The Organization of American States (OAS) without the US. An Alternative
By Nil Nikandrov
Global Research, March 23, 2010
Strategic Culture Foundation 21 March 2010
The parties to the Ninth International Conference of American States, held in Colombia’s capital Bogota in late April 1948, signed an agreement on creating the Organization of American States, OAS, which Washington conceived as a Cold War instrument to fight “communist penetration” into the Western Hemisphere.
In the run-up to the conference the popular politician, Bogota Mayor Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was treacherously murdered by three shots in the back. His killing is still the CIA’s top secret. All documented evidence of the preparation and execution of the operation has been destroyed. Nonetheless, it follows from recollections by some of those involved in the operation that the CIA station in Colombia had referred to Gaitán as a “potentially dangerous” politician for the United States. He was seen as a likely winner of the next presidential election in the Latin American nation, which was absolutely unacceptable to the US President Harry Truman, who believed Gaitán to be Stalin’s “secret stooge”.
The assassination of the Colombian politician sparked people’s protests throughout the country. The OAS statutory documents were signed to the sound of machinegun fire and the sight of entire homes set ablaze. It was against that symbolic background that the regional organization came into being.
The Mexican city Cancun has recently played host to the 23rd summit of another Latin American organization, the Rio Group. The summit meeting took a sensational decision to set up yet another regional organization, – Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC), or a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. A future organization will basically differ from the OAS in that it will not comprise the United States and Canada. CELAC will be mostly centred on speeding up regional integration, defending common positions on the international scene and spreading Latin American and Caribbean identity.
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