Calling a data frame via a string - python-3.x

Question

I have a list of countries such as:
country = ["Brazil", "Chile", "Colombia", "Mexico", "Panama", "Peru", "Venezuela"]
I created data frames using the names from the country list:
for c in country:
c = pd.read_excel(str(c + ".xls"), skiprows = 1)
c = pd.to_datetime(c.Date, infer_datetime_format=True)
c = c[["Date", "spreads"]]
Now I want to be able to merge all the countries data frames using the columns date as the key. The idea is to create a loop like the following:
df = Brazil #this is the first dataframe, which also corresponds to the first element of the list country.
for i in range(len(country)-1):
df = df.merge(country[i+1], on = "Date", how = "inner")
df.set_index("Date", inplace=True)
I got the error ValueError: can not merge DataFrame with instance of type <class 'str'>. It seems python is not calling the data frame which the name is in the country list. How can I call those data frames starting from the country list?
Thanks masters!

Answer 1

Your loop doesn't modify the contents of the country list, so country is still a list of strings.
Consider building a new list of dataframes and looping over that:
country_dfs = []
for c in country:
df = pd.read_excel(c + ".xls", skiprows=1)
df = pd.to_datetime(df.Date, infer_datetime_format=True)
df = df[["Date", "spreads"]]
# add new dataframe to our list of dataframes
country_dfs.append(df)
then to merge,
merged_df = country_dfs[0]
for df in country_dfs[1:]:
merged_df = merged_df.merge(df, on='Date', how='inner')
merged_df.set_index('Date', inplace=True)