How Latin America is Perceived in UN General Debates
2024-05-06
How is Latin America Perceived in Global Diplomacy?
In this presentation, I will explore how Latin America is represented in speeches delivered at the UN General Debate.
My main goals were to understand:
- How often Latin America is mentioned
- In what context it’s discussed
- Who is shaping the narrative
Why This Matters
Understanding how Latin America is talked about at the UN matters for how the region is seen, treated, and engaged with globally.
These speeches shape diplomatic relationships, guide foreign policy, and reflect who gets to define international narratives.
This project matters because representation influences reality.
Mentions of Latin America in UN Speeches
After cleaning the data and filtering only speeches that mentioned Latin America, I looked at how often each country was referenced.
Some countries, like Cuba and Mexico, are mentioned very frequently and others far less. This gives us a first hint at which nations attract the most international attention.
This bar chart shows which countries are mentioned the most
What Do These Speeches Talk About?
- To understand how Latin America is discussed, I looked at the most common words in the speeches
- This gives an idea of the type of language used when talking about the region at the UN
A Visual Glimpse of Language
- I made a wordcloud using the most frequent words
- It shows which terms come up the most when Latin America is mentioned
- Words like “nations”, “peace”, and “development” stand out
- Bigger words mean they were used more often in the speeches
Choosing the Number of Topics
To decide how many topics to use in my LDA model, I tested different values and calculated their semantic coherence.
Coherence peaked at 4 topics.
What Are the Main Topics?
This helped me group the speeches based on common themes.
Each row in the chart shows a different topic, and the words inside each row are the ones most often used in that group of speeches.
Which Countries are framing Latin America?
- I filtered speeches that mention Latin America and looked at who talks about it most
- Countries like Uruguay, El Salvador, Peru, and Mexico show up the most
- Some non-Latin American countries also appear, like Laos, Vietnam, Angola, Portugal, and the USA
- Their presence likely reflects historical, geopolitical, or economic ties
- The chart shows who’s helping shape the global conversation about Latin America
- This line chart shows how often Latin America was mentioned each year from the 1970s to 2015
- Mentions were high during the Cold War, likely due to U.S.–Soviet tensions, revolutions, and debt crises
- In later decades, mentions declined, possibly as global priorities shifted
