Following independence from Spain in 1898, Cubans hoped to create a new independent, more egalitarian nation built on the dreams of numerous well-known revolutionaries like José Martí and Antonio Maceo as well as lesser known radicals like the anarchists Enrique Creci, Enrique Messonier, and Adrián del Valle. Like so many of their fellow residents on the island, though, the anarchists quickly grew disillusioned with independence. Their disillusionment rested on repeated U.S. military occupations, a business and commercial class that put individual profits over the well-being of all, a government that seemed to repress labor and the popular classes in order to curry favor with international and national investors, and educational systems that anarchists charged taught obedience and subservience instead of freedom.

On 6 March 1701, the municipal government of Puebla de los Angeles received a cédula commanding the performance of an oath ceremony, or jura del rey, for the new Bourbon monarch, Philip V. Twelve days later, a second cédula arrived, ordering the celebration of royal funerary honors, or exequias reales, for the last Spanish Habsburg king, Charles II. Puebla's municipal leaders, or regidores, attributed great importance to public ceremony and began planning for the events immediately upon receiving Queen Mariana's instructions. Like the political elites of many early modern cities, Puebla's councilmen consistently dedicated a significant share of the city's resources to mount spectacles to commemorate such events as viceregal entrances, patron saints’ days, royal births and marriages, and Spanish military victories. These occasions provided local leaders with opportunities to instruct the populace in the authority of the king's primary representative, the primacy of the Catholic faith, the power of the city's leaders, the importance of hierarchy in colonial society, and the loyalty due the royal family and the Spanish Empire.

In his 1927 annual report to the Pernambucan state legislature, Governor Estacio de Albuquerque Coimbra wrote that “the economic, intellectual, moral and civic value of the Nation and the State is shaped, with the expression of human activity, in the excellence of physical and moral robustness of its population.” He believed that government was responsible for improving the condition of its citizens, and that “man, healthy or sick, … ought to fall under the knowing gaze of the Governments, preserving or restoring him to health, to benefit the Nation.” Under Coimbra's administrations, the Pernambucan government inaugurated public health, public assistance, and education programs designed to improve the material and physical well-being of Pernambucan citizens. This was not an easy task; regional economic underdevelopment and perennial budget crises threatened government-sponsored social programs. While public health programs could be implemented and administered with relative ease in the state's capital of Recife, transportation problems and low population density made the extension of such services to the residents of the state's interior almost impossible. Despite these obstacles, public health programs and the physical well-being of the state's populations had become the single most important concern of the Pernambucan government by the mid 1920s, and the expectation of future economic development and social progress was tied to the development of effective public health programs.

It is generally recognized that the grave military reverses of 1762 impelled Charles III “to place his American Empire on a competitive military footing.” A crucial element in this process was the “expansion of the regular, or veteran garrisons. . . .” This is not to say, of course, that there were no military establishments in the Indies before the Seven Years War. Indeed, as Allan J. Kuethe points out:

Yet, how different was this “promising defense system” from that put into place after 1762?