 The moral meaning of the term “liberal” provided a perspective from which Hispanic American liberals construed their vision of the Spanish monarchy as a paradigm of tyranny and despotism. From the point of view of liberal ideas, more broadly, they came to see the colonial past as an age of obscurantism, ignorance, and backwardness (Lastarria 1844; Samper 1861; for discussion see Collier 1967: ch. 5). This negative conception of the Spanish heritage became a constant feature of the Hispanic American liberal frame of mind. In light of their abhorrence of the colonial past, liberals insisted on the need to construe completely new political institutions and to instill a new political mentality in the population. They were also prone to blame the colonial heritage for the great difficulties that they faced in carrying out these purposes. To be sure, this dismissive attitude towards the colonial past was not exclusive of liberals since it was Bolívar who famously blamed the ills of Hispanic America on the colonial past. In his Jamaica Letter he claimed that, as a consequence of the colonial heritage, “institutions which are wholly representative are not suited to our character, customs, and present knowledge” (Bolívar 1815). As some conservatives often complained, the repudiation of the Spanish heritage prevented liberals from positively valuing aspects of their society that could help build stable political institutions, such as the unifying force of Catholicism.