Although each colony in Latin America was unique, all had some things in common.   For one, they felt that European nations were taking advantage of them.   Europeans took minerals and crops, but gave little in return.  

People  born in the Latin American colonies struggled to grow crops or to work in mines for other people.  Like the English colonies of North America, Latin America also had to pay taxes without having a voice in their government.  One popular song expressed the Latin American colonist viewpoint:

If anyone wants to know why I go shirtless, it's because of the taxes of the King.

Revolution in the Caribbean

The first rumbling of independence began on the large Caribbean island of Hispaniola.  Although Colombus claimed Hispaniola for Spain in fourteen ninety two, France controlled the western part of the island.  In the French colony , called Saint Dominque, enslaved Africans grew coffee and sugar on plantations.

When the French Revolution broke out across the Atlantic, distance cries of Liberty, Equaily, Fraternity echoed in Saint Dominque.  In  seventeen ninety one, a group of about one hundred thousand slaves rose up against the plantation owners.    This group was led by Toussaint L'Ouverture.  L'Ouverture believed that slavery was wrong.   He and other former slaves forced the French to abolish it throughout Saint Domingue.  In seventeen ninety six, L'Ouverture took control of the colony's government.

In eighteen hundred and two napoleon Bonaparte tried to regain control of Saint Domingue.  He sent a huge army to restart the practice of slavery on the island.  This time L'Ouverture began a revolution to drive the French out completely. 

Although L'Ouverture was captured and taken the France, the revolution became the first successful slave revolution in history.  From it,  the independent country of Haiti was born on Hispaniola  in eighteen hundred and four.