As soon as 1826, the Congress of Panama took place. The primary idea was to establish a union or federation of all countries formerly under Spanish rule, from Mexico, all the way south through Central America and, from Venezuela to the south through the Andes mountains range encompassing Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, the United Provinces of the River Plate and, Uruguay. Brazil was excluded, not because of a difference in national language, but because it had not chosen a republican form of government, and more importantly, because of its expansionist endeavors. The United Provinces of the River Plate –Argentina and Paraguay- declined the invitation due to discrepancies in vision about the preeminence of certain ideas and leaders like Simon Bolivar, as much as not being certain about the support in their struggle against Brazilian expansionism; but, the government of the “Great Colossus of the North”, the United States of America, did get an invitation to send representatives, and so did Great Britain. The observers from the United States were painstakingly chosen and dispatched, but never made it to the Congress. However Canada or better still, British North America was not invited to participate for lack of self-government. For Canada to sever its colonial ties it required Confederation in 1867 to start a process of changes in status that would further require the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and the Canada Act of 1982(1).

Major misconceptions formed the basis on which the fundamental principles for early Pan Americanism rested. The supposed unity of the region left no room for the diversity that in truth united the differences. A vast number of aboriginal peoples did not feel represented by the new governments, their languages were not considered as such, and their spiritual beliefs discarded as primitive and irrational, their entire culture viewed as pre-revolutionary as well as anti-liberal and not illustrated.

Slavery was still practiced and it would be some decades before it was actually abolished, although the ideas of economic liberalism demanded that slave labour be liberated and incorporated into the manpower market. This also applied to the indigenous populations: their communities with its tightly knit connections to their territory had to be dissolved so they too could be incorporated into the market.

Since the world market was dominated by nations that were already en route to industrialization, the role left for the new republics was that of managers in the extraction and production of the commodities and base materials that industrial economies demanded.

The Pan American Project begins
Thus, the ill-conceived Pan American dream came to life lame. It was a Utopia in its idyllic formulation on grandiose words adopted in its founding declarations of principle (2).  In practice, it was a very torpid Utopia since its foundations were laid on the establishment of resource management. It was torpid because, unlike Utopia, it was being put to practice. That is, it was a program that was achievable and the difficulties in its implementation had just to be solved on the ground as it progressed.

It was not until the late 1800’s that the first true Pan American congresses started to take place. Instead of coming from the South, now the initiative and leadership sprang from the United States of America. In 1890 the United States convened the First International Conference of American States at Washington that established the International Union of American Republics. This was already part of its “Manifest Destiny” as a ruling nation over the Americas, underpinned by that famous Monroe Doctrine that stated “America for the Americans”. At this new stage, Canada, now a confederation, was still not taking part, but US Navy battleships were: In Puerto Rico and Cuba 1898, in Colombia 1902, in Panama 1903, in Nicaragua 1912, in the Dominican Republic 1916-1924, in Honduras, El Salvador and, especially in Guatemala(3) where the United Fruit Company and other fruit exporters based in the United Sates were the actual ruling power for a half-century. In 1910 the organization now representing the governments of the continent became known as the Pan American Union(4).
This was the time when the term Banana Republic was coined and used to signify a circus-like sham of a democracy, an ill-used land that only produced bananas and tyrants.(5)

By the early 20th Century the US lead Pan Americanism was taking shape and new Congresses were convoked. But the break of the First World War followed by the Second World War prevented the formation of a body of government representatives that would address the original idea of resource management for the whole region under the light of the new historic circumstances. In any case, the objective was being met through a number of other mechanisms one of which, the preferred choice, was authoritarian regimes usually in the shape of military dictatorships(6).

No sooner had the Second World War ended than the Cold War begun. The Ninth Pan-American Conference took place in Bogota. It had been convoked to obtain a Pan-American commitment to fight against Communism. This Conference gave the final impulse to what was to be the first multi-national Declaration of Human Rights, and later, the formation of the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional version of the United Nations (UN) without a Security Council. Canada was still not a participating member(7).

Since this Utopia went against the needs, the wishes, the realities, the future well-being, the historical and cultural evidence of large portions of the population that was rather being used for, instead of included in, this torpid Utopia, then the program was in fact a Dystopia, but still a torpid one, because it was not a sort of illusory formulation of an evil intended state of affairs, but a plan of action already under way(8).

In A New Brave World
The Cuban revolutionary guerrilla took power in 1959. In the face of the Cold War, the latter seemed to prove the real continental fear basis of the ideological threat of Communism and it demanded that governments across the region fight it with all resources at hand, legal and otherwise. Across the region there was a full fledged persecution against popular leaders, labour leaders, community organizations, open minded catholic priests and of every person that looked suspiciously inclined toward social justice. The Pan-American Declaration of Human Rights, the first such international instrument of general character, was already in force but clearly not enforced. In 1961 the government of the United States launched the aid program called Alliance for Progress that brought president Kennedy to the countries of the region as a distinguished visitor. The plan had ideological, economic and military components. In its own words, the plan supported democracy; in practice it was an instrument against social change.

In this context it falls in place that Brazil, a member of the OAS, came under a military dictatorship and made ample use of forced disappearance of political opponents and social leaders and tortured large numbers of its citizens as a regular policing practice. Soon, all over Latin America military dictatorships were the governments of choice under the approving eye of the government of the United States. The OAS still functioned, in Washington, and governments kept sending their representatives to the organization but the organization was not just useless in curtailing abuse, it also frequently tended a smoke curtain over the main aspects of abuse and its motives. No sooner had the Alliance for Progress concluded than other continental means of intervention in the region were put in place by the government of the United States through the local military governments and authoritarian regimes and always with the pretext of fighting the threat of Communism and thus, feeding more social unrest into the body social (9).

In the early 1970s Latin Americans started moving to Canada seeking political refuge. Chile suffered a military coup in 1973 and many Chileans sought refuge in Canada. In 1974 Argentina fell under military dictatorship, in 1973 Uruguay, Peru from 1968, Bolivia form 1969. Despite the political repression, Canada did not admit refugees from these other Latin American countries as it did with Chileans. Since Canada did not have a refugee policy, then the doors for refugees into Canada did never close but would never be as open as they were for Chileans. These doors were simply left ajar.

Since the late 1970s and all through the 1980s conflict in Central America as a struggle between national liberation movements and dictatorial or authoritarian regimes, with the instigation of the School of the Americas, the participation of the CIA and the DEA, stirred a conflict that was still to linger well into the 1990s. Large numbers of citizens from Central American sought refuge in Canada and refugees from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua settled in Canada.

No Canada, No Canada...
Canada was, in the main, absent from this picture. In 1967 Montreal hosted the World International and Universal Exposition or Expo 67. In 1976 Montreal hosted the Olympic Games. Canada was thus in the world, was part of the world, had an acting membership in the UN since its creation, but was not yet a member of the OAS. For the vast majority of the people living in countries south of the United States, Canada was regarded as a land of infinite wooded lands, unlimited fresh waters, cold long winters and love for First Nations. Little did Latin America or the World know about Residential Schools or unsolved Land Claims, not to mention a massacre of women(10), the massive upheaval over a golf course on ancient sacred lands(11), and other such crude realities.

But Canada was still not an actor in Latin America, or so it seemed or may seem, until all of a sudden the Canadian government understood that Canada was located in the Americas, that membership in the OAS should be obtained. During all these years of turbulent history in the Americas, where the United States played such a prominent role, Canada appears to be absent, uninterested, too far to the north to even care or notice, too detached to feel the urge to take part. A few thousand refugees over the course of decades did not put enough pressure on the Canadian government to get it involved, to become a member of key Pan American bodies or to develop and implement Pan American policies like those of the United States. So it is only natural for Canadians as well as for Latin Americans to still regard Canada as a land of opportunity for Latin Americans under oppression, to see Canada as a refuge, the more generous since it has never seemed to do any harm to Latin American nations, it never seemed to obtain any advantage. Canada just appeared to be a haven in critical times. In short, the United States took the roll of the bad guy, Canada played the good guy, unselfish, uninterested, generous and remote.

Family Ties
And then, in 1990 Canada became a member of the OAS. In 1994 Canada co-launched the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that required years of negotiations and brought Mexico, the United States and Canada into one solid large economic block. Concurrently the Canada Development Agency (CIDA) runs projects in numerous Latin American countries to help governments in many aspects where a more up-to-date legislation is required to attract investment in oil, gas and minerals. At the same time the Toronto Stock Exchange attracts an ever-increasing number of mining companies. Foreign companies register their head offices in Canada and many in Toronto. Closing the picture, mining projects related to Canadian companies are now under way across Latin America. Talk of liberalizing rules for the industry in Latin America point toward free trade agreements with Canada.

In short, Canada did not need to play the part of the dirty interventionist, did not need to invade, depose, dispossess, oppress, tyrannize, did not need to take the lead in the Americas. Canada did not even have to be there, when Pan-Americanism developed into Pan-American organizations. But as of now it is clearly different. It almost seems as if the rules have been fixed and the ground cleared. It is now the time for Canada to come on stage to plunder.

Do you think plunder is a strong word? Think twice and then think again. Pay attention to the map. Make the connections between extractive projects, social unrest, forced displacement, criminalization of protest. If you work in the sector it should be clear to you already(12). If you invest, if your pension money goes to the industry, you are the Canada that stirs the bowl; if you deposit money in the bank, your bank invests it in trouble and problems. No Canadian is untouched, unstained, uninvolved. Not even Canadians who do not want to know.