In this chapter we survey the beginnings of research practice and education in American countries that were former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, with a focus on chemistry and Brazil. While these countries are usually seen from abroad as a homogeneous block, i.e. the so-called Latin America, substantial social, political, and economic differences starting from the time of the European colonization allegedly led to divergences in the paths of institutionalization of research practice and education. We begin with an overview of the circumstances around the emergence of these new young nations, and the obstacles they met in their attempts at developing chemical research traditions until the middle of the twentieth century. Next we discuss in more detail the situation in Argentina and Mexico as the two largest countries representing poles of attraction of former Spanish viceroyalties. We conclude with a detailed study of the development of chemical research and the chemical research community in Brazil, especially of the formation of the earliest sustained university-based program of advanced training in the 1930s, an outcome of which was the emergence of the first generation of Brazilian professional chemical researchers.