Richard Nixon photo

Proclamation 4122—Pan American Day and Pan American Week

April 10, 1972


By the President of the United States Of America

A Proclamation

Eighty-two years ago this spring, the first International Conference of American States was completing its work in Washington. The hopes which millions of people throughout the Western Hemisphere held for that conference were voiced in these words of a leading churchman of the day, Edward Everett Hale: "We trust that the American Congress, representing North and South America, will address itself squarely to some . . . practicable system, not content with general statements . . . of the folly and cost and horror of war."

While the hemispheric court of arbitration for which Hale specifically argued was not created at that time, a "practicable system" was—the system which we now call the Organization of American States. And down all the decades since that system has increasingly fulfilled the hopes of its founders for modes of cooperation and unity which should make peace permanent and war obsolete among the sister republics of the New World.

Today the Organization of American States stands as the oldest continuous regional body in the world, and one of the most vigorous and progressive as well. Geography, history, shared traditions of self-government, and common interests in the world give a special depth and durability to international ties in the Americas. The OAS, in turn, gives those ties structure, substance, and a strong arm for action.

It is an organization based on a workable combination of idealism and realism; on a capacity to grow and adjust with the times; and on the principle that all nations, large and small, are juridical equals, each entitled to mutual respect and equal rights. It embodies the steadily growing concern of the peoples of the Americas for joint efforts toward hastening economic and social development, maintaining collective security, and settling disputes peacefully. Its past is proud and its future promising.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Friday, April 14, as Pan American Day, and the week beginning April 9 and ending April 15 as Pan American Week; and I call upon the Governors of the fifty States of the Union, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and appropriate officials of all other areas under the flag of the United States to issue similar proclamations.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-sixth.

Signature of Richard Nixon

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Nixon, Proclamation 4122—Pan American Day and Pan American Week Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/307699

Simple Search of Our Archives