The integration process can be intensified and accelerated not only by specialization resulting from broadening of markets through liberalization of trade but also through use of such instruments as agreements for complementary production within economic sectors … Title III, Declaration of Punta del Este, Montevideo, 1961.
The European pattern of economic integration has found expression in the Western Hemisphere in three politically divergent, widelyseparated regional groupings. One such group is the now-defunct West Indies Federation, a rearrangement of the remaining bits and pieces of British colonialism in the Caribbean region. Another is the Latin American Free Trade Association, straddling gaps from Mexico to Argentina, which appears to be a superficial bid for economic affinity among the more developed Latin American nations. But the most vigorous approach to regional economic integration is being pursued by the Organization for the Economic Development of Central America, which boldly proposes to weld at least five individually inefficient, insufferably nationalistic entities into one productive effort capable of initiating and sustaining economic take-off. Thus, in Central America, regional integration is being enforced even before national identity has fully emerged.