What impact did the latin american rulers have on their people

Well for the people: Due to being Spanish colonies a ... uh ... while ago ... they were ruled over by the monarchy. So, when those colonies became their own countries, it wasn't that difficult for someone to be a dictator or something like that because everyone was used to it. Certainly the idea of democracy wasn't popular at the time. For ruler: Well kind of the same thing. There were bad rulers and good rulers. Some took all the power and others didn't. It was so easy to just claim absolute power through revolution, Cuba, that it was a very bad time for the rulers because they had to fear revolt. The idea of dictatorships is not really a good one, but if you have a good leader it's perfect ... except when that leader dies and some idiot takes his place creating chaos ... TL; DR: The absence of Spanish rule left a huge power vacuum that others were eager to fill.