<Tr> <Td> 44,400 soldiers (total deployment) </Td> <Td> Unknown </Td> </Tr> <P> The Spanish American wars of independence were the numerous wars against Spanish rule in Spanish America with the aim of political independence that took place during the early 19th century, after the French invasion of Spain during Europe's Napoleonic Wars . </P> <P> These conflicts started in 1809 with short - lived governing juntas established in Chuquisaca and Quito in opposing the government of the Supreme Central Junta of Seville . In 1810, numerous new juntas appeared across the Spanish domains in the Americas when the Central Junta fell to the French invasion . Although various regions of Spanish America objected to many crown policies, "there was little interest in outright independence; indeed there was widespread support for the Spanish Central Junta formed to lead the resistance against the French ." While some Spanish Americans believed that independence was necessary, most who initially supported the creation of the new governments saw them as a means to preserve the region's autonomy from the French . Over the course of the next decade, the political instability in Spain and the absolutist restoration under Ferdinand VII convinced many Spanish Americans of the need to formally establish independence from the mother country . </P> <P> These conflicts were fought both as irregular warfare and conventional warfare, and as wars of national liberation and civil wars . The conflicts among the colonies and with Spain eventually resulted in a chain of newly independent countries stretching from Argentina and Chile in the south to Mexico in the north in the first third of the 19th century . Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule until the Spanish--American War in 1898 . The new republics from the beginning abolished the formal system of racial classification and hierarchy, casta system, the Inquisition, and noble titles . Slavery was not abolished immediately but ended in all of the new nations within a quarter century . Criollos (those of Spanish descent born in the New World) and mestizos (those of mixed Indian and Spanish blood or culture) replaced Spanish - born appointees in most political governments . Criollos remained at the top of a social structure that retained some of its traditional features culturally, if not legally . For almost a century thereafter, conservatives and liberals fought to reverse or to deepen the social and political changes unleashed by those rebellions . </P>

What sector of latin american society led the movement for independence