Woodrow Wilson, Latin America and the League of Nations: Re-examining Wilsonianism in the regional context of the Americas

JUAN PABLO SCARFI

Cambridge

Conferencia; Postgraduates in Latin American Studies 2011, Annual Conference; 2011

Postgraduates in Latin American Studies (PILAS) and University of Cambridge

I will analyse the international attitude of Woodrow Wilson towards Latin America and the League of Nations, examining the ways in which his ideas were questioned and also emulated in Latin American approaches to world politics. The main purpose of the paper is thus to explore the similarities and differences between the first approach of Wilson to Pan-Americanism in 1914-1917 and his later attempt to reconstruct the basis of post-World War I international order, proposing the creation of the League of Nations (1918-1920). In this paper, I will thus explore first the Pan-Americanism advanced by Wilson in connection to US interventions in Vera Cruz (Mexico) in 1914, examining the extent to which his vision of Pan-American cooperation allow interventionism. Secondly, I will examine the later approach of Wilson to internationalism and his quest for a new world order. Thirdly, I will analyse the Latin American initiatives to create a Latin American League of Nations, as advanced by the Uruguayan jurist and former president of the country, Baltasar Brum. Finally, I will argue that Wilsonianism, as a missionary approach to world politics needs to be re-examined not only globally, as recent scholarship has suggested, but also in a hemispheric scale, exploring the extent to which a hemispheric missionary vision became somehow then global.