Encyclopedia of U.S.-Latin American Relations

Sample Article

Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security, August 15 to September 2, 1947

Popularly known as Rio Conference. In August 1947, the nations of the Western Hemisphere, save Nicaragua, convened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Subsequently, Ecuador withdrew because of political turmoil at home. The delegates focused their attention upon completing the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, or the Rio Pact. Many American policymakers understood the significance of the meeting. President Truman traveled to the conference at its conclusion, arriving aboard the battleship, the U.S.S. Missouri. He joined the Secretary of State George Marshall and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI) who took the lead for Washington on securing its goals of sustaining hemispheric solidarity and defense.

The origins of the Rio Pact dated to the 1945 Conference on Inter-American Problems of War and Peace in Mexico City, often referred to as the Chapultepec Conference, after the castle in which the conferees met. There, the United States and the Latin American nations made their first attempt to strengthen wartime cooperation against a threat to the hemisphere. Part III of the Act of Chapultepec recommended a regional arrangement for dealing with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security. While creating no machinery to administer it, the Act emphasized that the activities be consistent with the purposes and principles of the general international organization when established, a direct reference to the forthcoming United Nations. Owing to the United States-Argentine controversy surrounding the presidential candidacy of Juan Perón nothing more could be accomplished at the time. Still, the ideas of Chapultepec were significant, especially as tensions continued to rise in the international arena in the aftermath of the war and, they served as the backdrop for the Rio Conference.

In the years immediately following World War II, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union led to the onset of the Cold War in Europe by 1947. During the same time period Communists appeared to be on the verge of a military victory in China and were making headway in the Greece and Turkey. In response, the United States developed a policy of containment to limit Communist advances. The first expression of the containment policy came in March 1947, when President Harry S. Truman proclaimed in a doctrine bearing his name, that henceforth, the United States would assist "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The containment policy became the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for much of the second half of the twentieth century and largely shaped U.S. responses in Latin America.

Following the Chapultepec Conference, U.S. policymakers debated best how to treat Latin America. U.S. military planners and President Truman wanted to standardize and modernize Latin American militaries and develop a hemispheric defense policy against any outside threat. The State Department and the Congress demurred, fearing an arms race or the re-enforcement of military dictatorships across the southern hemisphere. As a result, Latin America remained outside of U.S, arms assistance programs until the 1951 Military Assistance Program.

Some U.S. policymakers, such as Nelson A. Rockefeller, saw Latin America's economic and social disparities and, closed political systems as breeding grounds for the Communists. In fact, the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina George Messersmith emphasized the same point in late 1946 when he noted that the inter-American system already was under attack from Moscow.

Thus, the unfolding Cold War and how to respond to Communist expansion served as the backdrop to the Rio Conference. By mid-1947, the United States softened its policy towards Perón, thus opening the door for Argentina's participation in the Rio Conference.

In many ways the Rio Conference fulfilled the hopes of Chapultepec.. The Rio Pact called for the peaceful settlement of disputes among member states before any appeal to the United Nations, the first direct declaration relating to Article 51 of the U.N.Charter that allowed for the creation of regional alliances. More important, the pact proclaimed that "an armed attack by any State against an American State shall be considered as an attack against all the American states," a significant U.S. concession given its history of no permanent or entangling alliances.This promise of collective security was a significant step forward for not only the United States, but also members who feared attacks by their more powerful neighbors throughout the region. Finally, an important safeguard was inserted into the Pact by its proviso that no collective action could occur without the consent of two-thirds of the parties agreeing and, that no individual state could be forced into action by the others. But the delegates could not agree on a definition for "an act of aggression," or exactly how the countries would respond to any given act of aggression.

There were some disagreements over the interpretation to what constituted the Americas. The United States and others pushed for a very liberal interpretation to include a gigantic ellipse beginning at the North Pole that went southward and encompassed Alaska and Greenland and typically ranged at least 300 miles from the coasts of the Americas. This created a problem when the Argentines complained about the occupation of the Falklands/Malvinas by the British. Following the classic reasoning of the Monroe Doctrine, Senator Vandenberg responded that the Argentine delegation was entitled to enter on the record any unilateral statement it desired, but questions of basic facts, such as ownership of the islands, did not fall under the purview of the Rio Treaty. As more than a century before, the U.S. position remained that if a country had occupied the territory before an agreement, then it could remain. Furthermore, the United States was not about to anger the British at this crucial juncture of the Cold War.

The delegates signed the Rio Pact on September 2, 1947 and each returned to seek ratification. The Treaty became operative in 1948 when the fourteenth nation, Costa Rica, ratified the treaty. In the United States, most Americans enthusiastically greeted the Rio Pact following the U.S. Senate approval of the treaty by a vote of 72-1. A jubilant Senator Vandenberg declared that the Rio Pact translated Pan-American solidarity from an ideal into a reality. For others, the treaty provided an adequate guarantee for the hemisphere's peace and security.

While Latin Americans saw the Rio Pact as a deterrent to external aggression, they also feared that it served as a stepping stone for the United States to move away from its non-intervention policy of the Good Neighbor era and a return to the gunboat diplomacy of the early twentieth century, especially after watching events in Argentina early in the Juan Perón presidency. Some solace was found in the fact that the Rio Pact required a two-thirds majority to intervene collectively in another state. This served as a potential constraint of the United States.

For many Latin Americans the Rio Conference failed to address the important topic of economic development. The Mexican Foreign Minister Jaime Torres Bodet emphasized that economic development provided the only sound basis for hemispheric peace. Brazilian Foreign Minster Raúl Fernandes went further by calling upon the United States to implement a large- scale economic aid program such as the one being considered for Europe in the form of what became known as the Marshall Plan.

While there were some hopes that the United States would respond to such requests, the Latin Americans had to wait nearly a generation for discussions on such matters. While Truman acknowledged the economic problems of the region, he explained that hemispheric problems differed in nature from those in Europe and, therefore could not addressed by the same means. Instead of a massive government program, Truman wanted the private sector to address Latin America's development needs. This approach cost the United States very little outside of providing technological and economic assistance as ultimately proposed in the Point 4 Program. Most Latin Americans left the Rio conference very disappointed in this area, but hopeful that a forthcoming meeting in Bogotá in 1948 would address the unexplored issues.

Within a very short time, the Rio Pact was put to a test. In December 1948, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle sponsored a small army of Costa Rican exiles led by former President Rafael Calderón Guardia to overthrow the government in San José because it harbored the pro-democracy Caribbean Legion that sought to overthrow authoritarian leaders throughout the circum-Caribbean region. After the invasion, the Costa Ricans requested and received from the newly formed Organization of American States (OAS) the invocation of Article 6 of the Rio Pact that prohibited attacks on member nations by other countries. Over time, the problems subsided and the forces withdrew, although tensions remained and another border incursion would occur in 1955 with similar reactions and responses.

According to historian Thomas A. Bailey the Rio Pact was the most significant inter-American agreement to that time and its ultimate consequence was the further multilateralization of the Monroe Doctrine. Importantly, the Rio Pact was also the first regional defense pact, as envisioned by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. While its significance waned during later parts of the Cold War, especially after the Dominican Intervention of 1965, it had been an important step forward in cooperation between the nations of the region during the postwar era and opened up the way for other discussions in the future.

Kyle Longley
Arizona State University

Also see: Argentina: Relations with the United States; Caribbean Legion; Dominican Republic, U.S. Intervention, 1965; Inter-American Problems of War and Peace in Mexico City, 1945; Nicaragua-Costa Rica Conflict, 1948; Ninth International Conference of American States, Bogotá, 1948; Adolph A. Berle; Spruille Braden; and Harry S. Truman;

References:
Green, David, "The Cold War Comes to Latin America," in Barton J. Bernstein, editor, Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration, Quadrangle Books, 1970
Parkinson, F. Latin America, The Cold War and the World Powers, 1945-1972, Sage Publications, 1974
Trask, Roger R, "The Impact of the Cold War on United States-Latin American Relations, 1945-1949," 1:3, Diplomatic History, pp. 271-284; and Report of the Delegation of the United States of America to the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace, Mexico City, Mexico, February 21-March 2, 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945).