The mere announcement of a well-thought-out foreign policy is not sufficient unless adequate machinery is available to make it effective. We have always thought of ourselves as buenos amigos to the republics south of the Rio Grande, but we have not always been able to make them believe it. Conceding that one of the reasons has been certain sins of commission, certainly another has been the sin of omission. The agencies for carrying out our foreign policies both in Washington and in the field were not geared to the load put upon them.

Even before the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States was keenly interested in the young sister republics to the south. However, for almost a century, the Department of State treated the world as a geographical unit in the conduct of foreign relations. It was not until 1870, when Secretary of State Hamilton Fish set up two geographical bureaus, that the second bureau was given jurisdiction over the Latin American region as well as certain other areas.

The Division of Latin American Affairs, established in 1909, is the second oldest of the geographical divisions, and its jurisdiction was limited to the twenty American Republics. When the Division was overwhelmed with work pertaining to Mexico during the latter's revolutionary period, a Division of Mexican Affairs was established in 1915, and it remained in existence until 1937, when the new Division of the American Republics was established and given jurisdiction over relations with all twenty American Republics. This arrangement lasted until the reorganization of January, 1944, when the Office of American Republic Affairs was established and subdivided at first into six, and later five, divisions upon a regional basis. Another division, named the Division of American Republic Analysis and Liaison, was added by Departmental Order No. 1271, dated May 3, 1944.