Carlos Saavedra Lamas : a vision for peace

Abstract

Resumen: During the uncertain interwar period, Carlos Saavedra Lamas, an experi-enced Argentine politician, and diplomat, negotiated the Anti-war Treaty of Non-aggression and Conciliation (1933) and developed an active role as a mediator of a regional ad-hoc group that brought an end to the Chaco War (1935), thus becoming the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize. Saavedra Lamas proposed three main contributions to understanding Latin American peace and conflict resolution. First, he understood peace in a negative way as a prerequisite for economic devel-opment and underlined both systemic and domestic obstacles to a stable peace, such as international anarchy and economic nationalism. Second, he presented an interwar liberal internationalism approach toward war avoidance typical of developing international treaties and sustaining inter-national organizations. Third, he proposed the notion of consultation grounded on American solidarity as a way not only to channel tensions among sovereign states but also to resolve active conflicts. In that sense, he proposed to universalize the system of consultations developed at the Pan-American Conferences. Still, he presented arguments against formal institutionalization while the use of force was not ruled out completely. However, his ideas were in tension with his diplomatic moves, character-ized by their critics as excessively Machiavellian and selfish, in addition to a set of conflicting political, geostrategic, and economic interests that were in play during the Chaco War’s peace negotiations. The first section of this chapter explores the social and political background of Saavedra Lamas and argues that he was an insider of the traditional Argentine elite. Later, it presents a review of the publications about Saavedra Lamas. Under the subtitle The Rise and Fall of a Pacificist, the second section delves into the intricacies of the networks, alliances, and animosities he faced as an actor of peace.