OAS

The Organization of American States (OAS) is the inter-governmental body that institutionalized Nelson Rockefeller and Adolf Berle's hemispheric security architecture, built through the Act of Chapultepec (1945) and the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the Rio Treaty, 1947), and formally constituted at the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogotá in April 1948. Throughout the Cold War, the OAS served as the principal vehicle for US-led collective action in the hemisphere, including the diplomatic isolation of Cuba, the endorsement of US military intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and the coordination of anticommunist policy following the 1964 Brazilian coup. Both of its early secretaries-general, Alberto Lleras Camargo and Galo Plaza, were members of Rockefeller's inter-American political network.

Origins in the Chapultepec System

The Organization of American States was the formal institutional product of a political architecture assembled by Nelson Rockefeller and Adolf Berle during the final years of World War II. The process began at the Chapultepec conference in Mexico City in February 1945, where Rockefeller's U.S. delegation pushed through a resolution authorizing a regional military pact and a conference to implement it, over the objections of the State Department's International Division, which feared the arrangement would violate the emerging United Nations framework.¹

Rockefeller's maneuvering at Chapultepec effectively created the legal basis for a hemisphere-wide military alliance that could operate independently of UN oversight. The text he negotiated became Article 51 of the UN Charter, with clauses permitting "regional action" and "collective self-defense" that allowed both sides of the Cold War to build regional military blocs.

Rio Treaty (1947)

The military pact Rockefeller had promised at Chapultepec was formalized at the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace and Security in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, producing the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, commonly called the Rio Treaty. Truman had originally promised to hold this conference in August 1945, though it was delayed two years. The treaty established that an armed attack against any American state would be considered an attack against all.²

OAS Charter (1948)

The OAS was formally constituted at the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogotá, Colombia, which ran from March 30 to May 2, 1948. The OAS Charter was signed on April 30, 1948, by 21 founding member states. The conference was disrupted on April 9, 1948, by the assassination of Colombian Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, which triggered the urban riots known as the Bogotazo and nearly ended the conference. Alberto Lleras Camargo of Colombia became its first secretary-general. The organization absorbed the predecessor Pan American Union and established a permanent secretariat in Washington, D.C.

Vernon Walters, then a military intelligence officer, was present at the Bogotá conference when the Bogotazo erupted. He later described the experience in his memoir Silent Missions, noting that the riots engulfed the hotel district and interrupted the final sessions.³

Cold War Function

The OAS served throughout the Cold War as the institutional vehicle for U.S.-led collective action in the hemisphere. Under the logic of the Rio Treaty, the United States repeatedly invoked OAS mechanisms to legitimize interventions and isolate governments deemed insufficiently anticommunist.

In 1964, following the 1964 Brazilian coup, the new Humberto Castelo Branco government provided 1,500 of the OAS's 2,500 troops (and their nominal commander) that backed U.S. Marine intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965. Brazil's foreign minister Juracy Magalhaes subsequently toured South American capitals urging creation of a permanent OAS strike force.⁴

At the Eighth Meeting of Consultation of Foreign Ministers at Punta del Este, Uruguay (January 22-31, 1962), the OAS voted 14 to 6 to exclude Cuba from the inter-American system on the grounds that Marxism-Leninism was "incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system." The resolution (Resolution VI, adopted January 31, 1962) passed with the minimum required two-thirds of member votes; the six dissenting votes came from Cuba itself along with Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador. Cuba's exclusion took effect immediately. The Goulart government's vote against exclusion was one element of the US case against him in subsequent destabilization planning.

OAS as Rockefeller Network

Galo Plaza became OAS secretary-general in 1968, serving through 1975, extending the continuity of Rockefeller-allied leadership of the institution. Both Lleras Camargo and Plaza were described as being "destined for" the OAS secretaryship, as well as the presidencies of their respective countries, as part of Rockefeller's inter-American network from as early as Chapultepec.⁵