Afro-Asian links to Latin America, The Origins of the Global South at the UN
As research expands on the global origins of anti-imperialism and the historical rise of the Global South, definitions of the composition of this group expand and contract across the twentieth century. Interestingly, the role of Latin American states changes in the varying configurations of the Global South grouping over this time. From the late nineteenth century onwards, the growth of anti-imperialist networks and activist groups in European metropoles from Paris to Berlin was only partially reflected among similar groups in Latin America, who tended to be more focused on regional cooperation and efforts to resist American hegemony across the continent. Although Latin American anti-imperialists were supporters of the crusade against colonialism, their quest for assertion of the right to self-determination was rooted in a different starting point. As opposed to the Western colonialism practised in Africa and Asia which bound together independence leaders as politically diverse as Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru and Indonesian President Sukarno with Ghanaian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and Algeria’s President Ahmed Ben Bella, it was the invisible colonial yoke of the United States across Latin America that produced a fervour of anti-imperialist feeling which, into the twentieth century, began to blend with the struggle against European imperialist policies across Africa and Asia.
The essential campaign which defined African and Asian anti-imperialist networks, that of the search for territorial sovereignty, found affinity with the quest for political sovereignty across Latin America. The growth of transnational anti-imperialism between these groups in the early part of the twentieth century reflects similar experiences of empire and its varied and nefarious policies and practices of oppression. This shared experience of sovereignty led to shared imaginings of the nation-state, or at least, the nation and state beyond empire, an important step towards the normative statehood of the twentieth century. As important as the efforts of the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission, as expounded lately by Susan Pedersen, to institutionalise ideas about what normative statehood amounted to, the networks of the anti-imperialist transnational community were central funnels in shaping the contours of the international system after 1945.
Michael Goebel has written recently about how cooperation between these groups led to the creation of a platform which allowed them to compare, contrast and coordinate their claims. Arguably however, their interactions went further, laying the foundation for the ‘Geneva-based culture of lobbying’ but also leading to the formalization of claims making processes. This methodology on a common cause had the effect of legitimising these differentiated interpretations and experiences of sovereignty. When the Mandates Commission was later transformed into the UN Trusteeship Council, these actors had the opportunity, the means and now the mechanisms by which to lead the attack on all forms of colonialism and imperialism, going beyond the opaque structures of the League which protected the interests of the European colonial powers. From the San Francisco Conference onwards, African and Asian representatives sought to coordinate their approach to decolonisation with their Latin American counterparts by articulating a common vision of how the UN could be utilised to pursue their objectives. Meeting with Latin American representatives in informal groups and committees, discussing the format of resolutions on colonial questions and tabling resolutions together, their transnational networks became formalised within the UN environment. One such example was the interaction of Latin American feminists with their Indian counterparts, who worked to draft the equality clause in the UN Charter. Such was the extent of cooperation between Latin Americans and Africans in particular, that by 1962, Ghana and Chile explored the possibility of establishing a Secretariat for African and Latin American Relations, with offices in Accra and Santiago, later to be expanded to include Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba and Ecuador. The aim of this Secretariat was to connect African, Asian and Latin American countries with similar problems ‘to study the ways of accelerating the common tasks of our peoples towards their full liberation and towards world peace.’[1]
However, as scholarship expands on the role of African and Asian countries in this accelerated process of decolonisation in the 1950s and 1960s, comparable work on role of the Latin American states is less visible. Matthew Brown has recently pointed out that ‘too much global history and too much Latin American history has situated Latin America as marginalized, passive, or a victim.’[2] Arguably however, these early interactions instead indicate the dynamic role of Latin American states in helping to set the stage for the transformation of individual campaigns against imperialism into an ideological and political struggle between North and South that came to encompass a range of issues beyond colonialism. The increasing role of Latin American countries is clear in their leadership of the campaign for the New International Economic Order (NIEO), and in the work of individuals like the Argentine economist Raul Prebisch who led the charge for North-South economic rebalancing as the first Secretary-General of UNCTAD in 1964. What connected these disparate groups was not just a vague ambition to remake the world order, nor merely an ideological campaign against neo-colonialism, but also the belief that the UN could be the instrument with which they could wield effective power. Indeed, they were largely supported in these initiatives by forward-thinking UN officials such as African-American political scientist Ralph J. Bunche who supported the tabling of resolutions, the creation of ad hoc procedures and committees and the extension of debates on a wide range of issues under the decolonisation rubric.
Beyond providing a platform and a process for formalising claims, the UN also served as a point of interaction, leading to greater regional and transnational cooperation between various actors seeking to present a common front during General Assembly sessions and encouraged the Great Powers and representatives from other middle powers such as the Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands and Germany to engage with Global South views. In the process, myriad visions of the UN were articulated and appropriated and debated between the actors. This dynamic process changed the institution formally by the expansion of its architecture and mechanisms but also developed its role and agency in the long campaign for North-South reform. Subtly, across the twentieth century, the UN has thereby served to coordinate and sponsor the rise of the Global South.
[1] Letter from General Lazaro Cardenas, former President of Mexico, to Kwame Nkrumah, 29th September 1962. GH/ RG 17/1/303, Political Relations with Afro-Asian and Latin American Countries, Special Collection Bureau of African Affairs (SC/BAA), PRAAD, Accra. Interestingly this idea was revived from 2006–2013 with a series of Africa-Latin American Summits that sought to rebuild unity and solidarity against Western intervention.
[2] Matthew Brown, ‘The Global History of Latin America’, Journal of Global History (2015), 10, 366.
