• Submitted by: manso
• Sports
• 09 / 17 / 2011

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2011.09.16 - 10:23:23 / radiorebelde.icrt.cu / Havana, Cuba.-  Once the Latin American athletes are welcomed in the Mexican city of Guadalajara that is the venue of the 16th Pan American Games this competition will be turning 60 years exactly, taking into account its beginning in 1951 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

 French Pierre de Fredy, who was the fourth baron of the Coubertin lineage and precursor of the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece in 1896, promoted the ideal about the unification of all nations through a four-year athletic competition, even though the world he used to conceive was mainly limited to the most developed nations from the European mainland.

Members of the International Olympic Committee constituted in 1894 included Belgian Baillet Latour, who substituted Coubertin from the presidency  and was one of the few members deeply convinced that the only formula capable to come true the baron´s goal was to carry out similar competitions in different geographic zones.

The organization of the Olympic Games in Paris in the year 1924 provided a good opportunity for many Latin American delegates, who were attending that competition, to gather together and exchange ideas about the Baillet Latour´s plans.

This way, the first Sports Central American Congress held sessions in July 4th in the capital city of Paris with the participation of representatives from Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Venezuela where it was unanimous the decision about granting the venue to Mexico to carry out the first Pan American Games in 1926.

The ideal related to seek for the true Latin American sports unification had its boom on the occasion of the Olympic Games held in Los Angeles, the United States in 1932 where Latin American delegates gathered once again and the Mexican representation in the meeting proposed to constitute the Latin America Sports Federation as the maximum aspiration of friendship and common regional destiny, according to the phrase used then by the Mexican delegates.

Such ideal was reaffirmed in the Olympic Games held in Berlin in the year 1836, where it was agreed to work in order to hold every four years the Pan American Games. Moreover, it was the time when Mr. Avery Brundage, who was the President of the Olympic Committee in the United States, not only welcomed many of the initiatives but also dedicated himself to create continental federations in each sport.

Along with the aforementioned goal, Brundage was also able to foresee in the short or long run the possibility to preside over one day the International Olympic Committee (COI) and knew that the votes of The United States could make the difference, this is why, Brundage organized in Dallas and Texas in 1937 a series of competitions as a testing practice before the future beginning of the Pan American Games and invited many athletes and sports officials to participate with all expenses paid. It was that city located in the west region in The United States where flags from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and, of course, the one from the host nation, fluttered in the wind. Besides, Baillet Latour´s personal effort and the one also carried out by other Latin American men made possible to hold in 1940 the first Pan American Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where delegates from 16 nations participated and approved the integration of the Pan American Sports Committee of which Brundage was elected as its president.

Likewise, it was agreed that the Buenos Aires city was going to be the next venue to hold the first Pan American Games of the year 1942.Therefore, during that period not even the beginning of the Second World War seemed to be an obstacle for the preparation of the Games, but after the attack by the Japanese army to Pear Harbor which occurred on September 7th, 1941, the United States and other Latin American nations involved in that large-scale military conflict.

This way the organization of the event was interrupted and only the ending of the war by 1945 enabled that London was the venue of a new Olympic Games in the year 1948 where Latin American delegates ratified Buenos Aires as the venue of the Pan American Games competition as well as its date of beginning set for February 25th, 1951. By Nolan Chacón and Translated by: Juan Carlos Caballero Puig