MEXICO AND THE FIFTH PAN-AMERICAN CONFERENCE: A DIPLOMATIC BATTLE FIELD AGAINST U.S. INTERVENTIONISM

Abstract

This article examines the indirect involvement of the Mexican government, headed by Alvaro
Obregon, in the fifth Conference of American States in Santiago, Chile in 1923.
We review the positions the Mexican government took and the impact it had on the outcome of that
event. During the conference the inter-American structure that the U.S. built since the late
nineteenth century through its Pan American integration project was questioned. The criticism
made by a group of Latin American diplomats toward that structure was inspired by the exclusion
that the directors of the Pan American Union made of the Mexican government . The conference
was therefore a diplomatic battle fiel against U.S. intervention in defence of the sovereignty of latin
American countries.