AMERICA PARA LOS AMERICANOS. The British Caribbean, Decolonization and the Inter-American system, 1940- 1969 (original) (raw)

Abstract

‘We have to enunciate the Monroe Doctrine in its exact terms: AMERICA PARA LOS AMERICANOS’, a 1948 Colombian report proclaimed, addressing the birth of the Organization of American States. This included a strong call for decolonization in the Americas, so the authors, as one of the key responsibilities of the newly created OAS was to help ‘liquidate colonial empires’. By the end of World War II, there were only a few colonies left in the Americas, and the British Caribbean islands made up the biggest group of them. Colonized during the 16th century, British Caribbean historic experiences had mirrored those of colonial Latin America. Yet unlike Latin American states, most of which reached independence in the aftermath of the Atlantic revolutions in the early 19th century, the British Caribbean independence trajectory was more in line with the global decolonization wave during the 1960s. Tracing the history of decolonization within the inter-American system from the Declaration of Panama to the admission to the OAS of newly independent British Caribbean states Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados in 1967 as well as Jamaica in 1969, the paper relates the forgotten story of the second wave of decolonization in the Americas. The admission to the OAS coincided with a major structural during the late 1960s and both events would prove transformative for the organization. However, relations between old and new members were often uneasy. While Latin Americans were early and vocal supporters for decolonization, their rhetoric was at times also self-serving, as countries such as Guatemala and Argentina used the language of decolonization to advance their territorial interests in Belize and the Falklands. Highlighting the tensions between two generations of decolonization, the paper not only challenges a colonial-postcolonial divide, but also explores how the OAS enabled a unique inter-American way to frame decolonization.

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