Pablo Morillo y Morillo, Count of Cartagena and Marquess of La Puerta, a.k.a. El Pacificador was a Spanish military officer who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and in the Spanish American Independence Wars. He fought against French forces in the Peninsular War, where he gained fame rose to the ranks of Field Marshall for his valiant actions. After the restoration of the Spanish Monarchy, Morillo then regarded as one of the Spanish Army's most prestigious officers, was named by King Ferdinand VIII as commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Army of Costa Firme with the goal to restore absolutism in Spain's possessions in the Americas.

The Spanish American wars of independence took place throughout Spanish America during the early 19th century, with the aim of political independence from Spanish rule. Struggles for sovereignty in both hemispheres began shortly after the outbreak of the Peninsular War as a front in the larger Napoleonic Wars, between royalists who favored a unitary monarchy, and patriots who favored either plural monarchies or republics. Thus, the strict period of military campaigns would go from the Battle of Chacaltaya (1809), in present-day Bolivia, to the Battle of Tampico (1829) in Mexico.