Garcia Robles Alfonso

Garcia Robles Alfonso

Introduction to Garcia Robles Alfonso

Alfonso García Robles (1911-1991), Mexican diplomat who devoted himself to the cause of nuclear disarmament. In the 1960s he organized a ban on nuclear weapons in Latin America and helped draft the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, one of the world’s most important arms control agreements. García Robles’s persistent efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons earned him the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize (see Nobel Prizes), which he shared with Swedish social scientist Alva Myrdal.

Born in Zamora, Mexico, García Robles earned a law degree from the National University of Mexico in 1933. He continued his education at the University of Paris from 1934 to 1937 and attended the International Law Academy at The Hague in 1938. The next year García Robles joined Mexico’s foreign service, taking a position at the Mexican embassy in Sweden.

García Robles returned to Mexico in 1941 and was eventually named director-general of Political Affairs and Diplomatic Service. In 1945 he served as a member of the Mexican delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization, which created the United Nations (UN). From 1946 to 1957 he worked for the UN Secretariat as director of the agency’s Division of Political Affairs. He then returned to Mexico to become director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s department on Europe, Asia, and Africa. In this position, he played a key role in convening the first Law of the Sea conferences, which laid the groundwork for international maritime law. From 1962 to 1964 he served as Mexico’s ambassador to Brazil.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis spurred García Robles to launch an initiative to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. The crisis put the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the brink of war over the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba, and threatened to intensify superpower rivalry in Latin America. García Robles proposed the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America, which barred nuclear weapons from the region. In 1967, after five years of painstaking negotiations, García Robles persuaded 14 Latin American countries to sign the treaty. In the following years 10 more Latin American nations signed the agreement, also known as the Treaty of Thlatelolco. Six other countries-Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, France, and the Netherlands-also agreed to keep nuclear weapons out of Latin America.

After his success in Latin America, García Robles continued to press for global limitations on nuclear weapons. He coauthored the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which barred the development, deployment, and testing of nuclear weapons outside of the five countries that already had nuclear weapons. Eventually more than 115 nations signed the accord, making it one of the most sweeping arms control agreements in history. In 1995 more than 170 countries agreed to permanently extend the treaty.

García Robles served as Mexico’s foreign minister from 1975 until 1976. He then served as Mexico’s permanent representative to the UN Disarmament Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, where he labored to mediate a compromise nuclear disarmament agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States. García Robles also argued for a global campaign to eradicate all nuclear weapons.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

Guide to Garcia Robles Alfonso


Posted

in

, ,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *