Who were the Creoles and why did they feel the need to fight? The Creoles were people of pure Spanish blood who were born in Latin America. The Creole felt that they needed to fight for three reasons. They wanted to protect economic interests, feared social unrest, and felt a new sense of national identity. These three reasons gave the Creoles the sense that they were being treated unfairly and that they should be seen as their own nation.
The Creoles thought that they should be treated as an equal of the Peninsulares or at least be seen as their own equal. The only difference between the Creoles and the Peninsulares was that the Creoles were “Americans by birth and Europeans by law,” while the Peninsulares were people born in Spain that migrated to the colonies. Even though the Creoles had growing economic and social influence the Peninsulares monopolized all administrative positions.” This caused many Creoles to think of doing away with Spanish colonialism and move toward independence. The creoles also felt this was causing them economic issues that they did not wish to deal with.
The restrictions that were placed upon the Creoles rights and economic interests made them feel like their lives and rights were being infringed upon. The Creoles felt that they were “the first to be forced by their own government to sell their products at artificially low prices and buy what they need at artificially high prices.” Then when drought caused the price of food to triple and crops to become scarce the Creoles “sought to capitalize on these social tensions…and hatched a plot which sought to wrest power from the Peninsulares and establish a form of Creole home rule.” The Creoles did not want anyone but themselves to be the leaders and they feared that other social classes would try to riot and overthrow them.
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