They did not seek to have the provinces enjoy local self-government or to have perpetuated the traditions of a sort of municipal home rule handed down from the colonial cabildos, so much as to secure the recognition of a number of isolated villages or small towns as sovereign states--which meant turning them over as fiefs to their local chieftains.

Federalism, therefore, was the Spanish American expression for a feudalism upheld by military lordlets and their retainers.
Among the measures of reform introduced by one republic or another during the revolutionary period, abolition of the Inquisition had been one of the foremost; otherwise comparatively little was done to curb the influence of the Church.

Indeed the earlier constitutions regularly contained articles declaring Roman Catholicism the sole legal faith as well as the religion of the state, and safeguarding in other respects its prestige in the community.

Here was an institution, wealthy, proud, and influential, which declined to yield its ancient prerogatives and privileges and to that end relied upon the support of clericals and conservatives who disliked innovations of a democratic sort and viewed askance the entry of immigrants professing an alien faith.

Opposed to the Church stood governments verging on bankruptcy, desirous of exercising supreme control, and dominated by individuals eager to put theories of democracy into practice and to throw open the doors of the republic freely to newcomers from other lands.