According to the author there were many problems that Latin America had after independence. In my opinion the two biggest problems that Latin America had after gaining their independence was the huge amount of economic devastation that the wars of independence caused, and the fact that the new republics that were formed after independence were very fragile. After the wars of independence there was a huge amount of economic devastation, the areas that were hit the hardest where the Mexican and Peruvian silver mines. Since most of their shafts were flooded, most of there machinery was destroyed in the process. These mines needed huge injections of capital but there weren’t enough banks in Latin America to provide them with it, and foreign banks weren’t interested in investing with them at all. Another reason for Latin America's huge amount of economic problems was the lack of transportation infrastructure; transportation costs were very high because it was hard for merchants who were trying to sell things to get past the steep mountains and tropical forests. Trade continued to expand but there wasn’t enough capital at the time to build new roads, bridges, railroads, and ports, so Latin American trade never realized its full potential. Rebuilding the government was also very expensive, because they all had to be rebuilt from scratch. The army was already overdeveloped, because their were too many officers and too many salaries to pay which created many conflicts between the armies. Another problem that Latin America had after independence was the fact that the new republics that were formed were very fragile; they were also understaffed as well. Due to the fact that most republics were understaffed, most found it hard to administer or make people pay their taxes. Latin American states relied on import/export tariffs, high yield taxes that could be charged at