Abstract This article on Latin American design history aims to contribute to studies in global design histories. The creation of ALADI (the Latin American Design Association), in 1978, involved the creation of a network between countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia and also the establishment of relationships between Latin American designers and international professional institutions such as the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). The article explains how these institutions boosted the influence of design practitioners in the region, how diverse positions regarding the social role of design within a regional context were debated, and how a certain definition of design was formulated. The asymmetrical relationships, between the periphery and the centre—between Latin America, western Europe and the United States—channelled into a discourse of resistance adopted by Latin American countries that aimed to reaffirm design as a tool for defending Latin American autonomy in the face of hegemonic onslaught, primarily by the Anglo-Saxon world. Based on exhaustive documentation and ethnographic work this article subscribes to the centre-periphery debates in design with a fundamental emphasis on the genealogy of the Latin American perception of the subject, a view so far not taken into account.