Outside Europe, nowhere but in Latin America have integration attempts and thinking developed so extensively across space and so consistently over time. This article introduces the historical waves of Latin American regionalism in order to discuss the theories applied to account for, and frequently advocate, regional integration. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, to assess the capacity to travel of theories that have been crafted for the EU; on the other, to draw lessons from the Latin American experiences that may contribute to advance integration theory in general and EU studies in particular.