ABSTRACT
Western hemispheric organizations for law, peace, security, and national development collectively form the Inter-American System of institutionalized multilateral cooperation among the American states. The Inter-American System is the political expression of Pan Americanism, a movement whose principles predate formal inter-American organization. At the inter-American conference in 1910 the Chilean delegation, led by Alvarez, proposed a separate codification of American international law to be presented to the Third Hague Conference. The systemic patterns at work in the Inter-American System reflect the structure of the Latin American regional subsystem. The institutional history of the Inter-American System began with the First International Conference of American States, held in Washington in 1889–1890. From 1945 to 1948 the institutions of the Inter-American System were formally codified and expanded. In 1889, at the first inter-American conference, all eighteen of the existing Latin American states plus the United States were present.
