Jaime Torres Bodet and the River Treaty

Abstract

This paper addresses the memory of Jaime Torres Bodet around the creation and signing of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance in 1947. Jaime Torres Bodet was a great diplomat, he left us his memoirs in which he describes his participation during the Inter-American Conferences in the 20th century. He attended the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace and Security of the Continent in 1947, in Quitandinha, Brazil, where the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance was signed, not without first stating the need for an economic cooperation plan for Latin America. In his memoirs, Torres Bodet recounts complex moments in the diplomatic relations between the governments of the United States and Mexico, derived from the events that occurred in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1948, during the Inter-American meeting that gave birth to the Organization of American States. In 2002, the Mexican government withdrew from Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, which obliges us to make a historical balance of this treaty, the aspirations of the Mexican diplomats who participated in its ratification, and above all, its implications for the Latin American region.