ABSTRACT
98 99The interest of the peoples of Latin America in regional security goes back to the independence period when Simon Bolivar convened the Congress of Panama in 1826. Then, the debate focused on the creation of a union treaty and confederation, the formation of an inter-American army for common defence, and the principle of non-intervention. The meeting in Panama was a regional response to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which enshrined the US hegemony over Latin America (‘America for the American’). At the end of the nineteenth century an upgrade of the Monroe Doctrine, the principle of Pan-Americanism, would seek to consolidate the influence of the USA on the region (Friedman and Long 2015). In this sense, two conceptions of governance have coexisted in the region: the idea of a strong, united and autonomous Latin America vis-à-vis a US led Pan-Americanism. Both conceptions gave birth to a complex, segmented and overlapped system of governance of regional security shaped by institutions of hemispheric, regional and bilateral scope.
