United States of South America

The United States of South America is a political term and a state proposed by Simón Bolivar that was meant to include all the territories liberated by him and José de San Martín. The term has recently resurged as the result of South American integration, such as the merging of Mercosur and CAN.

Proposed State

At the end of the Wars of Independence, fought in the 1810s and 1820s by the colonies of Spain in South America, several sovereign nations arose on the continent.

The notion of closer hemispheric union in the Americas was first put forward by the Liberator Simón Bolívar who, at the 1826 Congress of Panama, proposed creating a Confederation of Latin American republics, with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly. This meeting was attended by representatives of Gran Colombia (comprising the modern-day nations of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela), Peru, the United Provinces of Central America, and Mexico, but the grandly titled "Treaty of Union, League, and Perpetual Confederation" was ultimately only ratified by Gran Colombia. Bolívar's dream soon floundered irretrievably with civil war in Gran Colombia, the disintegration of Central America, and the emergence of national rather than continental outlooks in the newly independent American republics.

The proposed confederation has never been realized. In the Cuzco Declaration of 2004, the South American countries said that by creating the Union of South American Nations they would try to partially realize Bolívar's dream of uniting Latin America. Some other names proposed for this new Community of Nations was Unión de Sudamérica (Union of South America) whose abbreviations in Spanish (and English) were USA, and "United States of South América".

ee also

*Union of South American Nations
*Simón Bolívar
*South American Wars of Independence
*United States of Central America
*United States (disambiguation)
*United Provinces of South America