Inter-American System

Evolution of Inter-American System

Aims of Eisenhower's South American Tour

When president eisenhower takes off for South America on Washington's Birthday, he will, in a sense, be blazing by air a route that President Franklin D. Roosevelt pioneered by sea nearly a quarter of a century ago. Roosevelt, the first President to visit South America while in office, traveled to Argentina by way of Brazil—with a later call at the capital of Uruguay—to open a conference of the American republics that took the first steps to develop an inter-American system of mutual security. Eisenhower's mission to the same three countries—with a side trip across the Andes to Chile—is for the purpose of building up a fund of good will to facilitate development of instrumentalities for inter-American economic cooperation.

A White House statement on Jan. 6 said the President hoped that his tour would “publicly reflect his deep interest in all the countries of the New World and encourage further development of the inter-American system.” On an earlier trip to Latin America—to attend a meeting in Panama commemorating the 130th anniversary of the first inter-American conference—President Eisenhower joined the heads of 18 other American republics in signing the Declaration of Panama, July 22, 1956. One paragraph of the declaration called for “intensification of national and inter-American cooperative efforts to seek the solution of economic problems and to raise the standards of living of the continent.”

Since the days of World War II, when cooperation among the countries of the Western Hemisphere reached a high mark, many Latin American leaders and groups have borne a grievance against their big neighbor to the north. Reduction of the high war demand for Latin American food and raw material exports brought economic disruption and hardship to numerous countries in Central and South America. Meanwhile, the United States was distributing billions of dollars in aid of various kinds among European and Far Eastern countries, but comparatively little among fellow members of the American community, Pleas for a larger share of this bounty and for United States participation