Jefferson Caffery (December 1, 1886 – April 13, 1974) was an American diplomat. He served as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador (1926–1928), Colombia (1928–1933), Cuba (1934–1937), Brazil (1937–1944), France (1944–1949), and Egypt (1949–1955).[1]
Early life
Caffery was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, to Charles Duval Caffery and Mary Catherine (née Parkerson) Caffery.[2] He was privately educated in primary and secondary school. He was a member of the first class of Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute, which later became the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He also graduated with a bachelor's degree from Tulane University in 1906.
After graduation, he returned to Lafayette to teach at the Industrial Institute, including serving as its head football coach for at least one game, an 11-5 victory over Crowley in 1907.[3] He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1909.[4]
He traveled to Iran (then named Persia) in 1916, to Paris after World War I with President Wilson’s peacemakers, then to Washington, D.C., to arrange details for visits by the King of Belgium and the Prince of Wales. In 1920, he was named second-in-command at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. In 1933, Caffery briefly served as assistant secretary of state under Cordell Hull.[5]
As the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Jefferson was heavily involved in the Banana Massacre that occurred in 1928 in the small, coastal town of Ciénaga. Tired of terrible working conditions and very little wages (workers were paid in United Fruit Company store credit), banana farmers went on strike in protest. In order to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company, Caffery reported to U.S. Secretary of StateFrank Billings Kellogg that leaders of the strike would be immediately arrested and sent to prison in nearby Cartagena. Martial law was declared soon after and an unknown number of workers and their families were shot by a firing squad in the town square.[6] On December 29, 1928, he wrote a dispatch from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá to the U.S. Secretary of State stating, "I have the honor to report that the legal advisor of the United Fruit Company here in Bogotá stated yesterday that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military authorities during the recent disturbance reached between five and six hundred; while the number of soldiers killed was one."[7]
Service in Cuba
In 1934, while ambassador to Cuba, four assailants attempted to assassinate Caffery in front of his home in Havana. The assailants waited outside of his residence for his daily departure to his yacht club. One assailant was killed by a bodyguard, the others escaped. Caffery was not injured. The event was reported on the front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune on May 28, 1934.[2][8]
Caffery served as intermediary between the Egyptian and British Governments in the negotiations, and his "long experience in diplomacy, together with the respect in which he was held by the Egyptian Government, enabled him to arrange for the gradual departure of the British."[4]
In 1954, the British agreed to evacuate their military bases in the Canal Zone until the summer of 1956, but were given the right to return in case of an attack by an outside power against an Arab League member state or Turkey.[12]
In total, he worked 43 years in foreign service under eight U.S. presidents: Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.[2][13]
Personal life
Portrait of Mrs. Jefferson Caffery by Serge Ivanoff, Paris, 1946.Portrait of Jefferson Caffery by Serge Ivanoff, Paris, 1946.
He retired with his wife in 1955 to reside in Rome, where he was an honorary Papal gentleman to Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI. He returned to Lafayette, Louisiana in 1973, shortly before Mrs. Caffery's death on July 13, 1973. Caffery himself died on April 14, 1974.[4] The Cafferys are buried in the cemetery behind St. John’s Cathedral in Lafayette.[17]
^Smith, Joseph (2010). Brazil and the United States: Convergence and Divergence. Athens - London: University of Georgia Press. p. 126. ISBN978-0-8203-3733-3.
^ abRoosevelt, Franklin D. (1950). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1943, Volume 12. Best Books on. p. 52. ISBN9781623769727.
"Jefferson Caffery". A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography. Vol. 1. New Orleans, La.: Louisiana Historical Association. 1988. p. 141. ISBN0-940984-37-7. OCLC18400915.
Dur, Philip F. (1974). "Jefferson Caffery of Louisiana: Highlights of His Career, Part II: 1933-1944". Louisiana History. Louisiana Historical Association. XV. ISSN0024-6816. OCLC1782994.
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