 What gave Latin American liberals and liberalism a clear identity around the mid-nineteenth century was their opposition to an adversary. In most of Hispanic America there emerged a “conservative” reaction against the dominant liberal tide as well as the political and social instability that characterized the initial constitutional experiments. A salient exception to this general trend is Argentina where liberals faced no such strong opposition and the liberal identity was for this reason less clearly defined (Halperín Donghi 1988). Though liberals and conservatives shared some political ground, the latter were usually the champions of order and stability, favoring gradual social change and the preservation of traditional hierarchies and privileges – including those historically enjoyed by the Catholic Church. Liberals, by contrast, favored a faster pace of change, the full protection of individual liberties, and the dismantling of the Church’s privileges and immunities. In Hispanic America, liberals and conservatives agreed on the need for a written constitution, the conventional nature of political authority, individual representation, and the separation of powers, among other ideas. In Brazil, the two political groups agreed on monarchical rule, though conservatives favored political centralism, the maintenance of oligarchical privilege, limited political participation, and also opposed the emancipation of slaves. By contrast, Brazilian liberals favored more provincial autonomy, political participation, religious freedom, secularization, and the end of slavery and of oligarchical privilege (Viotti da Costa 1986). Radical Brazilian liberals founded a republican party that called for the end of the monarchical system and the abolition of nobility titles.