“Las relaciones ítalo-latinoamericanas. Cambios y continuidades en medio de la incertidumbre mundial”

Since 2003, Italy and Latin America have experienced a growing strengthening of their relations through the institutionalisation of biennial Conferences promoted by the Italian Ministry of International Affairs and the Italian- Latin American Institute (IILA), a body created in 1966 and still today the main political interlocutor for cooperation between the Peninsula and its Latin counterparts across the Atlantic. The level of collaboration achieved has been a concrete response to the low profile and low commitment that has often marked Italy’s diplomatic contacts with Central and South American republics, despite their common historical and cultural heritage. In recent years this collaboration has been challenged by the increasing deterioration of the international order towards a situation of uncertainty, itself aggravated first by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and then by the Russian- Ukrainian war. Based on these premises, the essay explores the consistency of Italian-Latin American relations and the main factors of change and continuity that are marking their trajectory at the beginning of the new decade of the 21st century. Using a historical approach, the paper seeks to explore the Italian-Latin American partnership above all as an example of a relationship between a medium-sized regional power with an agenda often inspired by the ambition to facilitate Euro-American dialogue, and an area whose international action continues to be marred by social imbalances, security problems, institutional fragilities and claudicant democracies. As such, the paper detects in Italian-Latin American relations a sample of the criticisms of the international system and evidence of the potential of a more coherent collaboration between the two sides of the Atlantic