En el mundo de entreguerras. La Sociedad de Naciones: una visión desde Europa pensando en Iberoamérica

Abstract

The creation of the League of Nations (LoN) was sponsored by the «Fourteen Points» of President Wilson, specifically in its Point 14: «A general union of nations should be created by particular concerts, it is hoped that a mutual security for the political independence and territorial intangibility of large and small nations will be established». Thus, the League of Nations, which came out of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and entered into force in 1920, came to replace the traditional system of blocs or alliances, which had marked international relations in the past, with the fundamental purpose of preserving peace and the independence of nations. But the LoN was born mortgaged, since the country that had promoted it, the United States of America, was not part of it. However, for the Latin American countries -or Ibero-American countries including Brazil- it was a great opportunity to join the new international society on an equal footing with the other nations of the world; curiously, their joining the LoN coincided in time with the first centenary of their independence. The presence in the LoN of the Spanish-American or Ibero-American nations (their number rose to twenty) gave a special character, «universal», to the Geneva organization and indelibly marked their commitment to the new international society within the framework of the LoN during the interwar period, to the point of having an important initial role in the heir of the LoN, that is, in the United Nations Organization (UN) once it was set up after the Second World War.