Alejandro Orfila

Alejandro Orfila (born 9 March 1925 in Mendoza, Argentina) was an Argentine 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 ralationship 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.

...
Wikipedia