Hacia un orden legal regional: Vicente Quesada y la construcción del derecho internacional latinoamericano

Abstract

Although he was essentially a diplomat and was involved in the preparations for the plans for the Argentine delegation sent to the First Pan-American Conference (1889-1990), Vicente Quesada was a precursor of Latin American modern anti-imperialism and above all of the theories postulating the existence of a regional international law for Latin America. Before modern Latin American anti-imperialist ideas were incorporated within the intellectual, diplomatic and political Latin American imaginary, Quesada put for ward a series of assertive critiques of the Monroe Doctrine as a safeguard to protect peace in the Americas and of the emerging Pan-American movement promoted by James Blaine in the context of the First Pan-American Conference. Moreover, preceding the institutionalization of international law as a modern discipline in Argentina and the construction of a continental legal tradition associated to Pan-Americanism, Quesada published a series of influential articles in which he sought to demonstrate that regional peace was the product of truly Latin American legal prínciples and not of the Monroe Doctrine. This article draws on these important pieces by Quesada and it argues that Quesada was pioneering in postulating a Latin American tradition of international law, advocating the construction of a regional Latin American legal order, safeguard from US expansionism.