Panama Meeting (1939)

The First Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American republics (held between 23 September and 3 October) was a response to the declaration of war in Europe. The framework for the meeting of consultation had been established at the Special Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace (Buenos Aires, 1936) and the Eighth International Conference of American States (Lima, 1938), which provided that if the peace in the Americas was threatened, any member of the Pan-American Union could initiate a meeting of consultation of foreign ministers. The Meeting, as subsequent meetings of consultation in 1940 and 1942, was devoted primarily to the juridical-political and military problems brought on by the war.

The Meeting produced a General Declaration of Neutrality of the American Republics and the Declaration of Panama, which, as a measure of continental self-protection, extended the territorial waters for 300 miles on both sides of the hemisphere. This zone was to be free of hostile acts by any non-American belligerent nation. The Meeting set up an Inter-American Neutrality Committee and an Inter-American Financial and Economic Advisory Committee which allowed Latin American nations to respond to the economic dislocations caused by the war with aid from the United States. In addition, the Meeting approved a resolution permitting ships to change their registry, which allowed U.S. ships to deliver supplies to Allied nations under the flag of Panama, thereby avoiding violation of the United States Neutrality Act. The Panama Conference of 1939 was an example of the effort to strengthen American unity and solidarity as a means of preserving the security of the hemisphere.

See alsoGraf Spee; Inter-American System.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, International Conferences of American States, Vol. 2 (1940).

Inter-American Institute of International Legal Studies, The Inter-American System (1966).

Jesús María Yepes, Del Congresso de Panama a la Conferencia de Caracas (1976).

Additional Bibliography

Leonard, Thomas, and John F. Bratzel. Latin America during World War II. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.

Piotti de Lamas, Diosma E., and Alfredo Traversoni. América Latina y Estados Unidos en el siglo XX: Aspectos políticos, económicos y sociales. Montevideo: Fundación de Cultura Universitaria, 1996.

Sheinin, David. Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism in Inter-American Affairs. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000.

                                     James Patrick Kiernan