This chapter offers a narrative and an analysis of the process of independence in Brazil between 1807 and 1831 from a general perspective, but with a still little-known focus: the influences this process received from Spanish America, which, during the same period, was also becoming independent. The narrative follows the flow of the most relevant political and social events in both realms, revealing how Spanish America as a whole and its many regions in particular were “read” in Brazil, and how the country created its political options, among other factors, from its continental neighborhood, then becoming independent from Portugal and starting its formation as a sovereign state and nation. Far from the traditional – and still current – idea of Brazil as an exception in the American context of the nineteenth century, the ways in which Brazil and Spanish America shared a scenario and historical unity are shown, which cannot be properly understood separately. In addition to that, the drawing of this common plot will be developed with a general description of the inverse movement, lesser known in the historiography, i.e., of how Brazilian independency impacted parts of Spanish America.

This chapter revisits the latest trends in the historiography of gender in the Age of Revolutions in current Latin America and proposes the need to put politics at center stage. Based on new scholarship on the rise of political actors in the viceroyalty of Peru in these transitional years, the text argues that the Era of Revolutions saw the emergence of a new patriarchal order that brought about a new masculine identity tightly connected with force, action, and modern politics. While new men found unprecedented opportunities to take on positions of authority and power, this process led to a renewed exclusion of other masculine identities, homosexuals, and women from public and political arenas. Moreover, this exclusion brought about a mysoginistic and machista discourse that dominated reform projects, legal documents, the press, arts, and theater. Studying this discourse, the chapter argues, is crucial to understanding exclusionary practices in politics that remain in place in the region to this day.