scholarly journals Modern Conflicts Features in Latin America. The Role of the OAS in the Settlement of the Falklands Conflict

Author(s):  
Y. I. Strashko

The article is an attempt to give careful examination to the issue of intergovernmental conflicts and the OAS's (The Organization of American states) activity on ensuring security in Latin America in particular. The article's focus on last decades is not accidental. The 30-40th of the XX century were marked by major military conflicts in South America that, however, were sidelined after the Second World War. Created on the verge of the Cold war the OAS was considered by the States as a barrier to the spread of communist threat in the Western Hemisphere and in such a capacity the organization went on up to detente policy implementation. All the time the OAS had to challenge different crises. By the time the bipolar world order seized to exist the OAS had had another mission. It was no longer the provision of international security but the local conflicts management including long-standing territorial disputes. The difference in approach to Organization's role and status between the US and Latin American states became distinct in the same period. The former persist in protection of freedoms and the Western way of life against global threats such as international terrorism (especially after 9/11), drug trafficking, gunrunning, money laundering and others crimes (especially those involving violence). The latter are trying to engage the OAS potential to protect their own national and regional interests while becoming integrated into a new global economic and political relations system. Trying to meet the modern challenges the OAS not only creates new bodies, but also makes significant changes in its statutory documents, which unlike the UN makes it more responsive to internal crises. Besides there is a distinct tendency of the Organization's becoming more independent from the US.

2002 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 73-98
Author(s):  
Rozita Levi ◽  
Slobodan Pajovic

The authors give a historical overview of the origin and development of terrorism in Latin America describing the forms in which it appears in this region of the world (political, military, state and narco terrorism). They also explore to what degree the attacks on the USA launched on 11 September 2001 will affect the governments of Latin American countries to harmonize their positions with those of the US government in taking joint actions in their combat to eliminate terrorist activities on the American continent.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-23
Author(s):  
W. A. Sánchez

Brazil has historically been regarded as the natural leader of Latin America, given its level of development, the size of its economy, its military might and its ambitious foreign policy. This image was cemented during the presidencies of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, who supported Latin American integration (particularly via the creation of such blocs as UNASUR and CELAC) and diminishing Washington’s historical influence in the Western Hemisphere. However, the situation has dramatically changed with the rise to power of President Jair Bolsonaro, a staunch supporter of the US in general (and President Donald Trump in particular), which has affected Brazil’s role in the region. Based upon the analysis of specific domestic and foreign policy components, the author draws conclusions on how Brazil’s prospects as a participant (or even the key motivator) in the transformation processes in the region have changed. Brazil is no longer perceived as the axis of attempts at regional integration, but rather “just another separate state” taking care of its own interests. Brazil’s economic crisis and Bolsonaro’s strategy (or the lack thereof) regarding the COVID-19 pandemic have negatively affected Brazil’s image even further. Then again, as this analysis seeks to demonstrate, Latin America has a mixed record when it comes to integration attempts, as regional governments are zealous guardians of national sovereignty. Hence, while there have been some successful regional thrivings towards promoting cooperation, the rise of some supranationalist organization similar to the European Union – is a dream. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Latin American (and Caribbean) blocs do not need supranationalism to be effective, but it shows the limits of regional integration initiatives.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence

This chapter focuses on a paradigmatic misencounter between an American experiencer and a Latin American reader. Examining an implicit debate about the sources of Walt Whitman’s poetry and vision of the Americas, I argue that Waldo Frank, one of the twentieth century’s main literary ambassadors from the US to Latin America, positioned Whitman as the representative US writer whose antibookish experiential aesthetics could serve as a model for “American” writers both in the North and in the South. I show how Frank’s framework provided a foil for Borges’s idiosyncratic view that Whitman’s poetry about America derived entirely from his readings of European and US writers. Although much of the best scholarship on Whitman’s reception in Latin America has concentrated on poets like José Martí and Pablo Neruda, who adapted Whitman’s naturalism, I contend that Borges’s iconoclastic portrait of Whitman as a reader profoundly influenced a range of anti-experiential literary theories and practices in Latin America.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Sidney Xu Lu

Abstract This article explains how the US westward expansion influenced and stimulated Japanese migration to Brazil. Emerging in the nineteenth century as expanding powers in East Asia and Latin America, respectively, both Meiji Japan and post-independence Brazil looked to the US westward expansion as a central reference for their own processes of settler colonialism. The convergence of Japan and Brazil in their imitation of US settler colonialism eventually brought the two sides together at the turn of the twentieth century to negotiate for the start of Japanese migration to Brazil. This article challenges the current understanding of Japanese migration to Brazil, conventionally regarded as a topic of Latin American ethnic studies, by placing it in the context of settler colonialism in both Japanese and Brazilian histories. The study also explores the shared experiences of East Asia and Latin America as they felt the global impact of the American westward expansion.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nubia Muñoz

It is too early to know which will be the final death toll from the Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2 virus epidemy in Latin America since the epidemy is still active and we will not know when it will end. The curve for new infections and deaths has not reached yet a peak (Figure 1). In addition, we know little about the epidemiology of this new virus. The daily litany of the number of people infected with the number of admissions to hospitals and intensive care units and the number of deaths guides health authorities to plan health services and politicians to gauge the degree of confinement necessary to control the transmission of the virus, but it says little about the magnitude of the problem if we do not relate it to the population at risk. At the end of the pandemic, we will be able to estimate age-standardized death rates for the different countries, but until then the crude death rates will provide a first glance or snapshot of the death toll and impact of the pandemic from March to May 2020. These rates are well below those estimated in other countries in Europe and North America: Belgium (82.6), Spain (58.0), the United Kingdom (57.5), Italy (55.0), France (42.9), Sweden (41.4), and the US (30.7). (Johns Hopkins CSSE, May 30, 2020). However, in the European countries and the US the number of deaths has reached a peak, while this is not the case in Latin American countries. (Figure 1). It should be taken into account that the above rates are crude and therefore, some of the differences could be due to the fact that European countries have a larger proportion of the population over 70 years of age in whom higher mortality rates have been reported.


Author(s):  
Dayana Rojas ◽  
Jorge Saavedra ◽  
Mariya Petrova ◽  
Yue Pan ◽  
José Szapocznik

AbstractSARS-CoV-2 has infected over one hundred million people worldwide and has affected Latin America particularly severely in terms of both cases and deaths. This study aims to determine the association between SARS-CoV-2 testing and COVID-19 fatality rate worldwide over 8 months and to examine how this relationship differs between Latin America and all other countries. This cross-sectional study used March 2021 data from 169 countries. Multivariate regressions predicted COVID-19 fatality (outcome) from the number of SARS-CoV-2 tests (exposure), while controlling for other predictors. Results for March 2021 were compared to results from June 2020. Additionally, results for Latin America were also compared to all other countries except Latin American for March 2021. SARS-CoV-2 testing was associated with a significant decrease in COVID-19 fatality rate in both June 2020 and March 2021 (RR = 0.92; 95% CI 0.87–0.96 and RR = 0.86; 95% CI 0.74–1.00, respectively). SARS-CoV-2 testing was associated with a significant decrease in COVID-19 fatality rate in Latin American countries but not in all other countries (RR = 0.45; 95% CI 0.23–0.89 and RR = 0.95; 95% CI 0.82–1.11, respectively). However, the difference between the risk ratios for June 2020 and March 2021 and between the risk ratios for Latin America and all other countries were not statistically significant. Increased SARS-CoV-2 testing may be a significant predictor of lower COVID-19 case fatality rate, specifically in Latin American countries, due to the existence of a strong association, which may have driven the worldwide results.


2020 ◽  
pp. 121-128
Author(s):  
Amarilla Kiss

Maritime piracy is an activity that was considered defunct long ago and that Latin American countries experience it again in the 21st century. Since 2016 the number of attacks has increased dramatically involving armed robbery, kidnapping and massacre. Modern day piracy has nothing to do with the romantic illusion of the pirates of the Caribbean, this phenomenon is associated with the governmental, social or economic crisis of a state. When it appears, we can make further conclusions regarding the general conditions of the society in these states. But do these attacks really constitute piracy under international law? Does Latin American piracy have unique features that are different from piracy in the rest of the world? The study attempts to answer the questions why piracy matters in Latin America and how it relates to drug trafficking and terrorism. Apart from that, the study presents a legal aspect comparing the regulation of international law to domestic law, especially to the national law of Latin American states.


Author(s):  
Pía Riggirozzi ◽  
Diana Tussie

The concept of post-hegemonic regionalism describes the scenario that has characterized Latin American regionalism in the last two decades. It first builds from Amitav Acharya’s work, in which he envisaged the end of United States hegemony and a world order of multiple leadership and power competitions, a scenario that he calls a “multiplex world.” To a large extent, post-hegemonic regionalism grew at odds with U.S. regional and hemispheric ambitions of market-led governance and in a context of weakened U.S. hegemony in Latin America. As a concept, denotes the region as a political space in which transborder governance is anchored in a new consensus about what cooperation and diplomacy is and is for, giving way to a reorganization of the regional scenario and the emergence of diverse efforts in new areas of cooperation. With this in mind, post-hegemonic regionalism is both a theory-based concept, contributing to a debate and a research agenda that branched out in the study of southern regionalism, as much as a manifestation of governance that re-signified and valued the regional space as one of action and contestation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212110364
Author(s):  
Carsten-Andreas Schulz ◽  
Laura Levick

Latin American states have long been active participants in multilateral treaty making. However, the rich history of Latin American legal activism contrasts with debates about the degree to which these states commit to international agreements. We probe the existence of this purported ‘commitment gap’ by analyzing the signing and ratification of multilateral treaties. Are Latin American states less likely to ratify agreements they have signed than states from other world regions? Using survival analysis of an original dataset on multilateral treaties deposited with the UN Secretary-General, we find no difference between Latin America and North America/Europe in terms of ratification. If a commitment gap exists, it appears to be more evident in other regions, particularly East Asia, Africa, and the Anglo-Caribbean. To the extent that there is a ‘commitment gap’ at the regional level in Latin America, it is unlikely to be due to country-level factors such as domestic institutions.


Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter examines the reasons for the instability in Latin America during the Cold War. The oil crisis of 1973–1974, followed by trade deficits, depression, and high inflation, helped promote revolutionary ideas among the landless peasants and urban poor of many Latin American countries. Under Jimmy Carter, with his interest in promoting human rights, a more active and enlightened US policy towards Latin America might have been expected. However, his aims were inconsistent, as the moral cause of human rights clashed with local realities and other American interests. The chapter first considers the Reagan Doctrine and Ronald Reagan’s meddling in El Salvador before discussing the United States’s involvement in Nicaragua and the ‘Contragate’ scandal. It concludes with an assessment of the US invasions of Grenada and Panama.


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