Organization of Central American States

On August 13, 1955, delegates from the five members of the Organization of Central American States (OCAS)—Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica—convened at Antigua, Guatemala, for the first formal meeting of the organization, which had been “founded in 1951. According to the press, the first formal meeting had been postponed a number of times: until 1954, because Guatemala had withdrawn in protest against the anticommunist point of view of the other members, and after Guatemala had rejoined in 1954, because of tension between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The most important and controversial item on the agenda of the conference, according to reports, was the election of a Secretary General; on August 24, after lengthy debate, the foreign ministers of the five member states chose by acclamation Jose Guillermo Trabanino, Foreign Minister for Ell Salvador. His election was reported to have been a diplomatic victory for Nicaragua against Costa Rica, since before the conference it had been generally supposed that, under the terms of an unofficial agreement reached by the five foreign ministers in April 1955, the post would go to a Costa Rican. The El Salvadorian nomineehad been approved to break the deadlock which developed as it became apparent in the course of the conference that Nicaragua would vote against any candidate proposed by Costa Rica. Other action taken by the conference included the following: 1) it requested the Secretary General to initiate conversations with the Superior Central American University Council, to coordinate activities in the field of higher education in the region; 2) it authorized the creation of a council of culture and education as a specialized agency widiin the organization;) it authorized its central office to study and formulate a project to be presented at the next ordinary conference, toward a Central American customs union; and 4) it created a commission of jurists to study the codification of Central American legislation, initiate studies on the possibility of unifying juridic principles and establishing cooperation with the corresponding organs of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.