Look closely at the image on today’s #stampoftheday. When you do, try not to read the words but just focus on the image, which portrays three women dancing with their hands clasped together. And then, using just the image as your guide, try to figure out what the stamp is supposed to honor.
You may recognize the image. It’s a portion of Botticelli’s painting ‘Spring’, which shows nine figures from classic Greek mythology. The center of the painting, according to the description on the Uffizi Gallery website “is dominated by the goddess of love and beauty, Venus, chastely dressed and set slightly back from the others, and by a blindfolded Cupid, firing his arrow of love.” Off to the left, dancing with clasped hands, are the Three Graces, daughters of Zeus, each of whom is supposedly was able to bestow a particular gift on humanity: mirth, elegance, and beauty.
Why is this the image used for a 3-cent stamp, issued on April 14, 1940, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Pan American Union, the predecessor of the Organization of American States (OAS)? It’s absurd, which seems fitting because the stamp, the entity it honors, and the general nature of US relations with countries in Central and South America has been, is, and is likely to continue being somewhat absurd.
The idea of an international union in the New World was first put forward during the liberation of the Americas by JosŽ de San Mart’n and Sim—n Bol’var who, at the 1826 Congress of Panama, proposed creating a league of American republics, with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly. This meeting was attended by representatives of Gran Colombia (which comprised the modern-day countries of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela), Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, The United Provinces of Central America, and Mexico. But the grandly titled “Treaty of Union, League, and Perpetual Confederation” was ultimately ratified only by Gran Colombia. And Bol’var’s dream floundered with civil war in Gran Colombia, the disintegration of Central America, and the emergence of national outlooks in the newly independent American republics.
Several decades later, James G. Blaine, a powerful senator who President James Garfield tapped as his Secretary of State, became interested in establishing an organization that would foster commercial ties between the US and the countries of Latin and Central America. With Garfield’s approval Blaine invited representatives of those nation to a Pan-American Conference. But in September 1881, Garfield was assassinated, and his successor, Chester A. Arthur, who came from a rival faction, pushed Blaine out and cancelled the conference. Blaine continued to lobby for the idea and succeeded after Benjamin Harrison was elected President in 1888 and tapped Blaine to again be Secretary of State.
The conference, which began on January 20, 1890, brought together 27 delegates from 13 countries. While they couldn’t agree on everything, they did reach several agreements on commercial and trade issues. On April 14, they formed the International Union of American Republics, which was to promote international cooperation; offer technical and informational services to all the American republics; serve as the repository for international documents; and through subsidiary councils, further economic, social, judicial, and cultural relations.
In 1902, the name was changed to the International Bureau of the American Republics. In 1910 the name Pan-American Union was adopted and the organization moved into a new building, an iconic structure designed by Paul Philippe Cret and Albert P. Kelsey, two leading early 20th century architects. (That building is portrayed on a bonus airmail stamp issued in 1946).
President Franklin Roosevelt, who pushed for closer ties among nations in the Western Hemisphere, particularly as war engulfed Europe and Asia, specifically requested a stamp honoring the Pan American Union. In January 1940, Postmaster General James A. Farley publicly announced the planned stamp while speaking on the “Calling All Stamp Collectors,” a national radio show broadcast by NBC. Almost two months later, the Post Office revealed that it was using Botticelli’s image of The Three Graces for that stamp. Their clasped hands, Farley said, symbolized “the bonds of friendship that exist among the countries of North, South, and Central America.”
Those bonds, of course, have often been frayed. In 1954, the U.S. backed a military coup in Guatemala that ousted a leftist government and installed a dictatorship. The US provided similar assistance to a host of other dictatorships throughout Latin America. And, in turn, many leftist governments in Latin America viewed the US with quite legitimate suspicion.
As the Congressional Research Service noted in a 2018 report, “The United States historically has sought to use the OAS [which replaced the Pan American Union in 1948] to advance economic, political, and security objectives in the Western Hemisphere. Although OAS actions frequently reflected U.S. policy during the 20th century, this has changed to a certain extent over the past 15 years.”
Some of these tensions came to a head fall of 2019 when OAS, with the support of the Trump Administration, claimed that Bolivia’s presidential election, which nominally was won by then President Evo Morales, was rife with fraud–charges that helped led to his overthrow by a military backed government. The key element in the fraud charge was the preliminary count on election night showed Morales winning but falling shy of 10 percentage point lead needed to avoid a runoff election. When it resumed, he passed that threshold, which led to the charges of fraud.
But, in a February 2020 piece in The Washington Post, John Curiel and Jack Williams, researchers with MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, wrote that OAS cited “no previous research” backing its claims of fraud. In fact, they added, “there are reasons to believe that voter preferences and reporting can vary over time: with people who work voting later in the day, for instance. Areas where impoverished voters are clustered may have longer lines and less ability to count and report vote totals quickly.”
When these factors are taken into account, they wrote, “there is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find – the trends in the preliminary count, the lack of any big jump in support for Morales after the halt, and the size of Morales’s margin all appear legitimate.”
And here’s the wonderful kicker. Previous research, they noted, also showed “that economic and racial differences make it difficult to verify voter registration in the United States, resulting in higher use of provisional ballots among Democrats – and greater support for Democratic candidates among votes counted after Election Day.”
Therefore, they warned, “under the OAS criteria for fraud, it’s possible that U.S. elections in which votes that are counted later tend to lean Democratic might also be classified as fraudulent.” But that, of course, would be a myth that no one would actually believe, right?
So perhaps the use of mythological symbol to honor an organization devoted to cooperation in the western hemisphere was prescient not just absurd.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.