ABSTRACT
From the moment of its birth in Bogotá, Colombia, the Organization of American States (OAS) has encountered daunting challenges in its evolution as a multilateral institution. Just weeks before the leaders of the original twenty-one member states gathered to adopt the OAS Charter in Bogotá on April 30, 1948, the popular Colombian politician and Liberal Party presidential hopeful Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated, triggering a wave of violence and vandalism by angry Gaitán supporters against the country’s elite that came to be known as the Bogotazo. Indeed, the IX Pan-American Conference, which formally created the OAS, had to be moved to the installations of a private school in the north of the city called the Gimnasio Moderno out of concern for the security of its participants. By coincidence, Fidel Castro was present in Bogotá at the time to attend a Latin American Congress of Students, organized to engage and oppose the leaders gathered in Bogotá.1 The assassination of Gaitán and the Bogotazo would have a profound effect on Castro. As national leader following the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Castro would become one of the OAS’s most profound critics as well as the target of its decision to suspend Cuba’s membership in 1962.
