Latin America and its Contributions to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Abstract

With the opening for signature of the Treaty of Tlatelolco in 1967, Latin America became the first nuclear-weapon-free zone in a densely populated region and it was the only one during much of the Cold War. This initiative was subsequently a reference for the preparation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and for the approval of other four Nuclear Weapon Free Zones (NWFZs) that exist today. Although there is no detailed evaluation of its effectiveness and performance, the actorness played by the region, mainly through the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL for its acronym in Spanish) in shaping norms within the nuclear non-proliferation regime contradicts the mainstream thesis that peripheral countries, due to their limited material capabilities, can be exclusively “norm-takers” and not “norm makers”, especially on the security domain where their agency would be epiphenomenal. The following article seeks, in effect, to rebut this postulate by analysing the contributions of the region, specifically, of the OPANAL onto the construction of norms within the nuclear non-proliferation regime.