The United States became the first nation to do so, and shortly thereafter Monroe received the Central American ambassador, Antonio José Cañas.

He asked him to send representatives to the first Inter-American Congress at Panama, a meeting at which, he said, the struggling new nations of the hemisphere "might consider upon and adopt the best plan for defending the states of the New World from foreign aggression, and... raise them to that elevation of wealth and power, which, from their resources, they may attain.

"Today, 138 years later, we are gathered in this theater in pursuit of those same goals: the preservation of our independence, the extension of freedom, and the elevation of the welfare of our citizens to a level as high as "from our resources" we can attain.

And today I have come from the United States at the invitation of a Central America which, with Panama, is rapidly attaining a unity of purpose, effort and achievement which has been unknown since the dissolution of that earliest federation.

He began working diligently to organize the public administration into four departments: hacienda (finance), guerra (war), relaciones (foreign affairs) and gobernación (interior).