What happened when Spanish America separated itself from Spain? Given what Paz has stated throughout the book about that moment in history, draw your own conclusions about why that happened.

When Spanish America separated itself from Spain, it was not strong enough to stand on its own. Spain was the liberal, Utopian, European source of South America, counter-balancing the more traditional aspects of the countries. Given what Paz has stated throughout the book about that moment in history, there could be several factors for that. The greatest factor is that Mexico, in particular, was not industrialized and had few raw materials. Thus, it could not compete in the world market on either front. Secondly, even though Europe was a declining source of ideas, it still presented many ideas to Mexico, which had not had any great thinkers of its own. Nearly all of Mexican philosophy had been borrowed from Europe and adapted to its own purposes. Finally, without ties to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-influenced nations around it were cut loose from that part of their history. The Spanish obliterated or nullified the Indian portions of their heritage. By choice, the Indians obliterated and nullified the Spanish parts. Thus they were cut off even more from the world and tradition than ever before. All of those factors contributed to the extreme difficulty that the Spanish-American nations faced when they severed ties with Spain.