In 1978, the XXVIII Annual Convention of the Asociación Venezolana para el Avance de la Ciencia (ASOVAC) was held in Maracay, Venezuela. Dr. Klaus Krickeberg, who at the time was the President of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability, participated in the event. He proposed to his colleagues residing in Venezuela, who were also attending the meeting, the establishment of a Latin American statistical society affiliated with the Bernoulli Society.
Between January and April of 1980, the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, organized the Jornadas Aniversarias de la Universidad Simón Bolívar, which included nineteen symposia, five specialized meetings, and four roundtables. These scientific events commemorated the university’s first ten years of institutional life, which had been completed on January 19, 1980. One of these meetings was the Simposio de Probabilidades y Estadística Matemática, coordinated by Prof. Enrique Cabaña, to which the following were invited as speakers: Professors Xavier Fernique from the Université de Strasbourg, Klaus Krickeberg from the Université de Paris, and Alejandro de Acosta from the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas.
An executive committee composed of Professors José R. León from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and Mario Wschebor from the Universidad Simón Bolívar, together with the symposium coordinator, obtained support from the United Nations Development Programme, which made it possible to gather a significant number of Latin American colleagues. They also organized a Constitutive Meeting of the Latin American Regional Section of the Bernoulli Society. The participants strongly supported the proposal and declared the Regional Section officially established from that point on.
The founders hoped that the new association, while continuing to act as a section of the Bernoulli Society, would also serve as a platform for exchange, coordination, and cooperation among Latin American mathematical statisticians and probabilists. To foster connections among colleagues in the region, it was agreed to hold periodic congresses, each to be called the Latin American Congress of Probability and Mathematical Statistics (in Spanish, Congreso Latinoamericano de Probabilidad y Estadística Matemática or CLAPEM). It was also decided that the Simposio de Probabilidades y Estadística Matemática would be considered the first CLAPEM.
An alphabetical list of the Latin Americans who contributed to the meeting with their presentations is as follows:
Alejandro de Acosta (Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas), Edmundo Araya (Universidad de Chile), Rodrigo Arocena (Universidad Central de Venezuela), Salomón Benzaquen (Universidad Simón Bolívar), Oscar Bustos (Universidade de Pernambuco), Enrique Cabaña (Universidad Simón Bolívar), Carlos A. B. Dantas (Universidade de São Paulo), Chang Dorea (Universidade de Brasília), Arnoldo de Hoyos (Universidade de Campinas), Ruben Klein (Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Rio de Janeiro), José R. León (Universidad Central de Venezuela), Ricardo Maronna (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich), Federico O'Reilly (IIMAS, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Joaquín Ortega (Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas), Nélida Winzer de Fernández (Universidad de Los Andes), Mario Wschebor (Universidad Simón Bolívar), and Víctor Yohai (Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires).
The full chronological list of subsequent CLAPEM congresses is:
II CLAPEM – July 8–19, 1985, Caracas, Venezuela
III CLAPEM – September 19–28, 1988, Montevideo, Uruguay
IV CLAPEM – September 24–29, 1990, Ciudad de México, México
V CLAPEM – August 2–6, 1993, São Paulo, Brasil
VI CLAPEM – December 11–15, 1995, Viña del Mar, Chile
VII CLAPEM – August 3–7, 1998, Córdoba, Argentina
VIII CLAPEM – October 15–19, 2001, La Habana, Cuba
IX CLAPEM – March 22–26, 2004, Punta del Este, Uruguay
X CLAPEM – March 12–16, 2007, Lima, Perú
XI CLAPEM – November 1–6, 2009, Caracas, Venezuela
XII CLAPEM – March 26–30, 2012, Viña del Mar, Chile
XIII CLAPEM – September 22–26, 2014, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
XIV CLAPEM – December 5–9, 2016, San José, Costa Rica
XV CLAPEM – December 2–6, 2019, Mérida, Yucatán, México - Homepage
XVI CLAPEM – July 10–14, 2023, São Paulo, Brasil - Homepage
XVII CLAPEM – Scheduled for March 2–6, 2026, Montevideo, Uruguay
You can find more details on each congress at the official SLAPEM page