Cooperation on Non-Proliferation An Analysis of the Treaty of Tlatelolco and the Latin American and Caribbean Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ)

page 115

The UN Conference on the Human Environment placed on the international agenda the environmental preservation issue and enjoined member states to take concrete steps to tackle pollution and other human impacts on environment. This had a remarkable resonance among South American countries, which possess vast natural reserves.

In this context, and given the Brazilian purpose of increasing its exports to its immediate market, president Geisel proposed the Treaty for Amazonian Cooperation (TCA), signed in 1978 by the representatives of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela.

The next government was led by João Figueiredo, whose “ecumenical pragmatism” (Miyamoto, 2013: 3) enabled him to appease the strained relations with Argentina, harmed since the Itaipú conflict. Although he took officially a neutral position in the Malvinas/Falkland War in 1982, a report published by O Globo in 2012 – based on declassified documents from the erstwhile National Information Servicerevealed that Brazil might have funnelled weapons to Argentina from the Soviet Union (Casado and Oliveira).

page 116

In the Brazilian northern border region, Figueiredo prevented a potential US intervention in Suriname in response to an imminent shift to the left in that country by taking the place of Cuban cooperation with Suriname.

Despite good relations with the US, Figueiredo and Reagan had different approaches regarding the methods to employ in the “anti-communist fight,” at least in Latin America.

For Brazilians, who had participated in the “Contadora Group” to promote peace in Central America, US interventions in the region had been “ineffective,” given the subsequent social and political instability in those countries.

Therefore, a military intervention on Brazil’s northern border would have been costly, undesirable, and strategically unwise.

These assessments led Brazil to strengthen its cooperation with Suriname to replace the Cuban influence. This approach proved successful in the mid-term because a US intervention in Suriname did not occur, and the country was not “Cubanized” as Americans had feared (Duchiade, 2019).


page 141

Panama and Colombia adhered to the Treaty in 1971 and 1972 respectively. In the context of the IV period of sessions in 1975, the Conference recognized that the détente of the Cold War did not help to shift the positions of Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Chile towards Tlatelolco.

Despite that, new Caribbean states joined Tlatelolco. Grenada, Surinam, Bahamas signed the Treaty, Trinidad and Tobago ratified it by waiving article 28 about the requirements for its entry into force, and Surinam was in a way to ratify it.

Concurrently, the independence of some Caribbean states increased the number of nonsignatories. Dominica, Santa Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines started the talks with OPANAL’s authorities in 1980 to adopt the Treaty.


page 148

On behalf of Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles, the Netherlands signed also Safeguard Agreements with the IAEA, but after Surinam’s independence on November 25 1975, this agreement applied only to the Netherlands Antilles.


Scroll to Top