Well, I just explained that, didn't I? The American revolution was a revolution of equals against equals...basically English gentry against English gentry. It occurred amongst a population who were mostly well-educated, who were accustomed to ideas of social freedoms, liberal political notions, the right of assembly, forming a parliament, and so on. The disagreement among these English gentry was as to whether an obviously incompetent monarch who was very far away should still be running things (through his representatives) or whether the locals should do it through their own representatives.

After the revolution was won, a significant movement arose amongst the people to crown George Washington king of the new country! Washington rejected that notion. A King of England in those days, by the way, was far from being an absolute ruler, though he was the titular head of government. He had to contend with a lively and strong parliament, a pretty modern legal system, and all kinds of other checks and balances.

What you had in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies was a far more archaic, enormously less democratic society with an almost medieval authority system tied in with a truly medieval and very powerful Catholic Church...a radically more primitive situation than in the 13 colonies.

And under those colonial systems lived millions of poverty-stricken, illiterate peasants...mostly descendants of the Indians whom the Spanish had conquered or mixed blood peoples of European and Indian descent. Those peasants were the natural victims of the dictators to come.

Americans in the 1770's were a sophisticated population, well aware of the ideal of human equality and the rights of people in a free society. Latin Americans were in comparison a people who had barely been exposed to such notions at all...they were used to the iron hand of the church and the nobility.

Is it surprising, then, that modern democracies developed in the USA and Canada (which had no revolution) while what occurred from Mexico on down was mostly tyrranical rule by dictators and military governments?

When you are born into a tradition of democracy, you understand it intimately, you take it for granted, and it is natural for it to be set up and maintained. When you are born into a tradition of absolute rule by tryants, it is tremendously hard to make the leap into democracy...specially when people are too poor and uneducated to understand how to do it.

Castro was contending with a very different dynamic in Cuba than he would have been in America...if he had been born an American, he would never have seen reason for the kind of revolution he led in Cuba. He would probably have become a University student with radical notions and been a campus organizer or something instead.

You cannot judge Fidel Castro or the Cuban revolution by the standards of our North American life. It's a whole different scenario. And it's a whole different scenario in Russia too, and in China. What works here doesn't work there. It may work there someday, but not yet.