The Western Hemisphere's Integration Precursor Efforts: The Founding of a Pan American Society Versus the Establishment of a US Sphere of Influence (1889–1945)

Today's Inter-American system is a result of the search by the United States and Latin America for common ground as each has simultaneously sought conflicting objectives. The traditional goals of the US for regional preponderance have time and again conflicted with the Latin American states' perennial aspirations to secure national sovereignty and self-determination. This fundamental difference in objectives helps explain why, even today, Latin American states tend to distrust and resist US leadership. US interests and goals are perceived to hinder Latin-America's objectives to build and secure sovereign and democratic states; forge an inter-state society capable of addressing common security concerns; and accomplish regional cooperation and integration around a common purpose (Waltz 1979; Bull 1984; Morgenthau 1993; Buzan and de Wilde 1998; Gilpin 2001; Herz 2003; Buzan 2004; Hurrell 2005).

Since the early nineteenth century, the Latin American ideals of independence, modernization, democratic consolidation and regional integration have been contested not only from within by the domestic authoritarian and populist tendencies but also from without, by European imperialism and by recurrent attempts by the US to establish and institutionalize its claim to regional hegemony (Waltz 1954; Waltz 1979; Watson 1984).