe Victoria as president
1824: Bernardino Rivadavia is forced to resign in Argentina
Dec 1824: Simon Bolivar’s general Sucre defeats Spanish troops at the battles of Ayachuco in Peru
Aug 1825: Upper Peru declares its independence from Argentina (United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata) and adopts the name Bolivia in honor of Simon Bolivar, with general Sucre (a native) as its dictator
1825: Venezuela’s population is 700,000
1825: Uruguay (Banda Oriental) secedes from Brazil to join the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata (Argentina), and Brazil declares war on Argentina
1825: Costa Rica begins to export coffee
1825: Portugal recognizes the independence of Brazil
Jan 1826: The last Spanish garrison in Peru surrenders to Simon Bolivar
1826: Jose Antonio Paez, leader of the llaneros of the countryside, leads a failed Venezuelan uprising against Gran Colombia
1826: There are ten independent countries in Latin America: Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Haiti, Paraguay, La Plata, Brazil, and the population of Latin America is about 20 million
1826: Bolivar organizes the Congress of Panama to promote Latin American union
1826: Portuguese king Joao dies and Brazil’s emperor Pedro is forced by the Brazilians to renounce the throne of Portugal
1826: Bernardino Rivadavia drafts a new Argentinian constitution and is reappointed president
1827: General Jose de La Mar becomes the first president of Peru
1827: There are five revolutions in one year in Chile
1827: A treaty grants special privileges to Britain in the trade with Brazil
1827: Diego Portales founds the Conservative Party in Chile
Jul 1827: Bernardino Rivadavia is ousted in Argentina
1828: Bolivar declares himself dictator of Gran Colombia against the will of Santander who is forced into exile
1828: Peru invades Bolivia and Colombia declares war on Peru
1828: Brazil is defeated by Uruguay and Argentina at the Battle of Las Piedras, and Uruguay is granted independence under president Joaquin Suarez
1828: Vicente Guerrero loses Mexico’s elections and rebels against the results
1829: Conservative minister Diego Portales becomes the most influential politician in Chile, winning the civil war against the liberals and subdueing the military
1829: Colombia and Bolivia win the war against Peru
1829: Bolivar’s former general Andres de Santa Cruz, an indio, becomes dictator of Bolivia
1829: Cusco’s general Agustin Gamarra becomes dictator of Peru
Dec 1829: Juan Manuel de Rosas, leader of the gauchos of the countryside, becomes governor of Buenos Aires, the first representative from the provinces to obtain so much power in the country
1829: The Venezuelan writer Andres Bello, who has lived 20 years in Britain, relocates to Chile and promotes education and law
1829: Mexico abolishes slavery
1829: Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the son of Spanish immigrants from rural Veracruz, defeats Guerrero and the conservative vice-president Anastasio Bustamante becomes president of Mexico
1830: Simon Bolivar leaves Bogota for exile and Venezuela (dec 1829, under Jose Antonio Paez) and Ecuador (may, under former Bolivar’s Venezuelan-born general Juan Jose Flores) secede from Gran Colombia, Venezuela having lost more than 50% of its population (or 500,000 people) during the struggle from independence (1810-30)
1830: An overland trail is opened to Los Angeles that brings Anglosaxon colonists to Mexico’s California
1830: Fructuoso Rivera, hero of the liberation war, is appointed president of Uruguay
Dec 1830: Simon Bolivar dies largely forgotten and abandoned
Apr 1831: Following popular protests (“Noite das Garrafadas”), Pedro I abdicates and leaves Brazil to his five-year old son Pedro II
1831: Slave insurrection in Jamaica
1831: Gran Colombia is renamed Nueva Grenada
1832: Santander returns from exile to rule Colombia/ Nueva Grenada
1832: The first spinning mill opens in Mexico
1832: Ecuador annexes the Galapagos islands
1832: Santa Anna overthrows Bustamante in Mexico
May 1832: Silver mines are discovered in Chile (Chanarcillo)
1833: Britain invades the Malvinas/Falkland islands of Argentina
1833: Slavery is abolished in the British colonies, notably the sugar-producing islands
1833: Luis Jose de Orbegoso becomes president of Peru
Apr 1833: Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna is elected president of Mexico by the National Congress, but the government is run by vicepresident Gomez Farias who enacts anticlerical laws
1833: Chile proclaims a constitution, largely fashioned by the pro-clerical Portales that recognizes Catholicism as the state religion
1834: Slavery is abolished in Guyana
Apr 1834: Mexico’s president Santa Anna abrogates the liberal constitution and the anticlerical laws, dissolves the National Congress and installs himself as dictator, while the liberal leader Lorenzo de Zavala exiles himself to Mexico promoting the cause of Texan independence
1834: After general Agust¡n Gamarra is deposed, Peru plunges into civil war
Apr 1835: The gaucho Juan Manuel de Rosas is appointed dictator of Argentina
1835: Bolivia’s dictator Santa Cruz conquers Peru after helping to quell an army rebellion against Peruvian president Lu¡s Jose de Orbegoso
1835: The “Guerra dos Farrapos” erupts in Brazil, pitting the Republic of Rio Grande do Sul against the Brazilian government, with Giuseppe Garibaldi supporting the farrapos
1835: Britain occupies the coast of Honduras (Belize)
1835: Manuel Oribe, a supporter of Argentina’s dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, becomes president of Uruguay
Mar 1836: Mexico’s dictator Santa Anna crushes a Texan uprising at the battle of the Alamo (San Antonio), but general Sam Houston defeats the Spanish and Texas declares its independence
Oct 1836: Santa Cruz proclaims the federation of Peru and Bolivia
Dec 1836: Chile fights a war against Peru and Bolivia
Dec 1836: Santa Anna enacts the “Siete Leyes/ Seven Laws”, a centralist amendment to the Mexican constitution
1836: Jose Vicente Rocafuerte Rodriguez becomes president of Ecuador
Dec 1836: Mexico enacts a new constitution
1837: Portales, most influential politician of Chile (although never its president), is murdered in an attempted military coup
1837: Bustamante is elected president of Mexico
1837: The liberal Jose Ignacio de Marquez is elected president of Colombia/ Nueva Grenada
1837: Argentinian intellectuals led by poet Echeverria found the Asociacion de Mayo to fight the dictator Rosas (including Bartolome Mitre and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento)
1838: The United Provinces of Central America is dissolved, making Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua independent
1838: France bombards Mexico in the “Guerra de los Pasteles” but Santa Anna defeats them
1838: Rivera deposes Manuel Oribe in Uruguay, and Oribe’s “Blancos” start a civil war against Rivera’s “Colorados”
1838: Juan Pablo Duarte founds a secret society to find for the independence of the Dominican Republic
1838: Brazil imports 46,000 African slaves in just one year
1838: The indio pro-clerical Rafael Carrera seizes power in Guatemala and imposes a ruthless dictatorship
1839: The Uruguayan Civil War (“Guerra Grande”) erupts between the liberal “colorados” of Montevideo (supported by France, Britain, Brazil and liberal Argentinians) and the conservative “blancos” of Cerrito (supported by Argentina’s dictator Rosas)
Jan 1839: Chile defeats Peru and Bolivia, forces the dissolution of the union between the two countries, ends the career of Bolivia’s dictator Santa Cruz and allows Agustin Gamarra to seize power in Peru
1839: Regional leaders try to overthrow Colombia’s president Marquez (“Guerra de los Supremos”)
1840: Francia dies and Paraguay elects two consuls, one being Carlos Antonio Lopez
1840: Peru begins to develop the deposits of guano on a mass scale, leading to an economic boom
1840: Sao Paulo has become the biggest producer of coffee, which has passed sugar and cotton as Brazil’s main export, shifting the economic center of mass towards the south
1840: Chile’s first steamship starts running (made in the USA)
1841: Jose Ballivian becomes president of Bolivia
1841: Santa Anna seizes power again in Mexico
1841: The general Manuel Bulnes, hero of the war against Bolivia, is appointed president of Chile, presiding over a period of peace and prosperity
1841: Peru and Bolivian go at war and Peru’s dictator Gamarra is killed at the Battle of Ingavi
1841: Pedro appoints the Conservative Party to form a government in Brazil
1841: Peru starts exporting guano
1842: Garibaldi leads an Italian legion for the “colorados” in the Guerra Grande in Uruguay
1842: The University of Chile is established
1842: The University of Chile opens with Andres Bello as its first president
1842: Peru and Bolivian sign a peace treaty
1843: Venezuela is ruled by general Carlos Soublette, a follower of Paez who grants civil liberties
1843: Former president Joaquin Suarez succeeds Fructuoso Rivera in Uruguay while Manuel Oribe lays siege to Montevideo (for eight years)
1843: Jean-Pierre Boyer is overthrown in Haiti and Santo Domingo is separated again from Haiti
1844: Carlos Antonio Lopez becomes dictator of Paraguay
1844: Pedro appoints the Liberal Party to form a government in Brazil
1844: Santa Anna is overthrown in Mexico and exiled to Spanish Cuba
1844: The Dominican Republic (white and Spanish-speaking) declares its independence from Haiti (black and French-speaking)
1845: The farrapos surrender in Brazil
1845: Jose Herrera becomes president of Mexico
Dec 1845: Texas is annexed by the USA
1845: Ramon Castilla, a mestizo, becomes dictator of Peru
1845: The general Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera is elected president of Colombia/ Nueva Grenada
1845: British ships are authorized to search Brazilian ships for slaves in order to enforce the end of the slave trade
Sep 1845: Britain and France enforce a blockade of Buenos Aires to defend Uruguay
1845: Ecuador’s dictator Flores is overthrown by the Liberals
Jan 1846: Jose Herrera is deposed and general Mariano Paredes is appointed president of Mexico
Apr 1846: The USA provokes a war with Mexico
1846: One fifth of the population of San Francisco is Anglosaxon immigrants
1846: The first iron mill is built in Brazil
1846: Britain adopts free trade, which puts the sugar-producing islands at a disadvantage against slave-operated plantations in Cuba and Brazil
1847: Paez replaces Soublette with Jose Tadeo Monagas as Venezuela’s president, but Monagas declares himself dictator
1847: Benito Juarez, a Zapotec indio, becomes the governor of Oaxaca in Mexico, and the mestizo Porfirio Diaz becomes his right-hand man
1847: A conference in Lima of Latin American countries foils an attempt by former Ecuador’s dictator Flores to bring the West Coast of South America under the rule of Spains’ queen Isabella II
1847: The indios of Yucatan rebel against the elite class in the “Caste War” of Mexico
Sep 1847: The USA reach Mexico City
Feb 1848: At the end of the Mexican war (treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), the USA acquires New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and California (almost half of Mexico’s territory)
1848: Manuel Isidoro Belzu becomes dictator of Bolivia
1848: Britain and France end the blockade of Buenos Aires in Argentina
1848: Brazil imports 60,000 African slaves in just one year
1849: Paez attemps a coup against Monagas, but is arrested and exiled
1849: Juan Rafael Mora becomes president of Costa Rica
1849: Pedro appoints the Conservative Party to form a government in Brazil
1849: The liberal Jose Hilario Lopez becomes president of Colombia
1849: The Partido Liberal is formed in Chile
1850: At the end of the “Caste War” the population of Mexico’s Yucatan has declined by 40%
1850: Mexico’s silver production reaches its pre-independence level (560 thousand kgs), about half of the world production
1850: Latin America’s population is 33 million
1850: The population of Latin America is 30 million (Mexico and Brazil 7 million each, Argentina 1 million)
1851: A military coup installs general Jose Maria Urbina as dictator of Ecuador, handing the power to the liberals from Guayaquil
1851: Cattle products account for 78% of Argentina’s exports
1851: A railway opens between Lima and its port of Callao
1851: Colombia abolishes slavery
1851: The conservative Manuel Montt becomes the first civilian president of Chile, but has to suppress violent protests by liberals who denounce the rigged elections, killing thousands of people
1851: Manuel Oribe’s “Blancos” of the “Partido Nacional” are defeated in Uruguay by the “Colorados”
1851: Justo Jose de Urquiza, governor of Entre Rios, declares Entre Rios independent from Argentina, and joins an alliance with Brazil and Uruguay against Argentine-supported Oribe
1852: Urbina of Ecuador expels the Jesuits and abolishes slavery
1852: Slavery is abolished in Uruguay
1852: The first steamboat sails up the Amazon River in Brazil
Feb 1852: The civil war in Uruguay ends with the victory of the “colorados” (supported by Brazil and by Argentinian rebels led by general Justo Jose de Urquiza) and the overthrow of Argentine’s dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas by Justo Jose de Urquiza
May 1852: The “Pact of San Nicolas” appoints Urquiza head of Argentina, while his opponent Bartolome Mitre goes into exile
1853: The United Provinces of Central America adopts a constitution under Urquiza and the name Argentina, but Buenos Aires de facto secedes and the capital moves to Parana
Jun 1853: Santa Anna is appointed again dictator of Mexico, drives to exile both Benito Juarez and Melchor Ocampo of Michoacan
1853: Peru annexes a piece of Amazon forest claimed by Ecuador
1853: A new constitution in Colombia grants state great autonomy
May 1854: The Mexican liberals led by the illiterate indio guerrillero Juan Alvarez and by Ignacio Commonfort proclaim the “Plan de Ayutla” against Santa Anna
1854: Peru abolishes slavery
1854: The first railway is inaugurated in Brazil
1855: The USA builds the Panama railway
1855: Manuel Isidoro Belzu appoints general Jorge Cordova to be his successor
Jul 1855: Benito Juarez returns to Mexico from his USA exile
Aug 1855: Santa Anna is forced to leave Mexico
1855: The USA adventurer William Walker conquers Nicaragua and appoints himself president
Nov 1855: Alvarez enters Mexico City as the new president and forms a government that includes the liberals Benito Juarez, Miguel Lerdo, Jose-Maria Iglesias and Melchor Ocampo
Dec 1855: Alvarez resigns and is replaced by Ignacio Comonfort
1856: Ecuador’s Urbina appoints general Francisco Robles as his successor but remains de facto in power
1856: Gabriel Antonio Pereira, of the “Partido Nacional”, becomes president of Uruguay
1857: Jose Maria Linares becomes dictator of Bolivia
Feb 1857: Mexico proclaims a new liberal and anticlerical constitution, largely drawn by Benito Juarez
Dec 1857: Mexican general Felix Zuloaga stages a coup against Comonfort and Juarez, starting the “Guerra de Reforma/ War of the Reform”
May 1858: Benito Juarez, a Zapotec indio, is elected president of Mexico by the liberals in Veracruz
1858: Colombia/ Nueva Grenada adopts the name Granadine Confederation
1858: A military coup removes Monagas and installs Paez again as president of Venezuela
1859: Mexico passes a law expropriating the Church of all its lands (but the beneficiaries are mostly foreigners and rich Mexicans), starting a civil war
1859: Peru occupies the southern provinces of Ecuador
Oct 1859: Urquiza defeats the militia of Buenos Aires led by Bartolome Mitre at the battle of Cepeda and forces Buenos Aires to reenter the federation of Argentina
1860: Gabriel Garcia Moreno, representing the conservatives from Quito, allies with Flores to restore order in Ecuador and becomes the new dictator, fostering education and road building and restoring the influence of the Catholic Church (“virtue, faith and order”)
1860: Chile is the world’s leading copper exporter
Mar 1860: Santiago Derqui from Cordoba becomes president of the reunited Argentina
1860: William Walker is executed in Nicaragua
1860: Bernardo Berro of the “Partido Nacional” is elected president of Uruguay
1860: Juarez restores order in Mexico
1860: Peru enacts its 15th constitution
1860: The Liberal Party wins the elections in Brazil (but only about 1% of the population is entitled to vote)
Jan 1861: Benito Juarez’s government seizes power in Mexico City and ends the Guerra de Reforma
Jul 1861: Britain, France and Spain ally against Mexican reforms
Sep 1861: The militia of Buenos Aires led by Bartolome Mitre rebels again and this time defeats Urquiza, so that Mitre can become president of a truly united Argentina
1861: Jose Joaquin Perez is chosen to become president of Chile by Montt
1861: General Jose Maria de Acha seizes power in Bolivia
1861: Santo Domingo’s dictator Pedro Santana asks Spain for annexion
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Jan 1862: British, French and Spanish troops attack Mexico over a financial dispute, but Britain and Spain soon withdraw
1862: Bartolome Mitre is appointed president of Argentina, thus reuniting the country after the civil war
1862: The USA recognizes Haiti’s independence
1862: Francisco Solano Lopez succeeds his father in Paraguay and creates a powerful army
1862: Ecuador declares war on Colombia
May 1862: The French invaders are defeated by the Mexican army at Puebla on the “Cinco de Mayo”
1863: British ships enact a six-day blockade of Rio to force Brazil to free slaves
Oct 1863: Guatemala defeats El Salvador in a war, with Honduras siding with El Salvador and Nicaragua and Costa Rica with Guatemala
1863: Castilla loses power in Peru and is succeeded by Juan Antonio Pezet
1863: The USA supplies weapons to the Mexican government fighting against France
1863: Ecuador loses the war against Colombia
1863: Venezuela abolishes the death penalty for all crimes (the first country in the world)
1863: Paez leaves Venezuela that plunges into anarchy
1863: The railway from Santiago to Valparaiso is inaugurated
1863: The Granadine Confederation adopts the name United States of Colombia
May 1863: France defeats Mexico and captures Ciudad de Mexico, while Juarez flees north
Sep 1864: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay attack Lopez’s Paraguay (“War of the Triple Alliance”)
1864: Mariano Melgarejo seizes power in Bolivia, and establishes a depraved regime
1864: 70% of Chile’s exports come from copper, gold and silver
May 1864: France crowns the archduke Maximilian of Austria emperor of Mexico
1865: Mariano Ignacio Prado repels a Spanish naval attack and becomes dictator of Peru
1865: Jamaican ex-slaves stage a revolt against the British
1865: Spain abandons Santo Domingo
Apr 1865: Guatemalan dictator Rafael Carrera dies
1866: Ecuador’s writer Juan Montalvo founds the newspaper “El Cosmopolita” to criticize the dictatorship of Garcia Moreno
Mar 1867: France withdraws from Mexico, Maximilian is overthrown and executed by Benito Juarez, who restores his government in Mexico City
1868: Bartolome Mitre is replaced by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento the “schoolmaster” as president of Argentina, the first civilian president since Rosas seized power, who embarks on a program of mass education and foreign immigration
1868: Mining production in Mexico is finally back to 1808 values
1868: The colonel Jose Balta becomes dictator of Peru
1868: Lorenzo Batlle y Grau of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1869: Argentina has 1.8 million people
1869: Jose Marti is arrested in Cuba for his anti-Spanish activities
1869: France intervenes in Haiti
1869: The newspaper “La Prensa” is founded in Argentina
1869: Pedro appoints the Conservative Party to form a government in Brazil
Mar 1870: Paraguay surrenders to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, losing almost 40% of its territory, and Paraguay’s dictator Lopez commits suicide
1870: Urquiza is assassinated in Argentina
1870: Antonio Guzman Blanco of the Liberal Party becomes president of Venezuela, dominating its political scene for 18 years
1870: The newspaper “La Nacion” is founded in Argentina
1870: The population of Mexico is 9 million
1870: The Republican Party is founded in Brazil
1870: Tomas Guardia seizes power in Costa Rica
1871: The liberal Federico Errazuriz becomes president of Chile
1871: Spain intervenes in Haiti
1871: The liberal Justo Rufino Barrios seizes power in Guatemala
1872: Mexico’s president Juarez dies (possibly poisoned) and is succeeded by Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada
1872: The USA businessman Minor Cooper Keith opens a banana plantation in Costa Rica
1872: Manuel Pardo is the first civilian president of Peru, but his tenure is rocked by the collapse of the guano economy
1872: Germany intervenes in Haiti
Jul 1872: El Salvador and Guatemala defeat Honduras in a brief war
1873: Britain forces Zanzibar to outlaw the slave trade
1873: Manuel Ferraz de Campos Salles and Prudente de Moraes sign a republican manifesto calling for an end to the empire
1873: The railway between Mexico City and Veracruz is inaugurated
1874: The first cable between Brazil and Europe
1874: Chile increases the number of men who can vote (but still fewer than 50%)
1874: Domingo Faustino Sarmiento is replaced by Nicolas Avellaneda as president of Argentina (280.000 immigrants have entered Argentina during Sarmiento’s rule)
1875: Gabriel Garcia Moreno of Ecuador is assassinated, opening an age of anarchy
1875: Peru exports 20 million tons of guano (fertilizer from bird droppings)
1875: Brazil provides about half of the coffee traded in the world
1876: The mestizo Porfirio Diaz overthrows Mexico’s president Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada in the name of free elections, but proceeds to create a dictatorship but also to develop the infrastructure of Mexico
1876: Mariano Ignacio Prado again becomes dictator of Peru
1876: Anibal Pinto Garmendia becomes president of Chile
1876: Chile supplies 38% of the copper traded in the world
1876: The population of Peru is 2.7 million
Apr 1876: Guatemala defeats El Salvador again, forcing the formation of a pro-Guatemalan government in Salvador led by Rafael Zaldivar.
1877: Britain intervenes in Haiti
1878: Following their victory in the elections, Pedro appoints the Liberal Party to form a government in Brazil
1879: Gold boom in Guyana
1879: Chile fights a border war against Peru and Bolivia (“War of the Pacific”)
1879: The civil war in Colombia kills 80,000 people
1879: Argentinian general Julio Argentino Roca is dispatched to eradicate the last remaining indios
1880: The liberal but pro-clerical Rafael Nunez is elected president of Colombia
1880: 90% of Mexicans are illiterate
1880: Cattle and sheep products account for 90% of Argentina’s exports
1880: Nicolas Avelaneda is replaced by Julio Argentino Roca as president of Argentina
1881: Domingo Santa Maria becomes president of Chile
1881: Francesco Matarazzo arrives in Brazil from Italy and begins building an economic empire
1881: Jose Marti mobilizes the Cuban community in the USA against Spain
1882: Ignacio de Veintemilla seizes power in Ecuador
1882: Maximo Santos of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1882: Argentina’s first meat-packing plant is built by British investors
1883: At the end of the “War of the Pacific” Bolivia loses its access to the sea (the port of Antofagasta) and the nitrate fields to Chile, Peru loses its southern provinces to Chile and is left bankrupt
1883: Jose Maria Placido Caamano becomes dictator of Ecuador
1883: Sao Paulo in Brazil has 35,000 people
1884: A railway is inaugurated between Mexico City and El Paso
1885: Costa Rica finance minister Mauro Fernandez launches a program of mass education
1885: El Salvador defeats Guatemala at the Chalchuapa Battle and Justo Rufino Barrios is killed, thus ending his dream of conquering Central America
1886: Peru’s general Andres Avelina Caceres seizes power
1886: The Conservative Party wins the elections in Brazil
1886: Colombia enacts a new constitution drafted by president Rafael Nunez, that proclaims a unitarian Republic of Colombia instead of the previous federalist United States of Colombia (one of the longest lasting constitutions in the world)
1886: Maximo Tajes of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1886: Jose Battle y Ordonez founds the newspaper “El Dia” in Uruguay
1886: Roca is replaced by his brother-in-law Miguel Juarez Celman as president of Argentina
1886: The liberal wealthy landowner Jose Manuel Balmaceda becomes president of Chile (beginning of the liberal republic), and invests heavily in schools and railways
1887: The Partido Democratico is founded in Chile
1888: Peru signs the “Grace Contract” that grants Britain 66 years of monopoly on the railroads but saves the country from bankruptcy
1888: Chile annexes the Easter Islands
1888: The railway from Mexico City to Monterrey to Laredo is inaugurated
1888: Slavery is abolished in Brazil (the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery), and European immigration booms (132,000 in 1888)
1888: Antonio Guzman Blanco retires from politics opening a decade of anarchy in Venezuela
1888: A financial crisis hits Argentina
1888: Colombia signs a concordat with the Catholic Church
Nov 1889: A military coup led by general Deodoro da Fonseca deposes Brazil’s king Pedro I, abolishes the constitution and inaugurates the republic, with power alternating between Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, and Brazil enters a stage of rapid economic growth
1889: Costa Rica holds its first free elections
1889: The first Conference of American States is held in Washington
1889: Brazil’s population is 14 million, of which 15% are black and 32% mulatto
1889: The first International Conference of American States is held in Washington, resulting in the founding of the “International Union of American Republics”
Aug 1890: Argentinian president Celman is forced to resign by popular protests and vicepresident Carlos Pellegrini succeeds him
Apr 1890: Leandro Alem organizes the Marxist-leaning Union Civica in Argentina
1890: Julio Herrera y Obes of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1890: 900,000 Europeans have emigrated to Brazil since 1822
1890: 1.74 million Europeans have emigrated to Argentina since 1851, mostly from Spain and Italy
1890: Brazil’s population is 14.3 million
1890: The production of nitrate in Chile has tripled in ten years
1890: The first general strike is held in Chile
Oct 1891: Balmaceda is deposed in a coup staged by the parliament, and naval captain Jorge Montt Alvarez becomes president of Chile (beginning of the parliamentary republic)
1891: Peru’s anti-clerical writer Manuel Gonzalez Prada help found the party “National Union”, a defender of the Quechua indios
Feb 1891: Brazil proclaims a new US-inspired federalist constitution (“Old Republic”) and Deodoro de Fonseca is elected first president
Nov 1891: Deodoro de Fonseca is overthrown by vice-president and army marshal Floriano Peixoto, who begins a military dictatorship
1892: The conservative Luis Saenza Pena is elected president of Argentina
1892: Leandro Alem founds the Union Civica Radical in Argentina
1892: A railway linking Bolivia with the Pacific coast (Oruro-Antofagasta) is inaugurated
1893: Second navy rebellion in Brazil
1893: Revolucao Federalista in Brazil
1893: Argentina’s Radicals attempt an armed insurrection
1893: The liberal Jose Santos Zelaya seizes power in Nicaragua
1894: Juan Idiarte Borda of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1894: Juan Justo organizes the Partido Socialista Argentino
Mar 1894: Prudente Jose de Morais e Barros, a former governor of Sao Paulo, becomes the first civilian president of Brazil
1894: The USA sends troops to Nicaragua
1894: Colombia’s president Rafael Nunez dies and the country plunges again into anarchy
1895: Luis Saenza Pena resigns and is succeeded by the conservative Jose Uriburu as president of Argentina
1895: Policarpo Bonilla is elected president of Honduras
1895: Britain and Venezuela argue over the border of Guyana
1895: Jose Eloy Alfaro, representing the anti-clerical liberals from Guayaquil, becomes president of Ecuador
1895: Jose Nicolas de Pierola of the Partido Civilista leads a revolution against general Avelina Caceres and becomes president of Peru, leading the country to rapid economic growth (beginning of the “Aristocratic Republic”)
1895: Jose Marti lands in Cuba and proclaims the independence of Cuba from Spain but is killed by Spanish troops
1896: Federico Errazuriz Echaurren becomes president of Chile
1892: Leandro Alem of Argentina’s Union Civica Radical commits suicide and is succeeded at the leadership of the party by his nephew Hipolito Yrigoyen
1896: War of Canudos in Brazil
1896: Aparicio Saravia of the “Partido Nacional” (the “Blancos”) starts a civil war in Uruguary
1897: Juan Lindolfo Cuestas of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1898: The USA defeats Spain and gains the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico, ending Spanish rule in America
Nov 1898: Sao Paulo’s governor Manuel Ferraz de Campos Salles becomes president of Brazil
1898: Jose Uriburu is succeeded by the conservative Julio Roca as president of Argentina
1899: Civil war erupts in Colombia between liberals and conservatives (“Guerra de los Mil Dias”)
1899: Banana tycoon Cooper Keith founds United Fruit Company in Costa Rica
1899: Eduardo Lopez de Romana becomes president of Peru during the stable “Aristocratic Republic”
1899: Cipriano Castro becomes dictator of Venezuela
1899: Nicaragua becomes a de-facto colony of the USA
1900: The population of Peru is 3.7 million,
1900: Only 300 thousand Native Americans have survived of Brazil is 17.3 million, of Argentina 4.6 million, of Mexico 13.6 milliOn
1900: The Partido Liberal is founded in Mexico by leftists
1900: The USA investor Edward Doheny strikes oil in Mexico
1900: Sao Paulo in Brazil has 239,00 people
1901: German Riesco Err zuriz becomes president of Chile
1901: Another liberal general, Leonidas Plaza Gutierrez, succeeds Eloy Alfaro as dictator of Ecuador
May 1902: Cuba becomes a republic and Tomas Estrada Palma is elected president
1902: ://www.scaruffi.com>Youstol Dispage dies
1902: The USA brokers a peace in Colombia, after 120,000 people have been killed
1902: Uruguya has one million people
Nov 1902: Campos Salles is replaced by Rodrigues Alves, also from Sao Paulo, as president of Brazil
1903: Panama secedes from Colombia with help from the USA
1903: The Civilista Party gains control of power in Peru, with a program of industrialization and urbanization
1903: Jose Battle y Ordonez, son of former president Lorenzo Batlle y Grau, of the “Colorado Party” is the first civilian president of Uruguay, dominating its politics for 28 years
1904: Vaccine Revolt in Brazil
1904: For the first time gold and silver represent less than 50% of Mexico’s exports
1904: Uruguay’s president Battle defeats the “Blancos” of Aparicio Saravia at the battle of Masoller
1904: The conservative Rafael Reyes is elected president of Colombia, but shares the government with the liberals (“Concordia Nacional”)
1904: The USA begins work on the Panama canal
1904: USA troops leave Cuba, after having de facto ran its government for five years
1904: Bolivia loses the eastern regions to Brazil
1904: Manuel Bonilla is appointed president of Honduras
1904: Roca is succeeded by the conservative Manuel Quintana as president of Argentina
1904: The first meat-packing factory opens in Uruguay
1905: The USA invades the Dominican Republic
1905: Argentina’s Radicals attempt a second armed insurrection, and a Spanish anarchist tries to shoot the president
1905: Argentina exports more wheat than meat
1905: Riots to protest against inflation in Chile’s capital Santiago leave more than 300 people dead
1906: Argentinian president Manuel Quintana dies of fatal wounds following a terrorist attack by an anarchist, and is succeeded by Alcorta Figueroa
1906: Eloy Alfaro returns to power in Ecuador with a coup
1906: The collapse of coffee prices causes an economic crisis in Brazil
1906: Pedro Montt Montt becomes president of Chile
1906: The Federacion de Estudiantes de Chile is founded
Nov 1906: Afonso Pena becomes president of Brazil
1907: The government of Chile massacres striking miners in Iquique
1907: Literacy in Uruguay is 55%
1907: The population of Santiago in Chile is 330,000
1907: Nicaraguan troops remove Manuel Bonilla and install Miguel Davila as president of Honduras
1907: Battle in Uruguay installs Claudio WIlliman as president
1908: Juan Vicente Gomez seizes power in Venezuela and becomes a ruthless dictator
1908: A railway connects Buenos Aires to the Bolivian border
1908: Augusto Leguia is elected president of Peru
1909: Jose Miguel Gomez is elected president of Cuba
1909: Costa Rica is the world’s biggest exporter of coffee
1909: Federacion Obrera de Chile is founded
1909: A Russian anarchist kills the chief of police of Buenos Aires in Argentina
1909: The populist Emiliano Zapata is elected president of the small village of Anenecuilco in Mexico with a program of land redistribution
December 1909: The USA forces Nicaragua’s president Jose Santos Zelaya to resign
1910: The marshall Hermes da Fonseca becomes president of Brazil and faces the “Revolta da Chibata”
1910: The population of Mexico is 15 million
1910: The “International Union of American Republics” changes name to “Pan-American Union”
Oct 1910: The conservative Roque Saenz Pena becomes president of Argentina
Nov 1910: Hermes da Fonseca becomes president of Brazil
Oct 1910: Francisco Madero in exile in Texas proclaims the “Plan de San Luis Potosi” that calls for a liberal revolution against Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, while Pancho Villa engages in guerrilla in the north
1910: Mexican’s exports have grown 900% since 1877, shifting from Europe to the USA
August 1910: General Juan Jose Estrada, with help from the USA, conquers Nicaragua
1910: Brazil has a population of 22 million
1911: Battle returns as president of Uruguay
May 1911: Pancho Villa conquers Ciudad Juarez in north Mexico and Porfirio Diaz resigns
Nov 1911: Francisco Madero is inaugurated as new president of Mexico, but Emiliano Zapata begins a rebellion in the south while Pascual Orozco begins a rebellion in the north
1911: A coup led by Plaza overthrows Eloy Alfaro in Ecuador
1911: The Brazilian and Peruvian rubber industry collapses after the British transplant rubber to Malaysia
1911: Russian-born USA businessman Sam Zemurray gains control of Honduras by having Manuel Bonilla oust and replace president Miguel Davila
1912: Universal male suffrage in Argentina
1912: The population of Latin America is 77 million (Mexico 14 million, Brazil 24 million, Argentina 7 million)
1912: Venezuela’s dictator Gomez shuts down the Universidad Central of Caracas following student riots
Jul 1912: Madero’s general Victoriano Huerta defeats the rebels in the north
1912: The USA occupies Nicaragua
1912: Former dictator Eloy Alfaro of Ecuador is lynched by the people
1912: Luis Emilio Recabarren-Serrano founds the “Partido Obrero Socialista” (POS), later renamed Communist Party
1912: The conservative Guillermo Billinghurst is elected president of Peru
Feb 1913: Victoriano Huerta seizes power in Mexico after Madero is assassinated, but rebellions flare up throughout the country (Pancho Villa in the north, Emiliano Zapata in the south, Venustiano Carranza in the northeast, and Alvaro Obregon in Sonora)
1913: More than 70% of Bolivia’s exports are tin
1913: Roque Saenz Pena becomes ill and is replaced by vicepresident Victorino de la Plaza
1913: Argentina’s per-capita GDP is twice Italy’s
1913: The main export of Ecuador is cacao
1913: Coffee accounts for 62.3% of Brazilian exports 52% of Venezuela’s exports
1913: The USA is the biggest importer of Latin American goods (29.7%) followed by Britain (20.7%)
1913: Honduras’ president Manuel Bonilla dies but Sam Zemurray retains control of the country
1913: Mario Garcia Menocal becomes president of Cuba
1913: The subway of Buenos Aires (Argentina) opens
1913: 30% of Argentina’s population is foreign born
Apr 1914: The USA occupies Veracruz, Mexico’s main port, to help the revolutionaries
Aug 1914: Carranza and Obregon enter Mexico City and depose Mexican president Victoriano Huerta, but neither Villa nor Zapata accept Carranza as president
Nov 1914: The USA withdraws from Veracruz
1914: A British-built subway opens in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Britain owns 70% of the 33,000 kms of railway in the country
1914: A third of Argentina’s population is foreign born
1914: Oscar Raimundo Benavides stages a military coup in Peru and seizes power from the Civilistas
Nov 1914: Wenceslau Braz-Pereira-Gomes of Minas Gerais becomes president of Brazil
1914: Roque Saenz Pena dies and is succeeded by as president of Argentina
1914: The Panama canal, built by the USA, is inaugurated
1914: Argentina’s population has increased to 8 million, with 3 million immigrants from Europe in one century,
1914: “Sedicao de Juazeiro” in Brazil
1915: Jose de Pardo y Barreda is appointed president of Peru by the military
1915: The USA occupies Haiti to end a civil war, after 21 of 22 Haitian presidents have been violently deposed since 1843
Apr 1915: Obregon defeats Villa in Mexico at the battle of Celaya
Oct 1915: The USA recognizes Carranza as president of Mexico and Pancho Villa raids the USA
1916: Hipolito Irigoyen is the first democratically elected president of Argentina
1916: The Brazilian Socialist Party is founded
1916: Plaza of Ecuador is succeeded by Alfredo Baquerizo Moreno, but real power falls in the hands of the “argolla” (the ring) led by Guayaquil banker Francisco Urbina Jado
1916: Contestado War in Brazil
Mar 1916: The USA enters Mexico to fight Pancho Villa
1916: Hipolito Yrigoyen of the Radical party wins the first elections after universal male suffrage and becomes president of Argentina
1917: Brazil enters WWI on the side of Britain and France, the only Latin American country to do so
Jan 1917: Mexico enacts a new constitution
1917: Frederico Tinoco stages a coup in Costa Rica
1917: Earthquake in Guatemala
1917: Oil is discovered in Venezuela
1918: Workers and students protest in Peru, led by Lima’s student Victor Raul Haya de la Torre and Lima’s journalist Jose Carlos Mariategui
Jan 1918: Dissident socialists in Argentina form the Partido Comunista
1918: The “University Reform Movement” that starts from the University of Cordoba in Argentina demands autonomy of the universities (the universities become centers of the opposition)
Nov 1918: Rodrigues Alves becomes president of Brazil again, but dies and is replaced by Delfim Moreira
Apr 1919: Emiliano Zapata is assassinated by the government of Mexico
1919: Augusto Leguia wins the elections in Peru, cracks down on student and workers’ protests and enacts a new constitution to pass economic and social reforms
1919: Uruguay enacts a new constitution that greatly increases the number of voters
Jul 1919: Epitacio Pessoa becomes president of Brazil
Nov 1920: Obregon is elected president of Mexico while Pancho Villa surrenders to the government and retires to a hacienda
1920: Sao Paulo in Brazil has 579,000 people
1920: Brazil’s population is 30 million
1920: British investor Weetman Pearson discovers the largest oil field in the world in Mexico
1920: Juan Bautista Saavedra seizes power in Bolivia
1920: Carranza’s assassination by the military led by Alvaro Obregon starts a new civil war in Mexico
Dec 1920: Arturo Alessandri-Palma, the candidate of the Liberal Alliance coalition (Radical and Democratic parties), narrowly wins the elections for president of Chile
1921: Royal Dutch Shell discovers in Venezuela, and its per capita income rapidly becomes the highest in Latin America
1921: Mexico is the second largest producer of oil in the world
1921: Alfredo Zayas becomes president of Cuba
1922: Yrigoyen’s trusted man Marcelo de Alvear becomes president of Argentina
1922: Luis Emilio Recabarren Serrano founds the “Partido Communista de Chile” (PCC)
1922: Artur da Silva Bernardes becomes president of Brazil
Jul 1923: Pancho Villa is assassinated
Nov 1922: Artur Bernardes becomes president of Brazil
Dec 1923: Adolfo de la Huerta leads a rebellion against the Mexican government
1923: While in exile in Mexico, Haya de la Torre founds the Marxist-inspired party “Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana” (APRA), representing the Quechua indios of Peru
Nov 1924: Plutarco Elias Calles, also from Sonora, succeeds his mentor Obregon as president of Mexico
1924: The USA withdraws from the Dominican Republic
May 1924: Mexico’s president Obregon defeats Adolfo de la Huerta’s rebels
Sep 1924: A military junta led by general Luis Altamirano forces Chile’s president Alessandri to resign
1924: Brazilians riot in Sao Paulo to protest economic crisis and try to overthrow president Bernardes
1924: USA investment in Cuba has multipled by more than 40 times since 1895 to $1.24 billion
Mar 1925: Another military coup reinstates Alessandri as president of Chile
Aug 1925: Chile approves a new constitution separating church and state
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Nov 1925: Alessandri resigns again as president of Chile and is replaced by Emiliano Figueroa, causing a two-day general strike
1925: Chile has had more than 120 governments since 1892
1925: The liberals are overthrown in Ecuador and Isidro Ayora is installed as president
1925: Gerardo Machado becomes president of Cuba and installs a dictatorship, opposed by the newly-founded Communist Party
1925: The USA withdraws from Nicaragua
1925: 3.5 million Europeans (mainly Italians and Portuguese) have immigrated to Brazil since 1886
Jul 1926: The “Cristeros” rise up against the Mexican government’s decision to seize all properties of the Catholic Church
1926: The Mexican government seizes all the properties of the Catholic Church
1926: Bolivia’s president Saavedra appoints Hernando Siles-Reyes, founder of the Nationalist Party, to be his successor
Nov 1926: Washington Luiz-Pereira de Souza becomes president of Brazil
May 1927: The colonel Carlos Ibanez seizes power in Chile, opening a period of political chaos
1927: The USA invades Nicaragua again to depose president Augusto Cesar Sandino
1927: Under pressure from the USA, Peru and Colombia ratify new borders that penalize Peru
1928: Obregon is reelected president of Mexico
1928: Venezuela’s dictator Gomez quashes a rebellion by students and young officers, many of whom go into exile (Jovito Villalba, Raul Leon, Romulo Betancourt)
1928: Jose Carlos Mariategui founds the Peruvian Socialist (later Communist) Party
1928: Hipolito Yrigoyen is reappointed president of Argentina but his erratic behavior causes riots
Jul 1928: Obregon of Mexico is assassinated by a Cristero
Jun 1926: The “Cristero” rebels are defeated in Mexico
Dec 1928: Emilio Portes Gil becomes president of Mexico, but real power is in the hands of Calles
Mar 1929: Calles founds the Pardido Nacional Revolucionario (later renamed “Pardido Revolucionario Istitucional” or PRI)
Nov 1929: Calles’ choice Pascual Ortiz Rubio becomes president of Mexico, the beginning of rule by the PRI
1929: Venezuela is the second world producer of oil after the USA
1929: Colombia’s population increases from 5 million in 1912 to 8 million
1929: Augusto Cesar Sandino begins a guerrilla war in Nicaragua against the USA
1929: The first Latin American Communist Conference in held in Buenos Aires
1929: Harvest of sugar peaks at five million tons in Cuba
1929: Ecuador becomes the first Latin American country to grant women the right to vote
Oct 1930: The military seizes power in Brazil and installs the fascist government of rancher Getulio Vargas, who launches a populist revolution (end of the “Old Republic”)
1930: One million Europeans immigrated to Argentina in one decade, 31% of the population is foreign-born, 46% of Argentinians live in the province of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires has two million people, literacy is 60%,
1930: Latin America’s population is over 100 million
1930: Zemurray sells his banana company in Honduras to United Fruit but becomes United Fruit’s largest shareholder
1930: The military, led by lieutenant colonel Luis Sanchez Cerro, overthrow Leguia in Peru, opening the age of the “tripartite” political system (the military, APRA and PCP)
1930: A coup overthrows Bolivia’s president Siles-Reyes
Sep 1930: A coup overthrows Hipolito Yrigoyen and installs Uriburu again, the beginning of military intervention in Argentina’s politics
1930: The liberal Enrique Olaya Herrera is appointed president of Colombia, returning the liberals to power after four decades
1931: Daniel Salamanca of the Partido Republicano-Genuino wins elections in Bolivia
1931: Rafael Trujillo seizes power in the Dominican Republic
1931: A Partido Comunista is founded in Venezuela
Nov 1931: general Agustin Justo wins elections in Arngetina
1931: Cuba’s population grows from 1.6 million in 1899 to 4 million, thanks to European immigration and improved health care
1931: Literacy in Chile is 56%
1931: Gabriel Terra of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1931: A coup removes Ayora from power and opens a period of instability in Ecuador
1931: The general Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez seizes power in El Salvador
Oct 1931: Haya returns to Peru but loses elections to the army’s candidate Luis Sanchez Cerro
1931: The general Jorge Ubico becomes dictator of Guatemala
Jul 1931: Chile’s president Ibanez is forced to resign by strikes by workers, students and lawyers
Oct 1931: Conservative candidate Juan Montero becomes Chile’s president
1932: Bolivia and Paraguay go to war over border areas (“Chaco War”)
1932: Uruguay allows women to vote
1932: Female suffrage in Brazil
Jun 1932: The airforce commander Marmaduke Grove establishes a socialist republic in Chile for a few months
Jul 1932: More than 1,000 members of APRA are executed during an insurrection in Peru, Haya is arrested and APRA is banned
Jul 1932: The wealthy class of Sao Paulo rebels in Brazil against Vargas but their insurrection is crushed
Oct 1932: Arturo Alessandri becomes president of Chile again and restores order, turning Chile into the most democratic country in Latin America
1932: Agustine Farabundo Marti leads a communist uprising in El Salvador and Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez’s troops kill about 30,000 people (“La matanza”)
1933: Marmaduke Grove founds the “Partido Socialista” (PS) of Chile
1933: The Partido Socialista is founded in Chile
1933: Coffee represents 71% of Brazil’s exports
Sep 1933: Cuba’s dictator Gerardo Machado flees the country and Ramon Grau San Martin proclaims a socialist republic
1933: Peru’s dictator Sanchez Cerro is assassinated by a supporter of APRA and replaced by army marshal Oscar Raimundo Benavides, while Haya, released from jail, goes abroad
1933: The USA withdraws from Nicaragua and general Anastasio Somoza is chosen to lead the National Guard
Dec 1933: The Mexican government enacts a socialist-inspired “Six-year Plan”
Jan 1934: Fulgencio Batista stages a coup and seize power in Cuba
May 1934: Cuba and the USA sign a treaty ending the USA protectorate over Cuba
Jul 1934: The general Lazaro Cardenas of the PRI (the former war minister and governor of Michoacan) succeeds Calles as president of Mexico and nationalizes the oil industry and launches a socialist agrarian reform
1934: Gabriel Terra of Uruguay enacts a new constitution granting him quasi-dictatorial powers
1934: The USA leaves Haiti
1934: Sandino is assassinated by the men of general Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua
1934: Jose Maria Velasco-Ibarra wins elections in Ecuador but is soon ousted by the military
1934: The liberal Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo is elected president of Colombia
1933: Bolivia’s president Salamanca is overthrown in a coup and replaced with his vice president Jose Luis Tejada Sorzano of the Liberal Party
1935: Bolivia loses the war against Paraguay that annexes most of Bolivia’s Gran Chaco after more than 100,000 people have died, mostly of diseases
1935: Luis Carlos Prestes founds the “Alianca Nacional Libertadora” (ANL) that includes socialists and communists
1935: Juan Vicente Gomez of Venezuela dies, opening a decade of chaos
1936: A coup installs colonel David Toro Ruilova as dictator of Bolivia
1936: Communists, Radicals, Socialists and the Unions of Chile form the Frente Popular
1937: Ruilova resigns and is replaced by colonel German Busch Becerra as dictator of Bolivia, who experiments with “military socialism”
Nov 1937: Brazil’s dictator Getulio Vargas abolishes political parties (“Estado Novo”)
1937: Chile’s exports have more than tripled in five years
1937: Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza becomes president of Nicaragua
Oct 1937: Dominican’s president Rafael Trujillo orders the extermination of the Haitian minority numbering at least 20,000 people (“the Parsley Massacre”)
Mar 1938: Mexico nationalizes USA and British oil companies
1938: The liberal Eduardo Santos, publisher of “El Tiempo”, is elected president of Colombia
1938: The Falange Nacional breaks away from the Conservative Party of Chile
1938: The candidate of the Frente Popular, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, narrowly wins the presidential elections of Chile (beginning of the Radical Years)
1938: Roberto Ortiz is elected president of Argentina
1938: Alfredo Baldomir of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1938: Bolivia adopts a constitution that nationalizes mineral resources
1939: Busch Becerra commits suicide and is replaced by general Carlos Quintanilla as dictator of Bolivia
1939: Peru’s president Benavides is replaced by the winner of elections, Manuel Prado, who allows APRA’s leader Haya to return from exile
1940: Mexico’s president Lazaro Cardenas is replaced by Manuel Avila Camacho of the PRI, who launches industrial reforms
1940: Higinio Morinigo seizes power in Paraguay
1940: Mexico’s population is 19.6 million
1940: The population of Brazil has increased almost 200% in 50 years
1940: A sick Ortiz resigns and his conservative vicepresident Ramon Castillo assumes the presidency of Argentina
1940: Rafael Calderon Guardia becomes president of Costa Rica
1940: Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia of the Partido Nacional Republicano is elected president of Costa Rica
1940: Bolivia’s general Carlos Quintanilla installs general General Enrique Penaranda as Bolivia’s new dictator
1940: The population of Peru is 7 million, with 500,000 people in Lima
1940: Arnulfo Arias Madrid become president of Panama for the first time
1941: Hernan Siles and V¡ctor Paz Estenssoro found the “Revolutionary Nationalist Movement” (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, or MNR) in Bolivia
1941: Chile’s president Cerda dies and is succeeded by the Radical candidate Juan Antonio Rio, while the Frente Popular is dissolved
1941: Peru wins a war against Ecuador and retains control of the coastal town that Ecuador had occupied
1941: Venezuelan politicians (Romulo Betancourt, Raul Leoni) and writers (Romulo Gallegos, Andres Blanco) found the party “Accion Democratica”
1942: The liberal Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo is elected again president of Colombia
Aug 1942: Brazil enters World War II on the side of the USA
Dec 1942: Bolivia’s general Enrique Penaranda massacres mines at Catavi
Jun 1943: A military coup removes Ramon Castillo of Argentina and installs Pedro Ramirez as president
Oct 1943: Argentina’s president Pedro Ramirez gives the ministry of Labor to Juan-Domingo Peron, who proceeds to organize workers
1943: Bolivia’s dictator Penaranda is overthrown by the MNR that appoints general Gualberto Villarroel to be president
1943: Juan Jose de Amezaga of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1943: Venezuela enacts a law that splits profits from oil 50-50 between the government and the foreign oil companies
1944: A coup restores Velasco of the Democratic Alliance as president of Ecuador
1944: Norman Borlaug begins experimenting with hybrid wheat in Mexico, launching the Green Revolution
1944: The army overthrows dictator Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez in El Salvador
1944: Teodoro Picado of the Partido Nacional Republicano is elected president of Costa Rica
1944: Following mass demonstrations, the Ubico government collapses in Guatemala
Mar 1945: The civilian Juan Jose Arevalo wins elections and becomes president of Guatemala, and his group of “October Revolutionaries” enacts liberal reforms, the beginning of the “Democratic Spring”
1945: Argentina and Uruguay switch to driving on the right
1944: Under USA pressure Batista allows elections in Cuba that are won by Ramon Grau San Martin
1945: The first free elections in Peru is won by liberal jurist Jose Luis Bustamante with APRA’s support
1945: Argentina becomes a haven for nazists fleeing Germany at the end of World War II
Aug 1945: Alfonso Lopez Pumarejo resigns and Alberto Lleras Camargo takes over as president of Colombia
Oct 1945: A coup by young army officers installs Romulo Betancourt of Accion Democratica as provisional president of Venezuela
Oct 1945: Vargas is deposed by the military in Brazil and replaced by Jose Linhares
1945: Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral wins the Nobel Prize for literature, the first Latin American to win the prize
1946: Miguel Aleman Valdez of the PRI is elected president of Mexico, the first civilian president of Mexico since the revolution
1946: More than 80 Guatemalan prisoners, psychiatric patients and sex workers die between 1946 and 1948 after being deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhoea by government scientists of the USA
1946: While testing vaccines, the USA infects hundreds of mentally ill patients and prisoners in Guatemala with gonorrhoea and syphilis
1946: Francesco Matarazzo Sobrinho, son of Francesco Matarazzo, founds the “Museu de Arte Moderna” in Sao Paulo, Brazil
Jan 1946: Eurico Gaspar Dutra becomes president of Brazil
Feb 1946: Juan Peron wins presidential elections in Argentina
Jul 1946: Bolivia’s general Gualberto Villarroel is overthrown with complicity from the USA’s CIA and the conservatives regain power
1946: Cayenne (French Guyana) becomes a department of France
1946: Gabriel Gonzalez Videla becomes president of Chile thanks to the votes of Communists and Radicals
1946: The USA established the military “School of the Americas” at Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone to train Latin American military officers, many of whom will stage coups in their countries
1946: Rafael Caldera founds the Social Christian Party of Venezuela, COPEI
1946: The conservative Mariano Ospina Perez is elected president in Colombia, ending liberal rule
1946: The USA founds the School of the Americas in Panama to train military officers to fight against leftist regimes and insurgency
1947: Venezuela holds its first free elections, won by Romulo Gallegos
1947: Female suffrage in Argentina
1947: Most countries of the Americas sign the Rio de Janeiro “Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance”
1947: Luis Batlle Berres of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
Feb 1948: Romulo Gallegos of Accion Democratica wins presidential elections in Venezuela
Mar 1948: Jose Figueres Ferrer in Costa Rica helped by a Caribbean Legion (mostly from Cuba) starts a civil war against the fraudolent reelection of Calderon (supported by Nicaragua) on behalf of the real winner, Otilio Ulate, and seizes power
Dec 1948: A military coup deposes the liberal Romulo Gallegos of Accion Democratica in Venezuela and installs Marcos Perez Jimenez as president, a corrupt politician who outlaws the leftists
1949: Costa Rica’s provisional president Jose Figueres Ferrer abolishes the army and grants voting rights to women and blacks
Nov 1949: Otilio Ulate is appointed president of Costa Rica
1948: The “Pan-American Union” changes name to “Organization of American States” (OAS or OEA)
1948: Carlos Prio Socarras succeeds his mentor Grau San Martin as president of Cuba
Oct 1948: A military coup deposes Bustamante in Peru and installs general Manuel Odria, the hero of the 1941 war against Ecuador
1948: Chile’s president Videla bans the Communist Party
Apr 1948: The populist Jorge Gaitan is assassinated in Colombia, starting a civil war that killed 250,000 people in ten years (“La Violencia”)
1948: Galo Plaza Lasso of the liberal coalition, son of Leonidas Plaza, wins elections in Ecuador and diversifies the economy that used to be based mainly on cacao
1949: Nazist criminal Josef Mengele secretely arrives in Argentina
1949: Peron rewrites Argentina’s constitution and curbs free speech
1949: Peru’s dictator Manuel Odria arrests members of APRA and Haya takes refuge for five years in the Colombia embassy
1949: Venezuela invites Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to form a cartel of oil producing countries
1950: Nazist criminal Adolf Eichmann secretely arrives in Argentina
1950: Brazil’s population is 51 million
Aug 1950: The fascist and fanatical Catholic politician Laureano Gomez is elected president of Colombia after all opposition candidates have been forced to withdraw, while civil war rages in the country
1950: In the first peaceful transition of power in Guatemala’s history, Arevalo is replaced by Jacobo Arbenz (another “October Revolutionary”) as president of Guatemala, who allies with the communists
1950: Mexico’s president Aleman commissions architect Carlos Lazo to build the Universidad Nacional, the largest campus in the world
1950: Brazil’s population is 52 million
1951: Juan Peron announces that Argentina’s nuclear program led by Austrian scientist Ronald Richter, but the program is later proved a fraud
1951: Andres Martinez Trueba of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1951: Francesco Matarazzo Sobrinho founds the “Bienal Internacional de Arte” of Sao Paulo, Brazil
1951: Jose Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica founds the Partido de Liberacion Nacional (PLN)
Jan 1951: Vargas is elected president again in Brazil
1951: Paz Estenssoro of the MNR is elected president of Bolivia but the election is stolen by general Hugo Ballivian
1951: Chile’s inflation is 1550%
1952: The poor of Bolivia seize power (“Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario”) after defeating the army, and Victor Paz Estenssoro forms a government, ending more than a century of coups (a total of 179, including six presidents assassinated)
1952: Latin America posts the highest population growth of all regions in the world, with Argentina growing 251% in 50 years and Brazil 191%
1952: Peron’s wife Eva dies of cancer in Argentina as millions mourn her as a saint
1952: Responding to public discontent with the government, general Batista returns to Cuba and seizes power
1952: Jose Maria Velasco-Ibarra wins elections again in Ecuador
1952: Women are allowed to vote in presidential elections in Chile, that are won by the conservative candidate, former dictator Carlos Ibanez (end of the “Radical Years”) with support from the Communists
1952: Adolfo Ruiz Cortines of the PRI is elected president of Mexico, and proceeds to build 33,000 kms of roads, irrigation for millions of acres of desert, thousands of schools and hundreds of hospitals
June 1952: Guatemala’s president Arevalo passes an agrarian reform intended to distribute land to the peasants
Jul 1953: Fidel Castro leads a failed insurrection against the dictatorial regime of Batista in Santiago de Cuba
Jun 1953: Colombia’s fascist Gomez is overthrown by the military and replaced by general Gustavo Rojas Pinilla
1953: Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras, is created
1953: Figueres becomes president of Costa Rica again
Aug 1954: Getulio Vargas of Brazil commits suicide after being forced by the military to resign
1954: Alfredo Stroessner becomes dictator of Paraguay
1954: An economic crisis hits Uruguay with high inflation and declining GDP
June 1954: Rebels led by Castillo Armas and supported by the USA’s CIA stage a coup in Guatemala to depose president Arbenz after he begins expropriating United Fruit’s plantations, the end of the “Democratic Spring”
Jan 1955: Costa Rica, a country without an army, is invaded from Guatemala by former Costa Rica president Rafael Calder¢n (supported by Nicaragua) but the USA stops the invasion
Sep 1955: A military coup deposes Peron in Argentina
1955: Chile’s inflation is 80%
1956: The conservative Camilo Ponce Enriquez (founder of the MSC) wins elections against Velasco and becomes president of Ecuador
1956: Manuel Prado is elected president of Peru with support from APRA and legalizes APRA again
Dec 1956: Fidel Castro and Argentinian-born Ernesto “Che” Guevara lead a second failed insurrection against the dictatorial regime of Batista in Cuba
Jan 1956: Minas Gerais’ governor Juscelino Kubitschek is elected president of Brazil, despite the fact that Joao Goulart wins more votes, and founds a new capital, Brasilia, in the interior, designed by Lucio Costa
1956: Nicaragua’s dictator Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza dies and is succeeded by his son Luis Somoza
1956: Hernan Siles Zuaco (UDP) is elected president of Bolivia
1957: Francois Duvalier seizes power in Haiti
1957: A National Front government ends the civil war in Colombia
May 1957: Colombia’s dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla resigns following widespread demonstrations
1957: The Partido Democrata Cristiano (PDC) is founded in Chile from the union of the National Falange, the Social Christian Conservative Party and the Ibanez’s Agrarian Labor Party
Jul 1957: The two main political parties of Colombia in exile (the Liberal Party of Alberto Lleras Camargo and the Conservative Party of Laureano Gomez) join together in the “Frente Nacional” and agree to alternate at the presidency for a period of four presidential terms
1957: Guatemala’s president Castillo Armas is assassinated and replaced by Miguel Idigoras Fuentes
Apr 1957: Student riots in Chile cost dozens of lives
Jan 1958: Venezuela’s dictator Perez Jimenez resigns and flees to the USA following widespread demonstrations
1958: Mario Echandi of the Union Nacional wins the elections in Costa Rica
1958: Chile’s president Ibanez re-legalizes the PCC that forms a coalition with the Socialists, the Frente de Accion Popular (FRAP), that narrowly loses the elections to the conservative candidate and former president’s son Jorge Alessandri (Salvador Allende is the candidate of the FRAP, Eduardo Frei is the candidate of the Christian Democrats)
Feb 1958: Arturo Frondizi is elected president of Argentina with votes from the Peronists
Jan 1958: The liberal Alberto Lleras Camargo is elected president of Colombia, ending “La Violencia” (civil war) but several regions declare independent republics, notably the communist “Marquetalia Republic”
1958: Adolfo Lopez Mateos of the PRI is elected president of Mexico
1958: The USA imposes an arms embargo on Cuba when civil war breaks out between rebels and the Batista government
1958: Ramon Villega Morales returns the Partido Liberal to power in Honduras
Feb 1959: Romulo Betancourt of Accion Democratica wins the elections in Venezuela and begins a program to develop the rural countryside
Jan 1959: Fidel Castro wins the revolution and installs a communist regime in Cuba, while Che Guevara summarily executes members of the Batista government
May 1959: Cuba launches a socialist agrarian reform
Mar 1959: Martin Echegoyen is elected president of Uruguay, the first president coming from the “Partido Nacional” since Oribe’s times
1959: Leftist leader Demetrio Vallejo organizes a general strike in Mexico
1959: Venezuela’s former president Perez Jimenez is extradited by the USA, the first head of state to be extradited by the USA
1960: The largest earthquake (magnitude 9.5) is recorded off the coast of Chile
1960: The population of Latin America is 200 million, half of it in Mexico and Brazil
1960: Brazil’s population is 71 million
1960: Inflation spirals out of control in Brazil (2900%), Uruguay (1100%), Argentina (900%), Chile (500%)
1960: The population of Peru has doubled in ten years, thanks to European immigrants
1960: In retaliation for the USA’s imposition of quotas on Venezuelan oil (to favor (Canada and Mexico), Venezuela joins Arab countries to found OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)
Apr 1960: Leftists of Venezuela’s Accion Democratica found the “Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria” (MIR)
Jun 1960: Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo tries to assassinate Betancour of Venezuela
1960: Sao Paulo’s governor Janio Quadros is elected president of Brazil
1960: Communist guerrilla groups start Guatemala’s civil war
1960: Castro is refused a meeting by USA’s president Dwight Eisenhower and turns to the Soviet Union for economic and military help
1960: Velasco-Ibarra becomes president of Ecuador for the fourth time
Jan 1961: Janio Quadros wins presidential elections in Brazil, inheriting from Kubitschek both hyper-inflation and huge foreign debt
Aug 1961: Unable to pass austerity measures, Janio Quadros of Brazil resigns and is replaced by vice-president Joao Goulart
Apr 1961: A Cuban rebel force trained by the USA’s CIA tries to invade Cuba (“Bay of Pigs” invasion)
1961: The population of Lima (Peru) is 1.6 million
1961: Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic is assassinated
1961: The military seize power in El Salvador
1961: The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front) is founded in Nicaragua to fight the Somoza dictatorship, with help from Cuba, Costa Rica and Panama, and opposed by the USA
1961: Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann is extradited from Argentina to Israel
Nov 1961: Ecuador’s president Velasco-Ibarra is overthrown by the military and his filo-communist vice president Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy seizes power
Mar 1962: The Peronist party wins the elections in Argentina but Arturo Frondizi is deposed by the army and replaced with Jose Guido
1962: The conservative Guillermo Leon Valencia is elected president of Colombia
1962: Francisco Orlich of the PLN wins the elections in Costa Rica
Feb 1962: Most of Latin America’s countries break political relations with Cuba
Oct 1962: The USA forces the Soviet Union to stop building missile bases in Cuba, and the USA imposes an economic embargo on Cuba
1962: The variety show “Sabado Gigante” premieres on Chilean television
Jul 1962: The military stages a coup when Haya de la Torre of APRA wins the elections in Peru over Odria and Fernando Belaunde Terry
1962: Brazil declares football player Pele an “official national treasure” so that he cannot be bought by European clubs
1962: Peru is the leading fishing nation in the world
1962: Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo becomes president of El Salvador
1963: The communist “Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional” (FALN), trained and funded by Cuba, carries out terrorist attacks in Venezuela
Jan 1963: Juan Bosch wins the first elections in the Republica Dominicana
Sep 1963: Juan Bosch is overthrown in the Republica Dominicana
Jul 1963: Arturo Illia is elected president of Argentina after the Peronists abstain from voting, and proceeds to nationalize oil industry
1963: Osvaldo Lopez Arellano seizes power in Honduras with a coup, the beginning of 18 years of military dictatorship
1963: Guatemala’s president Miguel Idigoras Fuentes is ousted by the military
1963: A military coup overthrows Ecuador’s president Arosemena and installs a junta
Jul 1963: In a rerun of the previous presidential election Fernando Belaunde Terry, founder of the party “Accion Popular”, is elected president of Peru over Haya and Odria, and creates new universities throughout the country
1963: Raul Sendic founds the revolutionary group Tupamaros in Uruguay, launching a campaign of robberies and kidnappings
Jan 1964: Raul Leoni of Accion Democratica wins elections and succeeds Betancour as president of Venezuela
Aug 1964: The general Rene Barrientos stages a military coup in Bolivia
1964: Colombian troops abolish the “Marquetalia Republic”
1964: Eduardo Frei-Montalva of the Christian Democratic Party is elected president of Chile after his party allies with the right-wing parties against socialist Salvador Allende’s leftist party that is the single largest party
1964: Paz Estenssoro is deposed by a military coup
Apr 1964: After urging student riots and strikes against the military, Joao Goulart of Brazil is deposed by the military and replaced by army marshal Humberto Castelo-Branco
1964: Gustavo Diaz Ordaz of the PRI is elected president of Mexico
1964: Peru battles communist guerrillas funded and armed by Cuba
1964: Brazil’s GDP grows 56% between 1964 and 1974
1965: The Marxist guerrilla “Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria” (MIR) is formed in Peru by former APRA members
1965: Uruguay’s inflation is 88%
1965: Fidel Castro allows one million Cubans over five years to leave Cuba and settle in the USA, while Che Guevara leaves Cuba to promote revolutions in other countries (Congo and Bolivia)
1965: Abimael Guzman and others found the communist group “Bandera Roja” in Peru
Apr 1965: The USA dispatches the marines to restore order in the Dominican Republic after the communists try a coup
Jan 1966: Cuba hosts the “Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America”
1966: The liberal Carlos Lleras Restrepo is elected president of Colombia and begins a massive program of land redistribution
1966: Manuel Marulanda (Pedro Antonio Marin) establishes the “Fuerza Armada Revolucionaria de Colombia” (FARC) as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party
1966: British Guyana (Georgetown) declares its independence with Forbes Burnham as its prime minister
Jun 1966: Juan Balaguer wins elections in the Republica Dominicana
Jun 1966: Arturo Illia of Argentina is deposed by the army and replaced by conservative and pro-clerical general Juan Carlos Ongania
Mar 1967: The Brazilian parliament elects general Artur da Costa e Silva
Mar 1967: Oscar Gestido of the Colorado Party is elected president of Uruguay
Dec 1967: Uruguay’s president Oscar Gestido dies and is succeeded by his vice-president Jorge Pacheco Areco
Mar 1966: The military allow elections and Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro is elected president of Guatemala after his brother is assassinated
Mar 1966: The military regime resigns in Ecuador
1967: Cuba revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who was trying to spread the communist revolution to Latin America, is killed by USA agents in Bolivia
1967: Jorge Pacheco Areco of the “Partido Colorado” is elected president of Uruguay
1967: Guatemala’s writer Miguel Angel Asturias wins a Nobel Prize, the first one awarded to Latin America
1967: Nicaragua’s dictator Luis Somoza dies and is succeeded by his brother Anastasio
1967: Chile’s government redistributes 15 million acres of land to the peasants
1967: Fidel Sanchez Hernandez becomes president of El Salvador
1967: USA shipbuilder Daniel Ludwig begins massive logging in the Amazon forest of Brazil
1967: 700 landowners own 50% of Peru’s land, or 2% of the population owns 90% of the productive land
Oct 1968: As inflation reaches 150%, Fernando Belaunde Terry of Peru is deposed by a leftist military revolution led by general Juan Velasco Alvarado, who enacts a massive socialist-inspired agrarian reform
1968: The USA ambassador is assassinated by communist rebels in Guatemala
1968: Velasco wins elections again in Ecuador
1968: A military coup installs Omar Torrijos Herrera as president of Panama
Jul 1968: 300 students are killed by the police during riots in Mexico between july and october
1968: The Olympic Games are held in Mexico
1969: El Salvador invades Honduras following a football match
1969: Rafael Caldera of COPEI is elected president of Venezuela and re-legalizes the left-wing parties
Aug 1969: Following a stroke by Costa e Silva, the military appoint general Emilio Garrastazu Medici as president of Brazil, but guerrillas fight against the government through kidnappings and bombings
1969: The Andean Common Market is formed by Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru
1969: The subway of Ciudad de Mexico opens
1969: Pedro Aviles Perez founds the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico
1970: The population of Peru is 13.6 million
1970: Mexico’s population is 48.3 million
1970: Brazil’s population is 93 million and the number of university students has increased from 144,000 in 1964 to 430,000
1970: Sao Paulo is the largest city in Brazil with 6 million people
Jun 1970: Following strikes in Cordoba, Argentina’s dictator Ongania is deposed by another military coup that installs general Roberto Levingston
1970: The conservative Misael Pastrana Borrero is elected president of Colombia, narrowly defeating former dictator Rojas Pinilla, but anarchy still reigns
1970: Brazil’s population is 90 million
1970: Fidel Castro launches a plan to produce ten million tons of sugar
1970: Luis Echeverria of the PRI is elected president of Mexico
1970: Earthquake in Peru
Nov 1970: The left-wing Unidad Popular led by Salvador Allende wins 36.3% of votes in democratic elections in Chile against 34.9% for right-wing Partido Nacional and 27.8% of the Christian Democrats, and Allende becomes the first Marxist politician in the world to be elected democratically, and begins a program of nationalization of foreign companies (copper, coal, steel) and distribution of land to the poor against an opposition that enjoys a majority in parliament
1970: Brazil wins its third world cup
1970: Peak of the Tupamaros insurgency in Uruguay, with kidnappings and assassinations
1970: The population of Latin America is 250 million
1970: Figueres of the PLN wins the elections again in Costa Rica
1970: The center-right Carlos Arana Osorio wins elections in Guatemala
1971: Guzman leads a split in “Bandera Roja” that creates the communist group “Sendero Luminoso” (Shining Path) in Peru
1971: Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez Merino founds Liberation Theology
1971: Venezuela is the fifth producer of oil in the world
Mar 1971: Following more riots in Cordoba, Levingston is replaced by general Alejandro Lanusse
1971: Hundreds of students are killed in Mexico’s worst student riots
1971: JeanClaude Duvalier succeeds his father as dictator of Haiti
1971: Hugo Banzer stages a coup in Bolivia and assumes absolute power
1971: Chile’s communist poet Pablo Neruda is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature
1971: About one thousand people are murdered in Guatemala by right and left terrorists
Dec 1971: A large scale demonstration is held in Chile against Allende’s government
Mar 1972: Juan Marma Bordaberry becomes president of Uruguay, winning against the “Partido Nacional” as well as an alliance of left-wing parties called the “Frente Amplio”, and defeats the Tupamaros
1972: Brazil’s economy has grown an average 10% over four years
1972: Andreas Pavel invents the stereobelt in Brazil, the first portable audio cassette player
1972: Cuba joins the Soviet Union’s COMECON
Feb 1972: Ecuador’s president Velasco is overthrown by general Guillermo Rodriguez Lara
1972: Large reserves of oil are discovered in Ecuador
1972: Earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua
Oct 1972: Large-scale demonstrations against Allende’s government spread throughout Chile
Sep 1973: Juan Peron returns from exile and wins Argentina’s presidential elections for the second time, the first election since the military dictatorships of the 1960s
1973: Venezuelas joins the Andean Common Market
May 1973: The Peronista Hector Campora becomes president of Argentina and appoints leftists to university positions
1973: The USA and Cuba sign a treaty to prosecute plane hijackers, after more than 80 airplanes have been hijacked since 1961 to Cuba
Feb 1973: A military dictatorship in Uruguay bans socialism, ending 70 years od democratic governments, although Bordaberry remains formally president
Sep 1973: As inflation hits 500% and GDP declines 7%, and strikes paralyze the country, Chile’s president Allende is overthrown by general Augusto Pinochet and commits suicide
1973: Mexican’s peasants found “Tierra y Libertad”, a Maoist colonia in Monterrey
1973: Large oil reserves are discovered in Colombia
1974: The liberal Alfonso Lopez Michaelson becomes president of Colombia following the dissolution of the Frente Nacional, but he still forms a government of coalition while the country plunges into anarchy
1974: Oil exports double in Ecuador over the year before
1974: Exports boom in Bolivia due to oil and gas
1974: Cuba’s population is 9.5 million
Mar 1974: Carlos Andres Perez of Accion Democratica wins presidential elections in Venezuela
Mar 1974: The general Ernesto Geisel is appointed president of Brazil after the oil crisis has caused a deep recession
Jul 1974: Isabel Peron, the second wife of Juan Peron, becomes president of Argentina at his death, the first woman to become president in the Americas
1974: A hurricane kills thousands of people in Honduras
1974: Mexico plunges into an economic crisis, after 20 years of rapid growth (average +6.5%)
1974: Hyper-inflation in Peru
1974: The Sao Paulo (Brazil) subway opens
1974: The Trans-Amazon road opens in Brazil
1974: Daniel Oduber of the PLN is elected president of Costa Rica
1974: Eric Gairy leads Grenada to independence from Britain
1975: Honduras’ Lopez resigns due to a scandal and is replaced by Juan Alberto Melgar Castro
1975: Colombian-born drug-lady Griselda Blanco is wanted in the USA for smuggling cocaine and hides in Florida where she orders dozens of murders
1975: Chile’s population is 11 million
1975: There are fewer democracies in Latin America than there were in 1955
1975: The subway of Santiago (Chile) opens
1975: Venezuela nationalizes USA-owned iron mines
1975: Colombia is rocked by terrorist attacks and strikes
Sep 1975: Peru’s president Velasco is replaced by general Francisco Morales Bermudez, who launches an economic austerity program to curb inflation
1975: About 1,000 people die in political violence in Argentina
1975: Large oil reserves are discovered in Mexico
1976: Anti-Castro terrorists (led by Luis Posada Carriles and funded by the USA’s CIA) blow up a Cuban airliner
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1976: Chile withdraws from the Andean Common Market
1976: Chile undergoes an “economic miracle” with average GDP growth of 7%
Jan 1976: Venezuela nationalizes all oil fields under Petroleos Venezolanos
1976: Inflation is 27% in Mexico
Jun 1976: The military appoints Aparicio Mindez-Manfredini of the “Partido Nacional” to be president of Uruguay, while thousands of dissidents are jailed
Mar 1976: After inflation hits 750%, Isabel Peron of Argentina is deposed by general Jorge Videla in a military coup, and 1,300 leftists are kill in the repression that follows
Jan 1976: Rodriguez Lara is ousted in Ecuador and replaced by a military junta
Dec 1976: Jose-Lopez Portillo of the PRI is elected president of Mexico
1977: the USA suspends military aid to Guatemala to protest civil rights abuses by the right-wing government
1977: Venezuela’s population is 13 million
1977: Brazil is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world after the USA
Jul 1977: Peru uses the army to break strikes
1977: Pinochet abolishes the secret police in Chile
Feb 1977: The general Carlos Humberto Romero becomes president of El Salvador in rigged elections, and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front is founded in El Salvador to fight the military dictatorship
1977: Mothers of students who disappeared under the repression of Videla’s rule stage demonstrations in Argentina
1978: The general Romeo Lucas Garcia is appointed president of Guatemala
1978: Antonio Guzman wins the elections and replaces Balaguer, the first time in the Dominican Republic’s history that an incumbent president peacefully surrenders power to the opposition
1978: The general Policarpo Paz Garcia seizes power in Honduras
1978: Indios are massacred by the army at Panzos, Guatemala
1978: Hugo Banzer rigs elections in Bolivia to have general Juan Pereda elected instead of the left-wing coalition of former president Hernan Siles (UDP)
1978: The liberal Julio Turbay is elected president of Colombia
1978: serial killer Pedro Alonso begins a killing spree that would leave more than 300 people dead in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru
1978: Dominica gains independence from Britain
1978: Nicaragua’s regime kills opposition leader Pedro Joaquin Chamorro
1978: Luis Herrera Campins of COPEI wins the elections in Venezuela
1978: The right-wing Rodrigo Carazo is elected president of Costa Rica
1978: Brazil’s GDP has quintupled since 1960 (making it the eighth industrial power in the West), and the number of college students has increased from less than 100,000 to almost 1.5 million
1978: The boss of the Sinaloa Cartel, Pedro Aviles Perez, is killed by the Mexican police
July 1979: Led by Eden Pastora and Daniel Ortega, the Sandinistas overthrow the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua
1979: National elections are held again in Bolivia but Paz Estenssoro (MNR) and Siles (UDP) win the same amount of votes
1979: Brazil is the sixth most populous nation in the world
1979: Maurice Bishop of the New Jewel Movement overthrows the government of Eric Gairy in Grenada
1979: The Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) subway opens
1979: The general Joao Baptista Figueiredo is appointed president of Brazil by the military
1979: Jaime Roldos wins democratic elections and becomes Ecuador’s president
1979: Peru enacts a new constitution, largely drawn by Velasco and returns to democratic rule
1979: For the first time Mexico allows the Communist Party to run for elections
1979: Joao Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo wins rigged elections in Brazil
1979: The Canal Zone becomes part again of Panama but the canal is still controlled by the USA
1979: The USA suspends the military treaty with Brazil to protest violations of human rights by Brazil’s dictator
1979: Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo founds the Guadalajara Cartel in Mexico
1980: Former Bolivia’s dictator Banzer forms the ADN party (Accion Democr tica Nacionalista) and loses elections against Siles (UDP) but general Luis Garc¡a Meza seizes power
1980: Only two South American countries have had a democratic regime for at least a decade, Venezuela and Colombia
1980: Brazil’s economy grows at an average 7% annually over four years and its population has reached 120 million (12 million just in Sao Paulo)
1980: Archbishop Oscar Romero, a critic of the regime, is assassinated in El Salvador
Feb 1980: The Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party) is founded in Brazil
1980: The population of Ciudad de Mexico is 14 million, one of the largest cities in the world, and grows by 500,000 people a year
1980: Nicaragua’s dictator Somoza is assassinated in Paraguay and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega seizes power
May 1980: In the first election since the restoration of democracy, Fernando Belaunde Terry is reelected president of Peru while “Sendero Luminoso” carries out its first operation
1980: The civilian Jose Napoleon Duarte is elected president of El Salvador by an overwhelming majority, the first civilian president since 1931
1980: More than 800 people are killed in Jamaica during the elections
1980: Violeta Chamorro splits with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua
1980: Eugenia Charles becomes prime minister of Dominica (and first black female leader in the world)
1980: Fidel Castro allows 125,000 people to leave Cuba for the USA
June 1981: Eden Pastora resigns from the Nicaraguan government and organizes a resistance movement in the south, part of the “Contras”
1981: Ronald Reagan funds “Contras” based in Honduras to fight Nicaragua’s communist regime of the Sandinistas
1981: Roberto Suazo Cordova is elected president of Honduras, the first civilian president in 18 years
1981: Belize, Britain’s last colony in the Americas, becomes independent
1981: The population of Lima (Peru) is 4.1 million
1981: Ecuador’s president Roldos dies in an plane crash
1981: The military appoints general Gregorio Alvarez as president of Uruguay
1981: Argentine dictator Videla relinquishes power to Roberto Viola after 6.500 dissidents have “disappeared”
1981: Torrijo of Panama dies in a plane crash
Dec 1981: USA-trained Atlacatl death squads massacre 900 people in El Mozote, El Salvador
1982: Siles Zuazo becomes president of Bolivia, replacing the military junta with a civilian government
1982: Salvador Jorge Blanco wins elections in the Dominican Republic
1982: Roberto Suarez Cordoba is elected president of Honduras
1982: Brazil and Paraguay inaugurate the itaipu Dam on the Upper Parana river
1982: Siles (UDP) is recognized as winner of the 1980 elections and finally installed as president
1982: The right-wing party ARENA wins parliamentary elections in El Salvador
1982: Miguel Hurtado de la Madrid is elected president of Mexico
1982: Belisario Betancur is elected president in Colombia
1982: Garcia is deposed and general Rios Montt seizes power in Guatemala and starts a terror campaign
1982: Argentina invades the Falkland islands causing a war with Britain
Feb 1982: Desire Bouterse seizes power in Suriname with a coup
1982: Luis Alberto Monge is elected president of Costa Rica
Dec 1982: Top opposition officials are killed by Desire Bouterse’s government in Suriname
1983: Following defeat in the Falklands war, the military junta collapses and Raul Alfonsin is elected president of Argentina
1983: The Caracas (Venezuela) subway opens
1983: Venezuela devalues its currency (“black friday”)
1983: Anti-Pinochet demonstrations take place in Chile
1983: Rios Montt is deposed in Guatemala
1983: Manuel Noriega becomes dictator of Panama
1983: Bolivia holds the first free elections
October 1983: The USA invades Grenada and deposes Hudson Austin who has seized power after Bishop was murdered
1984: Daniel Ortega Saavedra is appointed president of Nicaragua by the Sandinista junta
Apr 1984: One million people demonstrate against the dictatorship in Sao Paulo
1984: Jaime Lusinchi of Accion Democratica wins presidential elections in Venezuela
1984: The Marxist-leaning “Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru” (MRTA) is formed in Peru
1984: Leon Febres Cordero wins elections in Ecuador
1985: The Bolivian parliament chooses Victor Paz Estenssoro as president
1985: Griselda Blanco is arrested in the USA
1985: The population of Latin America is 400 million
1985: Julio Marma Sanguinetti of the “Partido Colorado” is the first civilian president of Uruguay after the military dictatorship, and dominates Uruguay’s politics till 2000
1985: Burnham dies and Desmond Hoyte become president of Guyana
May 1985: The USA imposes a trade embargo on Nicaragua
1985: The military junta collapses and Tancredo Neves is elected president of Brazil, the first civilian president in 21 years, but dies and is replaced by his vice-president Joseph Sarney
1985: Alan Garcia of APRA is elected president of Peru, leading to a massive economic crisis, corruption scandals and increased political violence
1985: The M-19 guerrilla group kills 11 of the 25 Supreme Court Justices of Colombia
1985: An earthquake in Ciudad de Mexico kills thousands of people
1985: Panama’s president Noriega orders the assassination of opposition leader Hugo Spadafora
1986: the Iran-contra scandal in the USA reveals that the USA sold arms to Iran to fund the contras in Nicaragua
1986: Juan Balaguer is reelected in the Republica Dominicana
1986: JeanClaude Duvalier is deposed in a military coup in Haiti
1986: Oscar Arias Sanchez is elected president of Costa Rica
1986: Vinicio Cerezo wins elections and becomes the first civilian president of Guatemala in 25 years
1986: Jose Azcona del Hoyo is elected president of Honduras
1986: Earthquake in El Salvador
1986: The liberal Virgilio Barco Vargas is elected president of Colombia
1987: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras sign a peace plan brokered by Costa Rica
1987: Brazil’s inflation is 338%
1987: Drug cartels terrorize Colombia
1987: Nicaragua’s dictator Daniel Ortega and the opposition sign a peace agreement
1988: Carlos Salinas is elected president of Mexico
1988: Alfredo Cristiani of ARENA is elected president of El Salvador
1988: A military coup installs Prosper Avril as dictator of Haiti
1988: Pinochet loses a referendum in Chile and resigns, ending the military dictatorship that killed 3,197 civilians in 16 years
1988: A new constitution is proclaimed in Brazil
1988: Ramsewak Shankar is elected president in Suriname’s first democratic elections
1988: Rodrigo Borja Cevallos wins elections in Ecuador
1988: Jose Amezcua Contreras founds the Colima Cartel in Mexico
1989: Jaime Paz-Zamora is elected president of Bolivia
1989: More than 3,000 people are murdered in Medellin alone in Colombia at the peak of the power of the Medellin drug cartel
1989: Carlos Andres Perez of Accion Democratica wins again presidential elections in Venezuela
1989: Carlos Menem of Arab descent is elected president of Argentina
1989: Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera of the “Partido Nacional” is elected president of Uruguay
1989: Fernando Collor de Mello is elected president of Brazil
1989: In the first elections since the return to democracy, Patricio Aylwin of the Christian Democratic Party is elected president of Chile
1989: Paraguay’s dictator Stroessner is deposed in a coup
1989: The USA invades Panama and deposes Manuel Noriega, arrested for drug trafficking and deported to the USA, and Guillermo Endara wins the first democratic elections
1989: Juan Garcia Abrego’s Gulf Cartel is smuggling over 300 metric tons of cocaine in the USA every year
1989: The boss of the Guadalajara Cartel, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, is arrested and jailed in Mexico
Jan 1990: Rafael Callejas is elected president of Honduras and assumes presidency
Feb 1990: The Sandinistas allow free elections in return for the end of contras insurgency, and Violeta Chamorro wins the presidency of Nicaragua
Feb 1990: At the Cartagena (Colombia) “Drug Summit” the presidents of Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and the USA join in the “war on drugs”
May 1990: The right-wing candidate Rafael Calderon becomes president of Costa Rica after winning election
Jul 1990: Alberto Fujimori wins elections in Peru and assumes office, while 3,384 Peruvians die in political violence just in 1990
Aug 1990: The liberal Cesar Gaviria Trujillo is elected president of Colombia and assumes office
1990: Sao Paulo in Brazil has 14 million people
1990: Argentina’s inflation is 8,000% and the economy has shrunk 10% in a decade
1990: Brazil’s inflation is 5,000%
Jan 1991: Johan Kraag is elected president of Suriname and assumes office
Jan 1991: Jorge Serrano, a former Rios Montt advisor, wins elections in Guatemala and assumes office
Jul 1991: Colombia proclaims a new constitution
Sep 1991: Jean-Bertrand Aristide wins the first elections in Haiti but is immediately deposed by the military
Dec 1991: El Salvador’s government and the rebels sign a peace agreement
1991: a ferry capsizes in Haiti killing over 500 people
1991: Brazil inaugurates the giant Itaipu Dam on the Parana River, the world’s largest generator of hydroelectricity
Feb 1992: Hugo Chavez stages a failed coup in Venezuela
Mar 1992: An anti-Israel bomb (sponsored by Iran and Hezbollah) in Buenos Aires kills 85 people
Apr 1992: Peru’s president Fujimori dissolves Parliament
Jun 1992: the first “World Summit” is held in Rio
Aug 1992: Sixto Duran Ballen wins elections in Ecuador and becomes president
Sep 1992: Earthquake in Nicaragua
Sep 1992: Abimael Guzman, leader of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), is captured by the Peruvian army
Oct 1992: The first democratic elections in Guyana are won by Cheddi Jagan; Jagan assumes office
Dec 1992: Brazilian president Collor is impeached by parliament and replaced with vice president Itamar Franco
1992: Youstol Dispage Fromscaruffi dies
1992: Mexico City has 18 million people, Sao Paulo has 15 million
1992: Mexico’s Guadalajara Cartel splits in the Tijuana Cartel, led by Javier Arellano Felix, and the Sinaloa Cartel, led by Joaquin Archivaldo “El Chapo” Guzman Loera
May 1993: Carlos Andres Perez, accused of corruption, is forced to resign and replaced by Jose Velasquez
May 1993: Guatemala’s president attempts a coup to become dictator but is forced to flee the country
Aug 1993: US-educated Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (MNR) becomes president of Bolivia after winning elections
Aug 1993: Juan Carlos Wasmosy of the Partido Colorado wins the first free elections in Paraguay and takes office
Aug 1993: US-educated Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada becomes president of Bolivia after winning election
Nov 1993: Mexico joins the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
Dec 1993: Pablo Escobar, the most famous druglord of Colombia, is killed by the police
1993: Mexico joins the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the USA and Canada
Jan 1994: Guerrilla rebellion in Mexico by the Zapatista National Liberation Army
Jan 1994: Carlos Reina is elected president of Honduras and assumes presidency
Feb 1994: Rafael Caldera of COPEI is elected again president of Venezuela and assumes presidency
Mar 1994: Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle of the Christian Democratic Party is elected president of Chile
May 1994: Jose Maria Figueres becomes president of Costa Rica after winning election
Jun 1994: Armando Calderon Sol of ARENA becomes president of El Salvador after winning election
Aug 1994: The liberal Ernesto Samper Pizano is elected president of Colombia and assumes presidency
Aug 1994: Fidel Castro allows 50,000 people to leave Cuba
Sep 1994: The USA invades Haiti to restore Aristide as president
Nov 1994: Chile joins the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
Dec 1994: Ernesto Zedillo wins presidential elections in Mexico and assumes presidency
1994: The USA, Canada and Mexico sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
Jan 1995: Finance minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso wins presidential elections in Brazil and assumes presidency
Jan 1995: Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay form the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur)
Mar 1995: Sanguinetti is reelected president of Uruguay and assumes presidency
Jun 1995: Eugenia Charles resigns from prime minister of Dominica
Oct 1995: The Guatemalan army commits a massacre in Chajul
Nov 1995: Nazist war criminal Erich Priebke is extradited from Argentina to Italy
1995: Chiapas indios are killed during protests in Mexico
1995: Juan Garcia Abrego is arrested and Osiel Cardenas Guillen seizes control of the Gulf Cartel
Jan 1996: Alvaro Arzu is elected president of Guatemala and ends the civil war
Jun 1996: FARC kills 34 soldiers in Colombia
Feb 1996: Rene Preval wins Haiti’s elections and assumes presidency
Aug 1996: Leonel Fernandez wins elections in the Republica Dominicana, the first victory by Bosch’s Dominican Liberation Party (PLD)
Aug 1996: Abdala Bucaram becomes president of Ecuador after winning elections
Sep 1996: 200,000 coca growers march in protest in Colombia
Sep 1996: Jules Wijdenbosch becomes president of Suriname
Jan 1997: Arnoldo Aleman is elected president of Nicaragua and assumes presidency
Feb 1997: Ecuadorian president Abdala Bucaram is ousted by Congress for corruption, beginning a period of political instability (six presidents in 8 years)
Apr 1997: Peru defeats the “Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru” (MRTA)
Aug 1997: Former dictator Hugo Banzer becomes president of Bolivia after winning elections
Dec 1997: Janet Jagan becomes the first white and the first female president of Guyana
Dec 1997: 45 people are massacred in the Zapatista enclave of Acteal in Mexico
1997: Arturo Guzman Decena of the Mexican special forces joins Osiel Cardenas Guillen’s Gulf Cartel and founds its armed wing Los Zetas
Jan 1998: Carlos Flores of the Partido Liberal is elected president of Honduras and assumes presidency
Mar 1998: FARC kills 62 soldiers in Colombia
May 1998: Miguel Angel Rodriguez is elected president of Costa Rica and assumes presidency
Jun 1998: Jose Amezcua Contreras of the Colima Cartel is arrested in Mexico and the power of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman increases
Aug 1998: The conservative (and former television and press journalist) Andres Pastrana, son of Misael, becomes president of Colombia after winning an election
Oct 1998: Thousands die in Nicaragua due to a hurricane
Nov 1998: Peru joins the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
Feb 1999: The socialist candidate Hugo Chavez wins elections in Venezuela and assumes presidency
Mar 1999: Luis Gonzalez Macchi of the Partido Colorado is appointed president of Paraguay
Jun 1999: Francisco Flores of ARENA becomes president of El Salvador after winning election
Jul 1999: The last leader of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) is captured by the Peruvian army
Aug 1999: Bharrat Jagdeo becomes president of Guyana
Sep 1999: Arnulfo Arias Madrid’s wife Mireya Moscoso becomes president of Panama after winning election; the USA returns the Canal to Panama
Dec 1999: Fernando de la Rua becomes president of Argentina after winning election
1999: Colombia becomes the main recipient of USA military aid
1999: Hugo Chavez seizes control of all Venezuelan institutions
1999: Colombia under siege by the Marxist guerrilla group FARC
Jan 2000: Alfonso Portillo becomes president of Guatemala after winning election
Mar 2000: The socialist candidate Ricardo Lagos becomes the president of Chile after winning presidential election
Mar 2000: Jorge Batlle of the “Partido Colorado” becomes president of Uruguay after winning election
Aug 2000: Hipolito Mejia wins elections in the Republica Dominicana and begins presidency
Aug 2000: Ronald Venetiaan becomes president of Suriname after winning election
Nov 2000: Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is forced to resign while on a visit to Japan
Dec 2000: Vicente Fox becomes the first opposition candidate (non-PRI) to become president through democratic election in Mexico
2000: Brazil’s population is 170 million
2000: Mexico’s population is 100 million
2000: Cuba’s population is 11 million plus 1.2 million Cuban-Americans in the USA
2000: Latin America’s population is 513 million
2000: More than 1,000 street children are murdered by death squads in Honduras
2000: The Argentinian economy collapses
2000: About 750 thousand Mexicans cross illegally into the USA, the peak of the Mexican wave
Jan 2001: Earthquake in El Salvador
Feb 2001: Aristide becomes president of Haiti after winning election
Jun 2001: Vladimiro Montesinos, wanted by Peru on allegations of corruption and blackmailing, is arrested in Venezuela
Jul 2001: Alejandro Toledo becomes president of Peru after winning election
Aug 2001: Banzer resigns as president of Bolivia because of cancer
Dec 2001: Riots in Argentina due to economic crisis lead to the resignation of president La Rua and two years of political chaos
Jan 2002: Ricardo Maduro of the Partido Nacional becomes president of Honduras after winning election
Jan 2002: Enrique Bolanos becomes president of Nicaragua after winning election
May 2002: Abel Pacheco becomes president of Costa Rica after winning election
May 2002: Fighting between communist terrorists and right-wing paramilitaries leaves 119 civilians dead in Bojaya, Colombia
Jun 2002: Brazil wins its fifth world cup
Aug 2002: Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada becomes president of Bolivia after election; however, Evo Morales, known for his defense of coca growers, comes in second
Aug 2002: The liberal Alvaro Uribe, whose father was assassinated by FARC, becomes president of Colombia after winning election
Dec 2002: Millions of Venezuelans go on strike for months, demanding Chavez’s resignations (he is briefly overthrown but then reinstated)
2003: Mexico arrests Osiel Cardenas of the Gulf Cartel and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman of the Sinaloa Cartel becomes the most powerful drug kingpin
Jan 2003: Socialist leader Luiz Inacio Lula of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party) wins the Brazilian elections and assumes presidency
Mar 2003: A landslide in Bolivia kills 400 people
Apr 2003: Castro’s regime in Cuba arrests dozens of dissidents, the worst crackdown on the opposition in two decades
May 2003: The socialist candidate Nestor Kirchner is elected president of Argentina, the sixth in 18 months; Kirchner assumes presidency.
Jun 2003: Brazil, India and South Africa form the “G3”, an economic forum for emerging countries
Aug 2003: Nicanor Duarte Frutos of the Partido Colorado becomes president of Paraguay after winning election
Oct 2003: Bolivian president Sanchez de Lozada resigns following weeks of violent protests throughout the country
2005: The USA approves the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with Guatemala, Costarica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican Republic
Jan 2004: Oscar Berger wins democratic elections in Guatemala
May 2004: Following widespread riots, Aristide flees Haiti and is replaced by Gerard Latortue
2004: Former Costa Rica’s presidents Jose Maria Figueres, Miguel Angel Rodriguez and Rafael Angel Calderon are investigated over allegations of corruption
May 2004: A fire in Honduras kills 102 convicts
Jun 2004: Tony Saca of ARENA becomes president of El Salvador after winning election
Jun 2004: FARC kills 34 people in Colombia
Jul 2004: An investigation by the USA senate unveils that Pinochet hid money abroad
Aug 2004: A fire in a shopping mall in Paraguay kills about 300 people
Aug 2004: Leonel Fernandez becomes president for the second time in the Republica Dominicana after winning elections
Sep 2004: Martin Torrijos, son of the former general, becomes president of Panama after winning elections
Oct 2004: Brazil launches its first rocket into space
Dec 2004: Gangsters kill 23 passengers a local bus in northern Honduras
Dec 2004: A fire at a nightclub in Buenos Aires (Argentina) kills 174 people
Dec 2004: Guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kill 17 peasants at a New Year’s Eve party
Dec 2004: Venezuela and Cuba launch the Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America or ALBA, an anti-USA alliance
2004: Latin America posts the biggest economic growth since the 1980s due to exports of raw material to China
2004: The USA and Chile sign a free-trade treaty
Mar 2005: The socialist candidate Tabare Vazquez becomes president of Uruguay, the fifth socialist leader to be elected in a few years in Latin America (after Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela)
Apr 2005: Ecuador’s president Lucio Gutierrez flees the country after mass protests against his dictatorial style
Jun 2005: Bolivian President Carlos Mesa resigns after mass protests
Aug 2005: Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary organization United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) disbands
Oct 2005: Guatemala is devastated by a hurricane
Nov 2005: Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori is arrested in Chile
Dec 2005: Parties allied to Venezuela’s president Chavez win 100% of the votes in elections boycotted by the opposition
2005: Brazil’s is the fifth most populous country in the world with 188 million people and Mexico is the 11th with 107 million, Sao Paulo and Ciudad de Mexico rank among the 10th largest mega-cities in the world
Jan 2006: Manuel Zelaya of the center-right Partido Liberal becomes president of Honduras after winning elections
Jan 2006: Leftist candidate Evo Morales wins elections in Bolivia and becomes the first indigenous president of a South American nation, and the fifth Bolivian president in four years; Morales assumes presidency
Feb 2006: Portia Simpson Miller is appointed prime minister by the majority party of Jamaica
Mar 2006: Michelle Bachelet becomes Chile’s first woman president after winning election
May 2006: Oscar Arias is reelected president of Costa Rica and assumes presidency
May 2006: Rene Preval wins Haiti’s elections and assumes presidency
May 2006: Fidel Castro of Cuba, Evo Morals of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of Bolivia sign a “people’s trade agreement”
May 2006: Gang violence, particularly by the First Command of the Capital (PCC), causes more than 100 deaths in the state of Sao Paolo, Brazil
Jul 2006: Alan Garcia is reelected president of Peru and assumes presidency
Jul 2006: An ailing Fidel Castro is de facto succeeded by his brother Raul as the helm of Cuba
Aug 2006: Former dictator of Paraguay, Alfredo Stroessner, dies in exile in Brazil
Sep 2006: Venezuela purchases $3 billion worth of arms from Russia
Dec 2006: Gangs attack buses and police across Rio de Janeiro killing 18
Dec 2006: Felipe Calderon becomes president of Mexico after narrowly winning elections and orders a military assault on drug cartels
2006: 22,000 people have been kidnapped in Colombia in a decade
2006: Evo Morales of Bolivia launches a nationalization plan
Aug 2006: The boss of the Tijuana Cartel, Javier Arellano Felix, is arrested in Mexico
2006: More than 2,000 Mexicans die in drug-related gangland-style killings
Jan 2007: Leftist candidate Rafael Correa wins elections in Ecuador and assumes presidency
Jan 2007: Former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua after winning election
Feb 2007: Venezuela de facto nationalizes all foreign oil projects
May 2007: Chavez shuts down Venezuela’s oldest private tv station, Radio Caracas Television
Sep 2007: Bruce Golding wins democratic elections in Jamaica and assumes role as prime minister, ending 18 years of rule by the People’s National Party
Sep 2007: The Colombian police arrest drug lord Diego Montoya
Nov 2007: Large oil reserves are discovered in Brazil
Dec 2007: Cristina Fernandez, the wife of outgoing president Nestor Kirchner, becomes president of Argentina after winning election, while it is discovered that her campaign was financed by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela
2007: 40% of Chile’s exports go to Asian Pacific countries
2007: The USA and Peru sign a free-trade treaty
2007: The Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez extends economic aid to Nicaragua in order to support Daniel Ortega’s government
Jan 2008: The socialist candidate Alvaro Colom wins elections in Guatemala and becomes the first left-wing president ever
Feb 2008: Cuba’s dictator Fidel Castro announces retirement
Mar 2008: The Mexican police arrest drug lord Gustavo Rivera Martinez
Mar 2008: FARC commander Raul Reyes is killed by Colombian forces during a raid inside Ecuador
Jul 2008: Colombian soldiers free Western hostages held for years by the FARC
Jul 2008: Ecuador approves a new constitution
Jul 2008: Argentina is paralyzed by protests against an export tax
Aug 2008: Honduras’ president Zelaya converts to Chavez’s leftist ideology and Honduras joins ALBA
Aug 2008: Leftist former priest Fernando Lugo wins presidential elections in Paraguay and ends the rule of the Partido Colorado that lasted since 1947, but a scandal reveals that he fathered four children while still a priest and one of them from a teenage girl
Jan – Aug 2008: Rondell Rawlins carries out a campaign of mass murders in Guyana
2008: Mass demonstrations in the eastern provinces of Bolivia against president Evo Morales’ plans to redistribute revenues from natural gas exports
2008: More than 6,000 people die in violence related to organized crime in Mexico (a 48% jump over the previous year)
2008: Latin America’s population is 569 million, of which 38% is in Brazil and 22% in Mexico
Jan 2009: Bolivia approves a new constitution
Mar 2009: Mauricio Funes of former Marxist guerrilla group “Farabundo Marti Liberation Front” (FMLN) wins El Salvador’s presidential election
Apr 2009: Colombia arrests the country’s most wanted drug lord, Daniel Rendon Herrera, known as “Don Mario”
Apr 2009: Peru’s former president Alberto Fujimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison for political homicides committed during his presidency
May 2009: Ricardo Martinelli, a tycoon of the conservative party, wins elections in Panama
May 2009: Chilean anarchist Mauricio Morales is killed by the bomb that he is carrying
Jun 2009: A military coup ousts Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and Parliament elects Porfirio Lobo to replace him
2009: An epidemics of “swine flu” is first recorded in Mexico
Jul 2009: The Colombia government accuses Venezuela of supplying weapons to FARC guerrillas
Dec 2009: Mexico kills Arturo Beltran Leyva, a brutal druglord
Dec 2009: Mexico legalizes gay marriage
Dec 2009: Venezuela arrests several tycoons, including the country’s richest man, Ricardo Fernandez
Dec 2009: Venezuela’s inflation reaches 27%, the highest in Latin America
2009: More than 7,000 people die in Mexico of drug-related violence in just one year
2009: 16047 people are murdered in Venezuela in one year (three times more than in the civil war of Iraq)
Jan 2010: Sebastian Pinera is elected president of Chile, the first time since 1958 that a right-wing politician wins a democratic election
Jan 2010: Porfirio Lobo is elected president of Honduras
Jan 2010: An earthquake kills 230,000 people in Haiti
Feb 2010: Laura Chinchilla is elected president of Costa Rica, the first female president in the country’s history
Feb 2010: Venezuela hires Cuba’s vice-president Ramiro Valdes
Feb 2010: A Spanish judge accuses Venezuela of having supported a deal between Colombia’s terrorists FARC and Spain’s terrorists ETA to assassinate Colombia’s president
May 2010: 11 people are killed Kingston, Jamaica, when troops storm the stronghold of drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke
May 2010: Kamia Persad-Bissessar becomes Trinidad’s first female prime minister
Jun 2010: Former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos wins presidential elections in Colombia
2010: Latin American economies recover from the recession and grow faster than any region except China, with Brazil posting its fastest growth in 24 years
Jun 2010: Cuba releases 52 political prisoners
Jul 2010: Argentina becomes the first country in Latin America approve same-sex marriages
Jul 2010: Desi Bouterse is elected president of Suriname
Aug 2010: Raul Castro enacts free-market reforms in Cuba
Aug 2010: The Zetas drug cartel kills 72 Central American migrants near Tamaulipas, in northeast Mexico
Sep 2010: Soldiers kill 25 drug cartel members during a gunbattle in Ciudad Mier in Tamaulipas, Mexico
Sep 2010: Colombian troops kill 22 guerrillas of FARC
Oct 2010: Chile rescues 33 miners trapped deep underground for 69 days
Nov 2010: Dilma Rousseff is elected to become Brazil’s first woman president
Nov 2010: Gangsters kill 14 people in Honduras
Dec 2010: A fire in a jail in the Chilean capital Santiago kills at least 83 inmates
2010: Brazil’s GDP passes Italy’s and Brazil becomes the seventh largest economy in the world
Apr 2011: Michel Martelly is elected president of Haiti
Apr 2011: A young man kills 11 students at his former school in Brazil
Apr 2011: The Zetas drug cartel kills at least 193 people near Tamaulipas (second Tamaulipas massacre) in Mexico
May 2011: A gang shootout in Mexico kills 28 people in the state of Nayarit
Jun 2011: Leftist candidate Ollanta Humala wins presidential elections in Peru while the economy has been growing an average of almost 7% yearly since 2003
Jun 2011: Gang-related violence kills 33 people in 24 hours in Mexico’s industrial capital Monterrey
Jul 2011: Mexico captures Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, the leader of La Linea who ordered 1,500 murders on behalf of the Juarez drug cartel in its fight against the Pacific cartel for control of Ciudad Juarez
2011: The USA has 413 billionaires, China has 115 billionaires, Russia 101, India 55, Germany 52, Britain 32, Brazil 30, and Japan 26
Aug 2011: Trinidad and Tobago declares emergency over drug crimes
Aug 2011: The Mexican Zetas drug cartel sets fire on a Monterrey casino killing 52 people
Aug 2011: Gunmen burst into a casino in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey and set it on fire, killing more than 50 people
2011: The Cuban government frees the last of 75 dissidents jailed during the crackdown on dissidents in 2003
Sep 2011: Gunmen dump 35 bodies in Mexico’s eastern state of Veracruz
2011: The Mexican Zetas drug cartel carries out mass executions in Durango killing at least 249 people
Oct 2011: A fight between prisoners at a jail in Matamoros in northern Mexico leaves 20 inmates dead
Oct 2011: The world’s population is 7 billion up from 1 billion in 1850 and less than 3 billion in 1950.
Nov 2011: The top commander of FARC, Alfonso Cano, is killed by the Colombian army
Nov 2011: Otto Perez Molina wins presidential elections in Guatemala
2011: Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff removes six ministers in one year because they are linked to corruption scandals
2011: Brazil overtakes Britain as the world’s sixth largest economy after the USA, China, Japan, Germany and France
2011: China becomes Brazil’s main trading partner
Dec 2011: Jose Eberto Lopez of the Popular Revolutionary Anti-terrorist Army of Colombia surrender
Dec 2011: Portia Simpson Miller’s People’s National Party wins elections in Jamaica
Dec 2011: 12,000 people are killed in drug violence in Mexico
Dec 2011: More than 45,000 people have died in Mexico’s war on drugs since 2006
2011: Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world
2011: 19,000 murders are committed in Venezuela in 2011, the highest murder rate in South America and four times that of Mexico
2011: Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, controls 80% of Mexico’s land phone lines, 75% of its broadband lines and 70% of mobile phone lines
2011: Panama’s growth averages 9% a year between 2006 and 2011, the fastest in the Americas
2011: Brazil’s economy grows by just 2.7% in 2011, down from 7.5% in 2010
Jan 2012: The USA calls Mexico’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman the world’s most powerful drug trafficker
Feb 2012: A fire at a jail kills more than 350 inmates in Honduras
Feb 2012: 44 inmates are killed in a fight in a Monterrey prison in Mexico
May 2012: FARC rebels kill 12 Colombian soldiers in an ambush near the border with Venezuela
May 2012: Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano’s Zetas drug cartel kills 49 people in Cadereyta, Mexico
May 2012: Danilo Medina is elected president of the Dominican Republic
Jun 2012: Paraguay’s senate removes president Fernando Lugo from office after a confrontation between police and protesters leaves 17 dead, and appoints vice-president Federico Franco
Jun 2012: Enrique Pena Nieto of the PRI wins elections in Mexico, inheriting a country where 60 thousand people died of drug-related violence in the six years of Calderon’s rule
Jul 2012: Venezuela joins Mercosur
Aug 2012: 48 workers die in a fire at Venezuela’s biggest oil refinery
Oct 2012: Jamaican runner Usain Bolt becomes the first athlete to win both 100 m and 200 m titles at consecutive Olympics
Oct 2012: Mexico kills Heriberto Lazcano, head of Los Zetas drug cartel, who is succeeded by Miguel Trevino
2012: Mexico grows twice faster than Brazil (4% vs 2%)
2012: Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon Forest has fallen from 28,000 sq km in 2004 to 5,000 sq km
Jan 2013: A riot at the prison of Uribana in Venezuela leaves 50 people dead
Jan 2013: About 230 people die in a fire in a night club of Santa Maria, in southern Brazil
Mar 2013: Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez dies of cancer and is succeeded by his vicepresident Nicolas Maduro
May 2013: Former Guatemala’s dictator Efrain Rios Montt is convicted of genocide
Jun 2013: Huge crowds protest in Brazil’s five major cities demanding better public services
Jul 2013: Mexico captures Zetas leader Miguel Trevino
Jul 2013: The Knights Templar drug cartel kills five demonstrators protesting against it and the police kill 20 gang members in a shootout in Mexico’s western Michoacan state
Aug 2013: Paraguay’s richest men, Horacio Cartes, becomes the country’s president after his centre-right party defeats the liberal party
Nov 2013: Juan Orlando Hernandez is elected Honduras’ president
Dec 2013: Michelle Bachelet is elected president of Chile for the second time
Dec 2013: The average salary in Cuba is $20/month
Dec 2013: Uruguay becomes the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana
Dec 2013: Mexico is the world’s fourth exporter of cars after Germany, South Korea and Japan