The uneven progress of globalization and domestic transformation weighs forcibly on culture. During the 19th century, Latin America's opening to laissez faire and the importing of manufactures were accompanied by the importing of ideas, customs, and attitudes. Beginning in the late 19th century the last great push (prior to the present) toward externally generated growth began. In the past during periods when export classes predominated, globalism was much more significant than in contemporary times in terms of its impact on growth. This was particularly true for the imperialist centers and the newly colonized Latin American countries during the 19th century.
Latin America's external trade and investment had greater significance in the 19th century. Born globalized, it is only in the middle of the 19th century that the internal market began to gain in importance, thanks to the growth of wage labor, local manufactures and, most significantly, a state which altered the balance of class forces between the domestic and overseas oriented investors and producers. In Latin America civil wars and overseas intervention raged throughout the 19th century as globalizers and domestic producers battled over the direction of the economy.
The early colonial conquest led by mercantile capitalists, trading companies, slave merchants was the driving force of early globalization (19th century), the growth of protectionism and national industry (from the mid-19th century) stimulated the growth of domestic industries and the relative decline of global flows as centerpieces of accumulation. In Latin America pre-colonial productive systems were basically oriented toward domestic markets and/or long distance non-European trade. Colonization set the stage for the emergence of settler colonists who displaced indigenous ruling economic elites and re-oriented the economies toward the world (European and later North American) market. In the 19th century national independence movements in Latin America led by the indigenous export elites (mine owners, landowners, merchants) deepened the process of globalization...................
