"Argentine Diplomat" Alejandro Orfila Signed FDC Dated 1968 For Sale

Up for sale "Argentine Diplomat" Alejandro Orfila Signed First Day Cover Dated 1968. 

1925 in Mendoza, Argentina) is an Argentine retired career diplomat. Born to Catalan immigrants who had become moderately

successful Mendoza Province vintners,

Alejandro Orfila received a Law Degree at the University of Buenos Aires in

1945. The following year, following political science studies at Stanford University, he

was assigned to the Argentine Embassy in Moscow; in 1948, however, he was

expelled from the Soviet Union on the

grounds of espionage. Transferred to the United States, he was appointed

Argentine Consul General to San Francisco and later New York, where

he remained until his father's death in 1952 compelled him to return to the

family business in Mendoza. Offered the prestigious post of Director of

Information at the recently established Organization of American

States (OAS), Orfila left for Washington, D.C. in 1953. There,

he forged close contacts in the U.S. capital and, after becoming Argentine

Ambassador to the U.S. in 1958 and to Japan in 1960, he formed an

influential K Street lobbying firm

in 1962, specializing in the interests of U.S. firms investing in or trading

with Latin America. In 1964 he became the political adviser to the Managing

Director of the Adela Investment Company, the largest multinational development

corporation for growing the Latin American economy. Close to President Juan Perón since his days in the Soviet Union, Orfila was

appointed Ambassador to the United States by the populist Argentine leader,

back in power in 1973 after an 18-year-long exile. Upon the retirement of Ecuatorian statesman Galo Plaza from the post of Secretary General of the OAS on 17 May 1975, Orfila was

elected to replace him. In this capacity, he moved quickly to repair the OAS's

relationship with its most important member, the United States. Inheriting an

OAS closely identified with the Non-Aligned Movement, he dismissed a number of Plaza's

appointees looked upon unfavorably by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Preferring his own brand of "gala

diplomacy" to confrontation, Orfila was fond of enlisting his sumptuous

beltway home for diplomatic dinners in the interest of assuaging differences. Orfila's

influence in U.S. foreign policy circles, however, remained marginal until the

advent of the Administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter in early 1977. Orfila rallied support in the

OAS for Carter's campaign pledge to renegotiate U.S. presence in the Panama Canal

Zone, a contentious issue across Latin America. The Panama Canal Treaty was

signed at OAS headquarters in September of that year. Taking the OAS into a

more active role in Latin America's economic development than had been the case

before, Orfila facilitated the Inter-American Development Bank as a means to provide

these governments an alternative to the high-interest credit markets in the

world's financial capitals, a policy that backfired somewhat after many of

these nations entered a debt repayments crisis in 1981. Supported in many circles

for his long-standing anti-communist policies, Orfila nevertheless actively

opposed the tide of human rights abuses in

Latin America. Working with President Carter and the U.S. Assistant Secretary

of State for Human Rights, Patricia Derian, he marshalled the then-dormant Inter-American Commission on Human

Rights into investigations inside repressive regimes like his

own country's, the Argentine military junta;

after looking into allegations of widespread political murders and kidnappings in September

1979, the commission's 1980 report removed any doubts as to the state of

freedoms in the country at the time, and helped lead to an improvement in the

climate of civil liberties. These moves, however, undermined Orfila's standing

in Washington after Ronald Reagan became

U.S. president in early 1981, particularly among President Reagan's foreign

policy advisers such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, who, as Republican Party campaign

adviser in 1980, chided the OAS investigations into atrocities by admonishing

them to be more supportive of "moderately repressive regimes." With

violence in the region more concentrated in Central America after 1980, Orfila

lost a valuable ally in his efforts to mediate the area's civil wars  when Panamanian strongman Omar Torrijos' plane exploded in August 1981.Orfila lent the

OAS' support to the establishment of the Contadora Group in hopes of alleviating the worsening

wars in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. This support, as well as that of the United

Nations and a number of other international bodies, failed to compensate for

President Reagan's opposition to the initiative, however. A 1982 resolution he

supported, asserting Argentina's claims on the Falkland Islands, resulted in a policy embarrassment for the

OAS after Falklands War ended in disaster. The severe economic

downturn in almost the entire western hemisphere was addressed by Orfila with

efforts to renegotiate Latin American debt repayments; this met with opposition

in the Reagan Administration on this, as well, and on 26 October 1983, the OAS

voted to condemn the U.S. invasion of Grenada,

making Orfila's policy rift with Reagan final. Towards the end of the year,

accusations of influence peddling arose against Orfila. Increasingly unable to

exert credibility despite the lack of evidence for the allegations, on 21 June

1984, Secretary General Orfila resigned his post, expressing frustration over

the OAS' inability to influence U.S. Latin American policy during the 1980s. He

was succeeded by Brazilian Vice-Minister of Foreign

Affairs João Clemente Baena Soares.