Granada falls to Spanish forces, ending the Reconquista and unifying Spain under Isabel and Ferdinand.

Columbus lands in the Americas under the sponsorship of the Spanish crown.

Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire and captures Tenochtitlan with Indigenous allies and devastating disease.

The Spanish develop massive silver mines at Potosí and Zacatecas, generating enormous colonial wealth.

Napoleon invades the Iberian Peninsula, imprisons the Spanish king, and destabilizes Spanish colonial rule.

Father Hidalgo delivers the Grito de Dolores, rallying the Mexican poor to fight for independence.

Simón Bolívar leads military campaigns across South America, liberating Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

Liberal governments collapse across Spanish America as caudillos seize power through personal armies and wealth.

Benito Juárez defeats conservative forces and a French-backed emperor to restore liberal rule in Mexico.

Porfirio Díaz seizes the Mexican presidency and rules as a dictator for nearly thirty years.

The New York Stock Market crash ends the export boom and triggers economic crisis across Latin America.

Fidel Castro's forces take control of Cuba after dictator Fulgencio Batista flees the country.

Military dictatorships seize power across Latin America and unleash systematic torture and murder against suspected communists.

The North American Free Trade Agreement is created, accelerating neoliberal economic integration across the Americas.

Hugo Chávez wins the Venezuelan presidency, signaling a broader leftward political shift across Latin America.

The most important events in Latin American history begin with the Reconquista that forged Spain into an imperial power and Columbus's encounter with the Americas. Spanish conquistadors dismantled the Aztec Empire and built a colonial economy on vast silver wealth extracted by forced labor. Napoleon's invasion of Spain fractured colonial legitimacy, sparking independence movements led by Father Hidalgo in Mexico and Simón Bolívar across South America. Independence gave way to instability and caudillo rule until the era of Progress produced reformers like Juárez and strongmen like Porfirio Díaz. The Great Depression shattered the export economy, and the Cold War brought Cuba's communist revolution and a wave of brutal military dictatorships across the continent. By the 1990s neoliberal reforms reshaped the region once more, only for leftist leaders like Hugo Chávez to challenge the new order as the millennium turned.

Latin America's defining moments from conquest to the modern era.

Portugal begins building sugar plantations in Brazil and imports African enslaved people to work them.

Friar Bartolomé de las Casas publishes his account of Spanish atrocities against Indigenous peoples in the Americas.

The Pueblo people of New Mexico revolt against Spanish rule and successfully expel the colonizers.

The Portuguese royal court flees Napoleonic invasion and relocates its seat of government to Brazil.

João VI leaves his son Pedro I to rule an independent Kingdom of Brazil.

Mexico and the United States go to war and Mexico loses nearly half its territory in defeat.

Brazil's liberals pass the free birth law, declaring all children born to enslaved people are free.

The United States defeats Spain in war and takes control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

The United States backs Panama's separation from Colombia and acquires rights to build an oceanic canal.

Mexican nationalists draft a new constitution that becomes the enduring foundation of Mexican governance.

Diego Rivera paints his History of Mexico mural inside the National Palace in Mexico City.

Getúlio Vargas becomes Brazil's populist president and guides the nation through economic depression using industrialization.

CIA-backed forces overthrow Guatemala's constitutionally elected president Jacobo Árbenz to protect US business interests.

Argentina's military dictatorship tortures and kills approximately twenty thousand suspected opponents during the dirty war.

The Sandinistas overthrow Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and seize control of the country.

The secondary forces and events that built and broke Latin American societies begin with Brazil's sugar economy, which depended entirely on African slave labor imported by Portuguese colonizers. Colonial-era resistance like the Pueblo revolt and later the flight of the Portuguese court to Brazil show how crisis and survival shaped the region's diverging paths. Economic and diplomatic shocks — Mexico's devastating loss of territory to the United States, Brazil's free birth law, and US seizure of Cuba and Panama — mark a region in constant struggle with foreign power. Cultural and political milestones such as Mexico's 1917 constitution and Diego Rivera's famous mural gave nationalist movements their defining identity, while Getúlio Vargas's populist presidency steadied Brazil through the Great Depression. The Cold War brought the CIA's overthrow of Guatemala's elected president, Argentina's murderous dirty war, and the Sandinistas' revolutionary victory in Nicaragua. Together these events fill in the human and political texture beneath the headline turning points of Latin American history.

The supporting events that shaped Latin American society and sovereignty.

Spanish conquerors establish the encomienda system, forcing Indigenous peoples into labor and Christian conversion.

Bourbon reforms restrict Creole authority and increase colonial taxation, fueling deep resentment toward Spanish rule.

Simón Bolívar's dream of Gran Colombia collapses as political infighting tears the unified republic apart.

Mexico's conservatives invite France to install Archduke Maximilian as emperor, deepening the country's civil conflict.

Argentina exports beef to Europe via refrigerator ship, launching a powerful new agricultural export economy.

Brazil abolishes slavery and Emperor Pedro II is deposed as the country transitions to a republic.

Porfirio Díaz resigns the Mexican presidency and flees into exile in Paris as revolution sweeps the country.

Latin American diplomats formally protest US dominance at the Pan American Union conference in Havana.

Bolivia's National Revolutionary Movement nationalizes mines, redistributes land, and grants universal suffrage without turning communist.

The Organization of American States issues the Declaration of Caracas, making Marxist activity illegal in member nations.

Fidel Castro meets Che Guevara in Mexico and together they plan a revolutionary campaign to overthrow Batista.

Argentina's military forces Juan Perón into exile, though his popular support continues to shape national politics.

The CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion fails, cementing Castro's hold on Cuba and pushing the island toward the Soviet Union.

Violeta Chamorro wins Nicaragua's election, becoming the first woman to serve as president in Latin America.

Colombia's government and FARC guerillas resume peace negotiations after decades of armed conflict and narco-violence.

Pool 3 traces the pivotal decisions and unexpected turning points that redirected Latin American history, beginning with the encomienda system that locked in colonial hierarchy and the Bourbon reforms that unwittingly fueled independence movements. Post-independence crises — the collapse of Gran Colombia, conservatives gambling on a French emperor for Mexico, and Argentina's sudden entry into global beef markets — reveal how quickly the hopes and dangers of a new era materialized. The fall of Porfirio Díaz and the Havana protest against US dominance mark moments when Latin Americans openly reclaimed political agency, while Bolivia's peaceful socialist revolution showed that reform did not have to mean communist takeover. The Cold War produced sharp turning points in Cuba, from Castro and Guevara's revolutionary planning in Mexican exile to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion that sealed Cuba's alignment with the Soviet Union, while Perón's exile illustrated how even massively popular leaders could be swept aside by the military. The pool closes with Nicaragua electing Latin America's first female president and Colombia's fragile peace negotiations with the FARC, offering cautious signs of democratic resilience in a region long defined by conflict.