Abstract: Even though Latin American diplomats and economists played a crucial role in the formulation and the theorizing of development economics, Latin American contributions to development debates in the United Nations have often been relegated to the margins. Based on sources from Brazilian and Cuban archives, the Organization of American States, as well as the UN archive, the paper relates the Latin American road to the creation of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in a struggle to fight what they perceived as an illiberal and unfair global economic order.