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Pan Americanism and Regionalism: A Mexican View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Jorge Castañeda
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Extract

The existence of regional arrangements rests on two assumptions: First, the recognition that world unity, based on a common way of life and common values, is still very distant; and second, the increasingly inescapable conviction that, in our time, the great majority of national states are political and economic units illequipped to develop fully and even survive on solely national bases. Politically, most states have lost ground in a world which has had its centers of power radically diminished in the course of a generation. Economically, they are units too small to develop fully their natural resources and overcome their poverty unless they work together. The modern world needs to create regional units as a bridge between the isolated national state and a sufficiently integrated world collectivity of the future.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , August 1956 , pp. 373 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1956

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References

1 The English author G. D. H. Colegives the following reasons for this: “The United States, while reserving its right to enter into any arrangements it may please with its neighbors on the American continent— or indeed elsewhere: witness the economic arrangements recently made with the Philippines—has been endeavoring to get the rest of the world to organize its economic affairs on the principle of ‘no discrimination’, which means, in practice, mainly the right of free entry for American private enterprise into the markets of the world. The United States delegates were most unlikely, at the time when the drafting was done, to include in the United Nations Charter anything that might be interpreted as giving encouragement to regional arrangements … Nor was the Soviet Union likely to wish to advertise in the United Nations Charter its farreaching plans for replacing Nazi Germany as the controlling power in East European economic relations. As for Great Britain, its delegates knew very well that nothing suggestive of the maintenance of the ‘sterling area’ or of empire preference would find favor with the United States. Accordingly, when the UN Charter was being drafted, the entire problem was passed over in silence.” (World in Transition, 1949, p. 580.)

2 Siegfried, André, Amérique Latine (Choses d'Amfrique), Paris, Armand Colin, 1934Google Scholar.

3 Sánchez, Luis Alberto, Existe América Latina? México, Fondo de Cultura Ecóndmica, 1945 (Tierra Firme, No. 14)Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 31.

5 Yepes, Jesús Maria, Philosophic du Panaméricanisme et Organisation de la Paix; Le Droit Panaméricain, Neuchâtel, Editions de la Baconnière, 1945, p. 77, 82 and ffGoogle Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 251.

7 Unfortunately, the immodest appropriation of universal desiderata or of the great principles of jusgentium—which frequently have no relation to the institutional reality of our peoples—is not limited to some zealous Pan Americanists. The Pan American Conferences themselves have often fallen into this tendency which certainly does not favor the universal prestige of Pan Americanism, but, on the contrary, has led many European authors to describe it as unreal, bombastic and insincere. The following affirmation contained in the “Declaration of Mexico” approved by the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace (Chapultepec Conference, Mexico, 1945) might serve as an example of the tendency on which we are commenting: “The American community maintains the following principles as governing the relations among the States composing it:…………… “12……… The American man cannot conceive of living without justice, just as he cannot conceive of living without liberty.”

8 Article I of the Protocol of Adherence to the Hague Conventions which was approved by the Pan American Conference of Mexico states: “The American Republics represented in the International Conference of Mexico, which are not signatories of the three Conventions signed in the Hague on July 29, 1899, recognize the principles set forth in those Conventions as forming part of the American international public law.”

9 The League of Nations established this principle in a Resolution of the League Assembly on March 11, 1932, in the following terms: “The Members of the League of Nations shall not recognize any situation. treaty or agreement which might have been effected by means contrary to the League of Nations Covenant or to the Paris Pact.”

10 Guani, Alberto, “La Solidarité Internationale dans l'Amérique Latiné”, Recueil des Cours, Académie de Droit International, Vol. 8 (1925, III), p. 259 and ffGoogle Scholar.

11 Strupp, Karl, “L'lntervention en Matiére Financière”, Recueil des Cours, Académie de Droit International, Vol. 8 (1925, III), p. 80Google Scholar.

12 According to this doctrine, the non-payment of the public debt cannot authorize the armed intervention and even less the occupation of the territory of American states.

13 The text of the reservations is found in the cited work of A. Guani, p. 290, 291.

14 Ibid., p. iii.

15 Article 15 of the Charter of the OAS says: “No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements.”

16 Whitaker, Arthur, Las Américas y un Mundo en Crisis, translated by Montenegro, Ernesto, Lancaster, Pa., Biblioteca Interamericana fundada por la Dotation Carnegie para la Paz Internacional (Vol. 15), 1946, p. 286Google Scholar.

17 According to this doctrine, no government should be recognized which is the result of a revolution or a coup d'état, so long as the people have not had an opportunity to organize the country constitutionally, by freely elected representatives.

18 A Mexican diplomat and author, Luis Quintanilla, has worked out a “test” for democracy which would indicate all the fault s which prevent a state from being considered democratic (Quintanilla, Luis, Democracia y Pan-americanlsmo, Mexico, ediciones de Cuadernos Americanos, 1952, p. 65)Google Scholar. In spite of the fact that the test, because of its intrinsic worth, might have been presented in the international centers and turned into an inter-American resolution, it ha s never been formally introduced as a proposal. In the first place, it is not certain that the present political setting in America serve democracy, the mere fact that it is denned internationally implies a divergence from the principle that the governmental regime and the economic system of the nations belongs to the domestic jurisdiction of the states and, therefore, is outside the orbit of international organizations.