Pan Americanism and Regionalism: A Mexican View

The existence of regional arrangements rests on two assumptions: First, the recognition that world unity, based on a common way of life and common values, is still very distant; and second, the increasingly inescapable conviction that, in our time, the great majority of national states are political and economic units illequipped to develop fully and even survive on solely national bases. Politically, most states have lost ground in a world which has had its centers of power radically diminished in the course of a generation. Economically, they are units too small to develop fully their natural resources and overcome their poverty unless they work together. The modern world needs to create regional units as a bridge between the isolated national state and a sufficiently integrated world collectivity of the future.