According to Abbreviationfinder, OAS stands for Organization of American States.
OAS History
Since its take-off as a nation, the United States of America has always opposed its claim to continental domination to the ideology of Latin American unity and integration, an ambition embodied on December 2, 1823 in the well-known Monroe Doctrine, synthesized in the phrase “America for the Americans”.
It was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that this philosophy could be deployed, when American industry grew like no other until it reached the status of a rapidly rising power, thereby seeking not only domination of the continent, but also creating the conditions to launch the fight for a new redistribution of the world.
At the end of 1889, the US government convened the First Pan-American Conference, which was the starting point of “Pan-Americanism”, seen as the economic and political domination of America under the supposed “continental unity.” This implied an update of the Monroe Doctrine at the time when US capitalism reached its imperialist phase. José Martí, who was an exceptional witness to the emergence of the imperialist monster, wondered about that Conference: Why should we be allies, in the best of youth, in the battle that the United States is preparing to fight with the rest of the world? world? And he was right.
Between 1899 and 1945, during eight similar conferences, three consultation meetings, and several conferences on special topics, the advancement of the economic, political, and military penetration of the United States in Latin America was established.
Rise of Monroist Pan-Americanism
At the end of World War II, from which the United States benefited, a period of boom in Pan-Americanism and the inter-American system began, from the Conference of Chapultepec in 1945, through the creation of the OAS in 1948, to the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, consolidating the subordination of the governments of the continent to the foreign policy of the United States.
The Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace, in Chapultepec, in March 1945, had a defined political objective: to align the countries of the region to face the process that would come with the creation of the UN.
As a result, at the San Francisco conference in April 1945, in which the UN was founded, US diplomacy, supported by Latin American countries, defended “autonomy” for the Inter-American System and achieved that in Article 51 of the charter of the world organization will preserve the settlement of disputes by “American” methods and systems. The interpretation given by the Board of Directors of the Pan American Union is that said letter was born compatible with the Inter-American System and the Act of Chapultepec.
In August 1947, the Pan-American Conference of Rio de Janeiro approved a resolution that gave rise to the tool that would give life to the permissiveness clause taken from the UN: the TIAR (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance), which reaffirmed the principle of ” solidarity “continental wielded by Washington, in order to face any situation that endangered” its peace “in America and adopt the necessary measures, including the use of force. With the TIAR, the Yankee will is imposed on the continent, constituting a permanent threat to the sovereignty of the Latin American countries.
As a culmination, between March 30 and May 2, 1948, the International American Conference of Bogotá gave life to the Organization of American States (OAS). In the middle of that meeting, the Colombian liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, with great popular roots, is assassinated, a fact that motivated a great insurrection known as the Bogotazo, brutally repressed and that served to manipulate the course and results of the Conference, by promoting States Together with the threat posed to democracy by the “rise” of the Soviet Union and communism, which they blamed for the deaths of the Bogotazo.
But both the Rio and Bogotá conferences coincided with a worsening of economic problems in Latin America, whose countries — excited about the Marshall Plan for Europe — were beginning to demand assistance for the region. But the Secretary of State himself, George Marshall, was in charge of defrauding them.
From the discussion and adoption of the OAS Charter, an extensive document of 112 articles emerged, signed without reservation by the twenty-one participating countries in Bogotá. The Charter endorsed some of the cardinal and just principles of international law, however, at the behest of Washington, provisions were introduced that transferred the main postulates of the TIAR to the OAS, for which, from its cradle, the OAS is the The ideal legal instrument for US domination of the continent.
His diplomatic rhetoric regarding the postulates on the independence and sovereignty of nations and the rights of man and peoples, have remained a dead letter.
Structure
The OAS carries out its purposes through the following organs:
- general Assembly
- Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs
- Councils (the Permanent Council, the Inter-American Council for Integral Development).
- Inter-American Juridical Committee
- Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
- General Secretary
- Specialized Conferences
- Specialized agencies
- Other entities established by the General Assembly
The General Assembly holds regular sessions once a year. In special circumstances it meets in extraordinary sessions. The Consultation Meeting is convened in order to consider matters of an urgent nature and of common interest, and to serve as the Organ of Consultation in the application of the TIAR (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance), which is the main instrument for solidarity action in case of assault.
The Permanent Council hears the matters entrusted to it by the General Assembly or the Meeting of Consultation and executes the decisions of both when their fulfillment has not been entrusted to another entity; oversees the maintenance of friendly relations between the member states as well as the observance of the rules that regulate the operation of the General Secretariat, and also acts provisionally as the Organ of Consultation for the application of the TIAR. The General Secretariat is the central and permanent organ of the OAS. The headquarters of both the Permanent Council and the General Secretariat are located in Washington, DC (United States).
