Inter-American Relations Research Articles

Donald Duck goes south: Walt Disney and the Inter-American relations

In the 1930s, with the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed that the United States would soon need the sympathy and cooperation of Latin America. His Good Neighbor policy sought to improve relations between the countries of the Americas. Walt Disney was commissioned by Nelson D. Rockefeller, who was in charge of inter-American relations, to make a goodwill tour of Latin America in search of inspiration for films about the region. He and his group met with politicians and artists, researched local cultures, and personally experienced the region’s society, geography and wildlife. As a result of these experiences, Latin America became the setting for two Disney films in the 1940s, Saludos Amigos (Norman Ferguson, 1942) and The Three Caballeros (Norman Ferguson, 1944). The aim of this article is to describe the key role played by Walt Disney and his cartoon characters (especially Donald Duck) in the transformation of inter-American relations, especially from the aspect of culture.

US hegemony in Latin America and opportunities to overcome it: horizon 2040

This article examines the phenomenon of US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and explores the possibility of overcoming it by 2040. The authors question the expediency of this measure for the countries within the region. The article identifies key determinants of Inter-American relations development. Among the key threats to Washington's dominance, the authors highlight the strengthening positions of major powers, particularly Brazil and Mexico, as well as China. The study's prognostic nature dictates its methodology, wherein current trends are compared with visions of future world development (by the middle of the 21st century).

Illegal Immigration from Latin America Amid the 2024 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Polarization Effects

Illegal immigration, particularly from Latin American countries, remains a major issue that divides the political process in the United States. Both Republican and Democratic candidates are exploiting this problem for political gain, as they compete for voters' support in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. While representatives of the two main political parties align on negative attitudes towards the issue, their approaches to addressing the problem are signifi cantly divided. This study aims to examine the impact of the polarising eff ects of Latin American illegal immigration on the political process in the United States within the context of the 2024 presidential campaign. The article takes a regional approach, examining presidential candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties who have formally declared their intention to run on September 1, 2023. The article concludes that the ongoing migration crisis in the United States and related socio-economic issues will remain a major concern in the future. Overall, discussions on this matter extend beyond domestic political discourse in the United States and now encompass the contentious interAmerican relations and the outlook for the liberal-democratic model as a whole.

Cinearte and Adhemar Gonzaga: interamerican relations and film industry

Cinearte and Adhemar Gonzaga: interamerican relations and film industry

China and the energy matrix in Latin America: Governance and geopolitical perspective

The importance of energy for States is fundamental. The proper functioning of production depends on energy security and energy policies. It is an object of geopolitics to control a region's production strategically. With the fight against climate change, green energy policies became relevant. In Latin America, the energy supply has various fossil and non-fossil fuels, primarily hydroelectric and alternative renewables. Energy demand is weak for EVs and mass transport vehicles. The energy matrix change process is led by China in Latin America, with a powerful presence through both credits and investments, both in renewable energy generation and the demand for EVs. Generally, she has invested the most money in energy in the world. Theoretically, there is a geopolitical issue as China has stepped into the US “backyard”. The result is that the energy matrix change has implications for domestic taxation, international trade, and inter-American relations. Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America has concentrated mainly on renewable energy since 2015, with strong resistance from the United States.

The new Pan-Americanism and the structuring of inter-American relations

The new Pan-Americanism and the structuring of inter-American relations

Direitos das mulheres e política regional sob a Guerra Fria. Direitos políticos e civis para as mulheres na América Latina, 1944-1954

ABSTRACT This article argues that advancements in women’s rights in the Inter-American diplomatic system after WWII did not solely follow women activists’ interests but resulted from the male-dominated multilateral relations in the region too. In support of these negotiations, the new political vocabulary of Human Rights emerging from the re-configuration of the world affairs was instrumental for the advancement of institutional reforms related to women’s rights in Latin America, especially voting rights. Contrary to existing literature on the subject, this article delves into the process of constructing this new vocabulary, instead of examining its final forms only. It uses archival sources from Brazil to offer another point of view of the making of the rhetoric of human rights and its uses in Inter-American relations in the after-war.

Transformation of the US approaches to radical leftist Latin American regimes under the Biden administration

This article is devoted to the transformation of the course of the Biden administration towards radical leftist regimes in Latin America. The purpose of the research is to identify the features of the process of normalizing their interaction, which is complicated by the external and internal political tasks of the White House. In the investigation will be analyzed Washington's steps to build a dialogue with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The results of this study will contribute to a better understanding of the US strategy in the region and the reasons for the conflict continuing in inter-American relations, despite the cooperation pragmatism.

A Defesa Interamericana Diante Dos Cenários De Agressão Ao Continente

The idea of a collective defense for the American continent emerged as a result of German threats and offensive actions during World War II. With the end of the war, the Cold War between the United States and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the emergence of nuclear weapons; and the expansion of communism brought new threats to America, requiring the adaptation of the inter-American defense. The adoption of multidimensional security in America has cooled concerns about continental defense.With the rise of China as an economic and military power, the return of a new Cold War between the US and Russia and the emergence of new high- capacity military devices bring to the fore the need for a re-discussion of inter-American relations defense. To maintain peace in America, what inter-American defense system is needed for the future? That is the question

Radical Leftist Latin American Regimes in Joe Biden's Foreign Policy

The article is devoted to the attempts of the Joe Biden’s administration to normalize relations with the radical leftist regimes (Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua). At the same time, the negotiation process is complicated by bureaucratic and ideological difficulties. The purpose of the study is to identify key obstacles of the improving the interaction between Washington and the antagonist countries. The author will analyze the main trends in the foreign policy of the United States in the region, as well as the behavior of the governments of Latin American countries. The results of the investigation will contribute to a better understanding of inter-American relations and will determine the trajectory of the transformation of the White House's course in the Western Hemisphere.

The Nicaraguan Question: Contadora and the Latin American Response to US Intervention Against the Sandinistas, 1982–86

AbstractWhile much has been written about the United States’ efforts to undermine Nicaragua's Sandinista government (1979–90), historians have paid little attention to Latin American state perspectives on the only successful armed revolution in the region since Cuba. In fact, the war that subsequently emerged between Sandinista armed forces and US-backed contras was a thoroughly regionalized affair: at least 12 Latin American countries—including the five largest—became directly involved in efforts to broker peace by the mid 1980s. How and why did they become involved? What can Latin American diplomacy vis-à-vis the Sandinista Revolution tell us about the shape of inter-American relations in the twilight years of the Cold War?To answer these questions, this article uses diplomatic archival sources and oral history interviews from Nicaragua, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Panama to trace Latin American state responses to US intervention against the Sandinista government between 1982 and 1986. While the Reagan administration viewed Nicaragua as the place where it would begin to roll back Soviet-sponsored communism in the Third World, a bloc of Latin American governments—especially those associated with the Contadora peace process—saw Central America as the site where they would push back against US unilateralism and the threat it posed to their real interests and shared hopes for regional sovereignty. In stark contrast with the earlier reaction to the Cuban Revolution, most Latin American states rejected US intervention and sought to legitimize Managua's left-wing government. The regional dimensions of Nicaragua's civil war therefore show how the political fault lines of Latin America's Cold War shifted over time.

Marisol’s Antimonument: Masculinity, Pan-Americanism, and Other Imaginaries

Marisol’s assemblage The Generals (1961–62) assumes a guise of well-worn signifiers of midcentury US patriotic masculinity: equestrian statue, founding father, soldier, and cowboy. At the same time, this sculpture of George Washington and Simón Bolívar on a single horse invokes the very forces Cold Warriors vilified as un-American threats at home and abroad: homoeroticism and Latin American dissent. Marisol’s irreverent antimonument, which has garnered little analysis but performed a central role during her meteoric rise in the 1960s, tapped into Cold War discourses about sexual politics, freedom, national mythologies, and inter-American relations.

Remembering Ernesto Cardenal

The first time I met Ernesto Cardenal in person was at the Center for Inter-American Relations (now Americas Society) on Park Avenue in New York. It was 1974. I was a graduate student in Columbia’s...

Политика Д. Трампа в Латинской Америке: итоги и перспективы

The Trump administration's policy south of the Rio Grande has revived the use of force in the spirit of infamous Monroe Doctrine and big stick diplomacy. As a result, an atmosphere of unpredictability has arisen between the United States and Latin America, and current trends in inter-American relations could be analyzed from the perspective of “controlled chaos” theory. In particular, D. Trump's aggressive political and diplomatic actions have significantly complicated the geopolitical situation in the strategically important Caribbean region. American-Cuban relations, normalized by Barack Obama, sharply deteriorated, and the regime of trade and financial sanctions against Venezuela, against which a real political and propaganda war was launched, was tightened to the utmost extent. The U.S. interaction with the largest countries in the region - Mexico and Brazil - has become more complex and ambiguous.

Latin American Reflections on Integration Processes: from Theory of Peripheral Capitalism to “Sudamexit”

Integration processes in Latin America and Caribbean basin have been traditionally provoking strong research interest. Over the past decades, Latin American integration has tested plethora of institutional designs, ranging from relatively uniform subregional trade blocs - CACM, LAFTA, etc. to multifunctional partnerships with an identity-forming component, like Unasur or CELAC. This paper is an attempt to show how the Latin American academic community itself analyzes the integration in the “domestic” region. Forming the literature review, the authors, firstly, show how Latin American integrationism has transformed with the successive change of the phases of the “old”, “open” and “post-liberal” regionalism. Despite the fact that the types of integration in each of the periods differ significantly, scientists approach them in quite a similar way. They have been engineering the region socially and have been using such basic concepts as globalización , soberanía and desarrollo . The theory and practice of Latin American integration has always been closely intertwined. Secondly, the authors distinguish three today’s Latin American “big discourses” about integration - political-economic, geopolitical and state-centered. Each of these discourses takes into account the internal and external conditions that led to the post-liberal phase of integration. Third, expert forecasts about the prospects of regional associations against the background of the crisis tendencies of recent years are presented in this paper. Latin American experts agree on the fact that regional integration has entered the new phase, the most important features of which are the globalization slowing down, the complication of inter-American relations due to the “Trump factor”, the decline of left-progressist forces in the region.

Cultural philanthropy and political exile: the Ford Foundation between Argentina and The United States (1959-1979)

Abstract: This article aims to reconstruct the role played by a giant of American philanthropy-the Ford Foundation (FF) - in Argentina starting from a very critical moment for Inter-American relations during the Cold War: 1959. The research is based on an extensive amount of archive sources, including specific information about the grants given by the foundation to hard science professionals in order to escape the political emergency of the mid-Sixties. This contribution will be divided into three parts (i) a brief introduction to the main goals and strategy of the FF and strategy in Latin America in light of the imperatives of the bipolar conflict (ii) the role played in supporting social sciences and organizing resettlement programs (iii) the several contradictions in the process of welcoming these scholars in the U.S. academies.

Inter-American relations after 9/11: overcoming neglect

The text reviews the book US Power in Latin America: Renewing Hegemony by Rubrick Biegon.

Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside

Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside

Nexus of Rivalry: Nicaragua’s Grand Canal and Inter-American Relations

The Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Company’s plan to build an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua represents the most recent of twenty-three such proposals over the course of the last two centuries. While CEO Wang Jing’s declining fortune may prevent the construction of a canal, Nicaragua’s eroded relations with Costa Rica and Colombia, a renewed relationship with Russian, and recent steps towards re-militarization have impacted and will continue to impact the region. These changes, in turn, reflect an inversion of earlier plans to build a canal. While the international stage of the 19th and early 20th centuries permitted various foreign actors to define the political and economic development of Nicaragua, recent events reflect a changing situation in which Nicaragua has redefined relations with its most immediate neighbors and with key global powers.

From Continuity to Breakthrough: the Obama Administration’s Policy in Latin America

<p>Wybór Baracka Obamy wzbudziły wielkie oczekiwania w Ameryce Łacińskiej. Oczekiwano, że Obama odnowi stosunki międzyamerykańskie zaniedbane przez administrację George’a W. Busha. Jednak Stany Zjednoczone już nie postrzegają Ameryki Łacińskiej jako „najbardziej niebezpiecznego obszaru na świecie”. Kryzys gospodarczy i problemy międzynarodowe, z którymi administracja Obamy musiała się zmierzyć, przyczyniły się do tego, że Ameryki Łacińskiej nie stała się priorytetem w polityce Waszyngtonu. Jednym z pierwszych wyzwań dla nowej administracji było usunięcie przez wojsko prezydenta Hondurasu. Stany Zjednoczone przyjęły w tej sprawie pragmatyczne stanowisko i trzymały się od niej z daleka. gdyż nie było nadziei, że konstytucyjny prezydent odzyska swoje stanowisko niezależnie od sankcji lub presji politycznej Waszyngtonu. Administracja Obamy przyczyniła się znacząco do sukcesu procesu pokojowego w Kolumbii. Stabilizowanie sytuacji w tym państwie pozostawało jednym z priorytetów polityki bezpieczeństwa administracji Obamy. Polityka ta nie ograniczała się realizacji planu Colombia, lecz oznaczała też czynny udział w rozmowach pokojowych i wsparcie porozumienie. Administracja Obamy rozszerzyła także cele programu Mérida Initiative wykraczając poza tradycyjne, wojskowe metody walki z organizacjami przestępczymi. USA zamierzały wzmocnić rząd prawa w Meksyku. Największym osiągnięciem tej administracji jest normalizacja stosunków z Kubą, był to prawdziwie rewolucyjny krok. Stało się to możliwe ze względu na zmianę poglądów opinii publicznej w Stanach Zjednoczonych na temat normalizacji, presji ze strony państw Ameryki Łacińskiej oraz zmiany podejścia kubańskiego reżimu wobec USA.</p>