Montevideo Conference (1933)

Convened in the capital of Uruguay 3-28 December, the Montevideo Conference of 1933, the Seventh International Conference of American States, was of great importance because it marked a turning point in U.S.-Latin American relations, with U.S. acceptance of the nonintervention principle. This resulted in a great improvement of relations. The important policy change was in keeping with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, proclaimed in his March 1933 inaugural address. Secretary of State Cordell Hull headed the U.S. delegation and voted for the "Convention on the Rights and Duties of States," which declared that "no state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another." (Although it signed with a reservation, the United States later ratified the convention.) Hull also modified U.S. tariff policy by proposing the reciprocal lowering of customs duties.

See alsoHull, Cordell; Roosevelt, Franklin Delano.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States: An Historical Interpretation (1943), chaps. 15 and 16, and Samuel Guy Inman, Inter-American Conferences, 1826–1954: History and Problems (1965), chap. 11.

Additional Bibliography

Marichal, Carlos. México y las conferencias panamericanas, 1889–1938: Antecedentes de la globalización. México: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2002.

Sheinin, David. Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism in Inter-American Affairs. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000.

                                              Larman C. Wilson