Description
This paper seeks to disentangle the emergence of the contemporary Latin American regional order, by tracing it back to its origins in the regional independence campaigns and confederative congresses of the early nineteenth century, and the first editions of the Pan-American conferences, at the end of the same century.
Through archival work conducted in the region, and throughout engagement with primary and secondary sources, this work explores regional notions, understandings, and framings of shared threats to sovereignty and independence, as well as the ‘regional rise of consciousness’, i.e., the constitution of a distinctive Latin American regional space and identity. Conceiving national sovereignty as inextricably linked to wider regional principles of political autonomy and non-intervention, Latin American politicians, diplomats and jurists forged a defensive notion of regionness in which unionism and multilateralism were seen as the primary means to safeguard their countries’ recently acquired independence against new European incursions, contest ever-increasing American gravitation in regional affairs, and fight for the recognition of an egalitarian sovereign status in the nineteenth-century – Western – international society.
In turn, disentangling the regional origins sheds light on contemporary Latin American dynamics. In particular, on the current conundrum between championing solidarist regional norms and practices concerning the promotion and defence of democracy, human rights, and environmental stewardship, against a regional background of zealous upholding of the pluralist principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs.
