At the end of the Wars of Independence, fought in the 1810s and 1820s by the colonies of Spain and Portugal in South America, several sovereign nations arose on the continent.

The notion of closer hemispheric union in the Americas was first put forward by the Liberator Simón Bolívar who, at the 1826 Congress of Panama , proposed creating a league of Latin American republics, with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly. This meeting was attended by representatives of Gran Colombia (comprising the modern-day nations of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela), Peru, the United Provinces of Central America, and Mexico, but the grandly titled "Treaty of Union, League, and Perpetual Confederation" was ultimately only ratified by Gran Colombia. Bolívar's dream soon floundered irretrievably with civil war in Gran Colombia, the disintegration of Central America, and the emergence of national rather than continental outlooks in the newly independent American republics.

The proposed institution of a United States of South America has never been realized. In the Cuzco Declaration of 2004, the South American countries said that by creating the South American Community of Nations they would try and realize Bolívar's dream of uniting South America.

See also

• South American Community of Nations
• Simón Bolívar
• Wars of Independence
• United States of Central America