Once the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Last Database Union ended, Washington seemed to pay some attention to Latin America and the region shared a certain homogeneity with governments Last Database more inclined to seek close relations with the White House . It can be said - of course, with some exaggeration - that there was a relative community of interests and values in Last Database the inter-American system. That first continental date must also be located in the grand strategy of Washington in that historical context.
The grand strategy, called " Engagement plus Enlargement ," was that the Last Database United States would not fall back as it had done after World War I and that it had the will, the ability, and the opportunity to decisively reconfigure the international system (the engagement component ), while it would seek to propagate the market Last Database economy and political pluralism (the enlargement component). Regarding this last component, US policy used the 1989 Washington Consensus to give impetus to policies of liberalization and Last Database economic deregulation, on the one hand, and reduction of the State, on the other.
In this framework, a central axis was trade, an issue that Last Database became the main focus of the First Summit of the Americas with the aspiration of achieving a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005. On the way to the Last Database conclave in Miami, the United States held a set of prior consultations, as well as preparatory meetings. Latin America, then through the so-called Rio Group (made up of the sum of the Last Database Contadora Group, the Contadora Support Group, the Caribbean Community [Caricom] and the Central American Integration System [SICA]), held meetings of ahead of the summit in order to make contributions that reflected the needs of the region.