What America is this? Survivals of the European colonization of Indoamerica, with examples of the cases of Brazil and Argentina

Abstract

This paper addresses significant differences between three processes of colonization that were imposed over the territories and the native peoples of the Americas. Beside the french in Canadian Québec in the first two centuries (XVII and part of the XVIII), the three dominant colonizations were the english in North America, the portuguese in present Brazil, and the spanish conquests in the rest of South and Central America. Secondly, the paper aims to address certain social and cultural attitudes and institutional aspects that still “survive” in the Americas after two centuries of Independence of the metropolis. Thirdly, we intend to deny certain common assumptions about the “latinity” of the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. We consider that one of the fundamental historical axes to be taken into account when analyzing the forms and origins of policies and the construction of the State in these countries rests in the form in which they obtained their independence and their attempts to reconstruct the State in reference to the three crowns: the English, the Spanish and the Portuguese.