I will take Karen's challenging question about the goals of a multilateral institution as the starting point for analyzing whether the promise of multilateralism in Latin America has been honored, if the current crisis is related to those goals (or their absence), and whether multilateralism still holds any promise for the future. In my analysis, key elements of Ruggie's definition (institutional form, coordination, generalized principles) will also be at stake. Thus, objectives and principles are at the center of this discussion.