As an important political entity, the history of Latin America began with "the history of discovery". (Wolff Glaber Dodoff: Where is Latin America going? Trans. Qi Chu, Beijing Current Affairs Publishing House, 1985, p. 5. ) From the 6th century A.D./KLOC-,European civilization began to expand its power in the world with the help of advanced technologies and systems. The slow evolution of Indian civilization in this region first became the victim of European civilization, and the region also became the marginal zone of the emerging world system, beginning its long history of marginalization.

This history of marginalization can be roughly divided into two stages. The previous stage, from16th century to the beginning of19th century, was a colonial history lasting more than 300 years. The latter stage is the dependent history that began after the independence movement in19th century, and lasted for more than 150 years, and it has not ended yet. In a narrow sense, the history of modernization in Latin America is the latter period, because during this period, Latin American countries have successively achieved political independence and started the modernization process centered on building nation-states and industrialization. Broadly speaking, the modernization history of Latin America is the sum of these two periods, because the beginning of colonial history marks that the region has been included in the worldwide modernization process. The long and unique colonial history directly determines the uniqueness of Latin America's modernization process, making it a model that has always been firmly locked in the world system and freed from bondage in modern world history. The road to modernization in Latin America embodies the dilemma that almost all third world countries can't get rid of: dependence and autonomy. This paper will describe the macro-process of modernization in Latin America from a broad perspective.