My morning jog took me past another example of institutional architecture; the headquarters building of the Organisation of American States (picture – built 1910), an organisation (founded 1948, but previous versions had existed since Simon Bolivar had first put forward his vision at the 1826 Congress of Panama) which could be loosely described as a more venerable pan-American equivalent to the Council of Europe (founded 1949). I was interested to see ‘CUBA’ emblazoned on the building. The country indeed always remained, technically-speaking, a member state of the organisation, although its government was suspended between 1962 and 2009. Honduras was similarly ‘suspended’ between 2009 and 2011, following a coup. Just for the record, the OAS’s official languages are Spanish, English, Portugese and French and, yes, the European Union enjoys observer status.
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