Colonial history was not destiny for the six territories that were peripheries under both the Habsburg and Bourbon monarchies. Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay emerged from colonialism as extremely poor new nations. This initial backwardness was, to be sure, a direct outgrowth of their colonial experience as sustained peripheries. Yet colonial institutions and actors were so weakly implanted in these countries that it remained possible for them to improve their situation in the decades immediately following independence. Less strongly imprinted than the colonial centers and semiperipheries, the sustained peripheries were capable of reinventing themselves.

Successful reinvention of economies and societies in the immediate aftermath of colonialism was hardly guaranteed, however. Of the six sustained peripheries, only two managed to rise from the bottom of the region's economic hierarchy. It was specifically Chile and Costa Rica where postcolonial actors established competitive economies and sustained real growth via primary exports during the decades that followed independence.