Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"It was the battle that secured the independence of Peru and ensured independence for the rest of South America. In Peru it is considered the end of the Spanish American wars of independence, although the campaign of the victor Antonio José de Sucre . . . finally ended in 1826." [Wikipedia] Within a year, all New World nations were liberated except Cuba and Puerto Rico. This marked the end of Spain as a world power. The main liberators were Simon Bolivar in the North and Jose de San Martin in the South. They met in Guayaquil, Ecuador in July 1822 to plan the assault of Peru, but they differed in their goals. San Martin withdrew. [Aldrete: Decisive Battles] "It took Bolívar two years to equip an army equal to the task, but resounding victories in 1824 made Bolívar the liberator of two more countries . . . In the second of these battles, Ayacucho, fought at an exhausting altitude of over ten thousand feet, the patriots captured the last Spanish viceroy in America. Everything after the battle of Ayacucho was essentially a mop-up operation. The long and bloody Spanish American wars for independence were finally over. Only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish control . . ." [Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 4th Ed., p. 115]