A phrase popular in the halls of the OAS is that if the OAS would not exist, we would have it to invent. The Organization of American States (OAS) today operates by consensus, is a body where only States are represented, and that although in its infancy, i.e., after the second world war, his main work was support to United States in the cold war in his confrontation with the Soviet Union, ended the cold war is doomed to new threats and economic cooperation directing duties on the mandates of the summits Presidential. The rationale is that the Organization lacks funds to carry out mandates that are generated, which prevents its timely completion. Other international, regional organizations or not, act in parallel, competing many times, with the actions of the OAS and, sometimes, advances to their initiatives, which gives the impression that is a useless organization, outdated or repetitive of what, for example, already United Nations It adopted. In short, the OAS is an organization where there is not the political will of Governments, nor the States to ensure a cohesive power and set to represent the interests of the hemisphere, as if this occurs, for example, in the European Union. And is that the OAS groups, if we can say so, countries that even though they belong to the American continent do not share the same interests, even so Western values, but also, in her womb they host to indigenous groups, indigenous communities, Native American, etc. For example, Canada and United States has more interest in reaching agreements in the G-8 that at the OAS.
And other countries in UN. What does allow the OAS is, in the heat of the debate, understand each other and legislate and develop some documents, although non-binding, if of interest on problematic issues in the region such as, for example, drugs, gangs, democracy, etc. Caribbean countries obtained financial aid, scholarships and in natural disasters. Countries oil as Venezuela and, in another time, Mexico, donate them oil. And countries such as Brazil and Argentina, grains and other products. We can not fail to mention the permanent presence of the ghost of Cuba. The OAS is an organism that when it collapses in resolving some political crisis enters to carve in its UN and EU aid. Then, we find that the OAS, by the countries represented diverse composition, is of itself mired and ineffective, is not a homogeneous group and is only a place where converge problems of the most diverse views of the opposite that not allows to reach any important agreement that are not nothing other than generalities. In other words, his performance is at issue.