A Little History - In Latin America It Was the Women Who Led UNICEF : Tom McDermott

Editor's note:  This article is a continuation of last week's piece on UNICEF's first woman representative, Gertrude Lutz. If you have not seen that article, you may want to read it first.

 

Unlike Europe, the Middle East and China, Latin America had not been seriously affected by World War II.  So UNICEF’s initial interest in Latin America was as a source of government contributions, not country programmes.  In early 1947 Maurice Pate and Ludwik Rajchman met with five Board delegations from Latin America to seek contributions to UNICEF’s programmes. Pate’s idea was that contributions by governments in the Americas might help to nudge the US to provide additional funding for war ravaged countries in Europe and Asia.  

A Change of Attitude

Katherine Lenroot

One key person who pressed for a change in UNICEF’s approach was the distinguished American social worker, Katherine Lenroot, who was the head of the US Children’s Bureau and the US delegate to UNICEF’s Executive Board from 1947 to 1951 (see UNICEF’s first Natcom).  In early 1948 Lenroot attended the Pan-American Child Congress in Caracas.  She and others used the congress as an opportunity to push for a resolution calling on UNICEF’s Executive Board to consider programmes for children in the Americas. 

In response to the demands from Latin America, Maurice Pate asked an illustrious British nutritionist, Reginald Passmore of Edinburgh University, to tour five countries in Latin America and come up with proposals for action. Passmore’s visits detailed a serious crisis facing children of the region in terms of nutrition and communicable diseases. His report led to a letter from Pate to all Latin American delegations outlining the types of assistance UNICEF might be able to provide - assistance to communicable disease control efforts for TB, syphilis, and malaria, supplementary feeding and milk plants.    

Brazil 

In late 1949 Dr. Leo Eloesser had returned to New York from China. He reported to the Board in early 1950.  It was clear from Eloesser’s report that in China, as in Europe, the opportunities for UNICEF action were ending. Yet in many other parts of the world, including Latin America, the needs of children were serious and growing. 

In February 1949 Brazil was the first Latin American country to make a formal request for UNICEF assistance. However, UNICEF's funds were very limited and no programmes had yet been defined.  So, in early 1950 Maurice Pate sent Eloesser off to several countries in Latin America, including Brazil. to explore programme possibilities.  In turn Brazil signed a Basic Agreement with UNICEF in June 1950.  

The Brazilian delegation to the UN was among the most vocal in calling for UN agencies to expand their focus beyond Europe and Asia. In the 1950 meeting of the Third Committee in which Eleanor Roosevelt argued for the disbanding of UNICEF, Brazil’s delegation argued for extension and expansion of UNICEF, even before Ahmed Bokhari stepped down from the Chairmanship to make his famous speech on the emergency for children outside Europe (see The Runaway from Peshawar).

Perhaps Eloesser’s China experience led him to distrust capitals and want UNICEF  to be ‘close to the problem’. Whether due to Eloesser’s distrust of big-city elites or other factors, UNICEF opened its Brazil office not in the then capital, Rio de Janeiro, but in the northern city of João Pessoa.  This indeed placed UNICEF’s first team in, or at least on the edge, of the country’s region of greatest need - the north and northeast.  

A Mexican pediatriatrician, Martinez Sotomayor, was appointed as the first UNICEF chief of mission in Brazil.  Dr. Sotomoyor, however, found traveling through the northeast hard on his health and asked for a replacement less than a year after taking up the post.  Lutz later described Sotomayor as “...no doubt, a good paediatrician, but he had been used to working in a well set-up children’s clinic in Mexico City, and seemed to be totally unaware of what was awaiting him on his travels through the backlands of the northeast of Brazil.”   

Note:  In first researching this story, I confused Dr. Sotomayor, the Mexican pediatrician with Carlos Martinez Sotomayor, the Chilean former minister of foreign affairs, who later became UNICEF’s regional director for the Americas.  If anyone can help clear the confusion about the two Sotomayors,  please let me know.

Gertrude Lutz Takes Charge

Gerturde Lutz returned from Poland to the European office in Paris in 1951 with a serious back problem and needed to take several months to recover.  She had done a remarkable job in Poland, keeping warm relations with the government despite its strong anti-western and anti-UN stance in those years.  Other agencies had closed quickly after the war. 

Under Lutz’ leadership UNICEF Poland did the opposite - expanding its child feeding project from 400,000 children in 1947 to over one million in 1950.  In response to the country’s appalling TB rates among children, UNICEF worked with the government and the Danish Red Cross in equipping health centers, providing X-ray equipment and antibiotics.  UNICEF also supported an anti-rickets campaign.  UNICEF’s most substantial support, however, was in helping Poland re-establish its dairy industry, which had been largely destroyed in the war.  UNICEF helped equip milk-collection points, pasteurization and milk-drying plants. By the time UNICEF closed its programme at the end of 1950 the refurbished milk industry had allowed the country to end its dependence on imported American dried milk.  Forty years later those plants were still operating (and are likely still operating today).  

Al Davidson, still the head of UNICEF’s office in Paris in 1951, first asked Lutz to take up the programme in Bulgaria, and when she was unable to travel, then proposed Beirut.  Finally, when Lutz’ health had improved somewhat, Davidson proposed Brazil.  She accepted. 

When she arrived in Brazil in October 1951, Lutz found Dick Heyward and Dr. Sotomayor were there at the airport to welcome her.  With her experience from Poland in establishing supplementary feeding, milk plants and TB control, Gertrude Lutz was the perfect replacement for Sotomayor.  Lutz continued as UNICEF’s chief of mission / representative in Brazil for 13 years - one of the longest assignments for a UNICEF representative. 

Alice Shaffer 

In the early 1950s in addition to Brazil, UNICEF was organizing other offices in Latin America - Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru.  

Gertrude Lutz may have been UNICEF’s first woman representative, but she was not the first woman representative in Latin America.  Alice Shaffer was a social worker from Chicago who had headed the office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Berlin in 1939. In one difficult moment while working in a Berlin hospital, she came face-to-face with Adolf Hitler.  There is no indication of what - if anything - the two said to each other.  

When World War II broke, Shaffer had to leave Germany, but then worked in Paraguay and Cuba to develop child welfare services.  As soon as the war ended in Europe, she returned to Berlin to trace out what was left of the Quaker community. 

In July 1949 Alice Shaffer became chief of mission for the UNICEF area office in Guatemala covering Central America and the Caribbean.  She continued in that role until 1958 and then traveled for UNICEF in Africa and Asia formulating child services. In 1966 to 1969 she returned to Latin America, replacing Gertrude Lutz as representative in Brazil and retired from there in 1969.

I have written several articles about the British Quakers and the Friends Ambulance Unit which served as the nursery for so many UNICEF staff in China and India (Glan Davies, Newton Bowles, Tony Meager, Jack Reynolds, and others).  We should note that the American Quakers organization, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) also provided several of UNICEF’s early senior staff.  

It may be humbling for us in UNICEF to note that the AFSC won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 “for their pioneering work in the international peace movement and compassionate effort to relieve human suffering,...”  - well before UNICEF won the same prize in 1965.

Note:  In 1960 Shaffer authored a paper titled “UNICEF in Central America” - if anyone has a copy, please let me know.

Cordelia Trimble

Cordelia Trimble took charge of the Ecuador office in 1951.  Like Shaffer, Trimble came from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).  She was part of a large group of American Quakers (60 members) sent at UNICEF’s request to oversee aid deliveries in Palestine in 1949.  Tony Meager was at this time working as one of the managers of the AFSC / UNICEF Palestine project. 

1949 - UNICEF / AFSC Child-feeding in Breig, Gaza 

In Gaza Trimble headed an 8 person team responsible for distribution of UNICEF supplies.  She was known in AFSC as ruthless, often irritating and overruling other AFSC units in Palestine in order to establish child-feeding units. In doing so she often worked with the Egyptian military to scrounge timber and tin for feeding units (some Quakers were apparently aghast at her willingness to take help from the military).

While she was in Ecuador, Trimble married Arthur Robinson who was also working in Latin America for UNICEF.  I learned from Fouad Kronfol that Robinson later joined the regional office in Beirut as the Deputy RD for MENA.

A New RD Faces Three Senior Women

Meanwhile, a Frenchman, Robert Davée was appointed as Regional Director in 1952. The Regional Office was first established in Lima and oversaw several countries, in addition to supervision of the representatives in Brazil, Ecuador, and  Guatemala.  The regional office moved to New York in 1957 and Davée continued as RD until 1962 when he was replaced by Oscar Vargas Mendez.

According to a nice memoir by Gertrude Lutz of the encounters of the three women representatives with their new RD, Davée:

 “.. was somewhat reluctant to working with women in leading positions.  Yet, it so happened that precisely in his area, three of the four then so-called “Chiefs of Mission” were women ! .... After a few minor initial difficulties, there never arose any real problems….Once, however, Robert said to me: ‘Gertrude I have difficulty in telling you off because you are a woman.’ When I said: ‘My dear Robert, just go ahead, please,’ he merely replied, ‘Well, just now I cannot think of anything.’ That concluded the matter.”

Gertrude Lutz continued as UNICEF Representative in Brazil for 13 years.  I hope to write more in a later edition about her later career in Brazil, Turkey, Biafra, as Deputy RD for Europe and North Africa, and finally with the Swiss National Committee.

Aside from Gertrude Lutz, I have very little information on any of the people mentioned above.  Again, I ask for the help of members who may know more about our pioneers in Latin America.  

Gertrude Lutz Frankhauser

Read more articles on UNICEF's history