“The most dangerous and serious threat”: the OAS’s reaction to the Tricontinental conference

Abstract

Despite its historical presence in the construction of Pan-Americanism as one of the founding members of the Organization of American States, after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 Cuba was gradually relegated from the inter-american system until its exclusion in 1962, largely due to the diplomatic action of the United States and its continental allies. Isolated in its own hemisphere, the island's rapprochement with other social and political realities - related under the principles of anti-imperialism, the fight against racism or the liberation of peoples - crystallized in the First Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966.

Cuba's foreign policy did not go unnoticed by the OAS, nor did the holding of an event of the characteristics of the Tricontinental, which was seen as a serious subversive threat. This paper seeks to study the reaction of the inter-American system to the conference, both the discussions within it and the projects that emerged from it. That is, to analyze an episode of the complex relations that Cuba maintained with its continental neighbor, during the climate of conflict that characterized the Caribbean in the 1960s.