In the first decades of the 19th century most Latin American countries achieved independence from Spain and Portugal. As was predictable the forthcoming Bicentennials of these events have triggered a wave of studies on the crises of the Hispanic empires and the emergence of new national states. Historians are revisiting the crucial events seeking to revise established perceptions on the topic. However, what they intend to revise is not always clear. In effect, the contribution would be hardly innovative, if it is understood as the questioning of conventional nationalistic histories, meaning the epic views of long-lasting nations that finally came to recover the right to self-government they were entitled to (the saga of liberty against despotism). In the 1960s a series of studies, propelled by the diffusion of Marxist thought and social history in Latin America, as well as by the increasing presence of American and European historians in the field, had already destabilized those Manichean approaches (albeit, without completely eradicating them from the academic milieu); these studies introduced a number of nuances that would set at stake the very essence of the nations that had emerged from the dissolution of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, revealing, in sum, the contingent nature of their origins and foundations.