Latin America was leaving behind the coups C Level Contact List d'état and the democratic transition was consolidating in a gradual but promising way. The world proclaimed the "peace dividends" once the confrontation between the United States and the C Level Contact List Soviet Union ended, Washington seemed to pay some attention to Latin America and the region shared a certain homogeneity with governments more inclined to seek close relations C Level Contact List with the White House . It can be said - of course, with some exaggeration - that there was a relative community of interests and values in the inter-American system.
That first continental date must also be located in the C Level Contact List grand strategy of Washington in that historical context. The grand strategy, called " Engagement plus Enlargement ," was that the United States would not fall back as it had done after World C Level Contact List War I and that it had the will, the ability, and the opportunity to decisively reconfigure the international system (the engagement component ), while it would seek to propagate the market C Level Contact List economy and political pluralism (the enlargement component). Regarding this last component, US policy used the 1989 Washington
Consensus to give impetus to policies of liberalization C Level Contact List and economic deregulation, on the one hand, and reduction of the State, on the other. In this framework, a central axis was trade, an issue that became the main focus of the First Summit of the C Level Contact List Americas with the aspiration of achieving a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005. On the way to the conclave in Miami, the United States held a set of prior consultations, as well as C Level Contact List preparatory meetings. Latin America, then through the so-called Rio Group (made up of the sum of the Contadora Group, the Contadora Support Group, the Caribbean Community [Caricom] and the Central American Integration System [SICA]), held meetings of ahead of the summit in order to make contributions that reflected the needs of the region.