Galo Plaza

Galo Lincoln Plaza Lasso de la Vega (February 17, 1906 - January 28, 1987) served as president of Ecuador from 1948 to 1952 and as secretary-general of the Organization of American States from 1968 to 1975, and was one of Nelson Rockefeller's most consistent Latin American allies from the Chapultepec conference of 1945 onward. At Chapultepec and at the San Francisco founding conference of the United Nations, Plaza served as Rockefeller's parliamentary agent among the Latin American delegations, shuttling instructions and delivering votes. As Ecuador's president he accepted Summer Institute of Linguistics operations in his country, co-authored a study of United Fruit Company operations with a Rockefeller-linked analyst, and promoted a banana export strategy shaped by U.S. developmental priorities; as OAS secretary-general he provided institutional continuity for the regional architecture Rockefeller had built. He was the son of Leónidas Plaza Gutiérrez, who had served as Ecuador's president in 1901-1905 and again in 1912-1916, making them one of few father-son pairs to lead the country.

Birth and Family

Plaza was born on February 17, 1906, in New York City, at the Marlton House, during his father's diplomatic travel: Leónidas Plaza Gutiérrez was then on his way to Washington to serve as Ecuador's minister. Galo Plaza thus held U.S. birth citizenship while remaining a Ecuadorian national, a background that shaped his later educational choices and his comfort operating within American political networks. His mother was Avelina Lasso Ascásubi. He received his primary and secondary education at the Instituto Nacional Mejía in Quito before returning to the United States for university study.

Education and Early Career

Plaza studied agriculture at the University of Maryland, economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He returned to Ecuador and managed the family property, Hacienda Zuleta in Imbabura Province, importing Holstein cattle and introducing systematic seed selection and mechanized tractors to Ecuadorian highland agriculture.

He entered politics in 1937, elected as a councilman of Quito, then as mayor in 1938. In December 1938 he was appointed Minister of National Defense, a post he held through 1939. In 1929 he had served as attaché at the Ecuadorian legation in Washington. In July 1944, President José María Velasco Ibarra appointed him ambassador to the United States, a posting that placed him in Washington precisely as the major inter-American and international conferences of 1945 were being organized.¹

Chapultepec and Early Rockefeller Alliance

Plaza first emerged as a key actor in Rockefeller's inter-American network at the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace, held at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City from February 21 to March 8, 1945. Rockefeller, then serving as FDR's Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, assembled a small group of Latin American leaders who acted in concert with the U.S. delegation. Plaza, representing Ecuador as ambassador, was among the most cooperative, shuttling back and forth to Rockefeller for instructions to pass on to other Latin American delegations. Rockefeller's management of the conference through these allies was, in the formulation of researchers Colby and Dennett, "shamelessly blatant, but it got results."²

Plaza's connection to Rockefeller deepened through the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco later that year, where he again served as part of Rockefeller's parliamentary apparatus for managing the Latin American bloc's votes. Both postings were made while Plaza served as Ecuador's ambassador to Washington (1944-1946).¹

Later, Plaza himself suggested that Rockefeller be asked to lead a Latin American mission, reflecting the mutual confidence the two men had built during these formative conferences. A photograph documenting a subsequent Pan American Society dinner showing Plaza alongside Rockefeller during the Truman years is preserved in the Harry S. Truman Library.³

Presidency of Ecuador (1948-1952)

Plaza was elected president and inaugurated on August 31, 1948. U.S. Ambassador John F. Simmons, reporting to the State Department in Despatch No. 710 of September 3, 1948, analyzed Plaza's inaugural address as signaling a meaningful reorientation of Ecuadorian foreign policy toward closer alignment with the United States, noting that the United States was "the only foreign country mentioned expressly by name" in Plaza's speech.⁴

Plaza served his full four-year term, completing it in 1952, the first Ecuadorian president in twenty-eight years to do so. Velasco Ibarra's subsequent administration, Simmons's successor noted, "turned viciously on President Galo Plaza, completely disregarding that the latter had guaranteed free elections and pacifically turned over the power."⁵

On the Rio Protocol of 1942, Plaza's record was more complicated than a simple acceptance. His predecessor had formally ratified the protocol in February 1942, ceding approximately 200,000 square kilometers of disputed Amazonian territory to Peru. As president, Plaza initially proceeded with demarcation but in 1949 halted Ecuadorian participation in the boundary work. In 1951 he publicly announced that Ecuador would not accept any border that did not guarantee the country an outlet to the Marañón River, effectively staking out a revisionist position on the protocol while stopping short of formal repudiation. The ceded territories were believed to contain oil reserves.

The banana boom dominated Plaza's economic legacy. When he took office in 1948, Ecuador was exporting approximately 3.8 million banana clusters annually; by 1952, exports had reached 16.7 million clusters, a 421 percent increase, driven in part by diseases devastating Central American plantations and redirecting United States market demand to Ecuador. Plaza promoted this expansion actively, with IBEC (International Basic Economy Corporation), a Rockefeller Brothers venture, advising on development programs. The Standard Fruit and Steamship Company, whose stock Chase Manhattan Bank transferred, expanded its Ecuadorian operations as a result.²

Plaza's connection to the banana industry extended beyond his presidency. In 1958, alongside National Planning Association researcher Stacy May, he co-authored "The United Fruit Company in Latin America," a study published by the National Planning Association that drew on access to United Fruit's internal records. May had run the Statistics Division of the U.S. War Production Board during World War II. The book covered United Fruit's operations in Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, and Colombia, and was regarded as relatively factual rather than promotional in character.⁶

Summer Institute of Linguistics

SIL missionaries first arrived in Ecuador in 1952, with the formal invitation of the Ecuadorian government attributed to Plaza. One SIL account states that SIL entered Ecuador "in response to the expressed invitation of then President Galo Plaza to study, record and work on translation of materials into indigenous languages." SIL maintained a formal reporting relationship with Ecuador's Ministry of Education through 1982, when its agreement was terminated. The Summer Institute of Linguistics had been actively promoted in Latin America by William Cameron Townsend, and both Plaza and the Colombian leader Alberto Lleras Camargo (who became the OAS's first secretary-general) helped Townsend establish SIL's South American operations.⁷

Interlude: International Mediation (1958-1966)

Between his presidency and his OAS tenure, Plaza built a substantial record as a multilateral mediator. In 1958 he presided over meetings of the Special Committee of the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) that laid the foundations for the Latin American common market. In the same year, he headed a United Nations observer mission sent to Lebanon.

In late 1958, as the Batista regime in Cuba was collapsing, Plaza was approached through ex-President Roberto Arias of Panama to participate in an offer of good offices to the Cuban people, potentially joining a panel of two or three Latin American ex-presidents to seek a peaceful transition. The State Department had prompted this initiative; a December 23, 1958 State Department communication records that the United States was "in touch with ex-President Galo Plaza of Ecuador to see whether the latter would be interested in joining" the mediation panel.⁸

In 1960 Plaza presided over the United Nations committee charged with managing the evacuation of Belgian military forces from the Congo during the independence crisis.

From September 16, 1964 through the end of 1965, Plaza served as the personal representative of the UN Secretary-General and as mediator in Cyprus under UNFICYP. He submitted a formal mediation report on March 26, 1965, which proposed resolving the Cyprus dispute primarily as a Cypriot internal matter rather than a Greco-Turkish bilateral affair. Greek Cypriot representative Glafcos Clerides described the report as "bold and welcome"; the Turkish side rejected it. The episode became known in UN peacekeeping literature as the "Plaza moment."⁹

At the OAS (1968-1975)

Plaza was elected secretary-general of the OAS on February 13, 1968, and took office on May 18, 1968. He served two terms before stepping down in 1975. His tenure at the OAS coincided with accelerating fragmentation of Cold War-era inter-American consensus, including growing pressure from member states to lift collective sanctions against Cuba that had been imposed in 1964. The OAS ultimately passed a "Freedom of Action Resolution" in July 1975, allowing member states to resume relations with Havana, effectively nullifying earlier OAS resolutions on Cuba. Plaza presided over the organization during the period when this change was being debated and ultimately enacted.

Alberto Lleras Camargo had served as the OAS's first secretary-general; Plaza succeeded José A. Mora of Uruguay as the third person to hold the position. Both Plaza and Lleras Camargo had helped William Cameron Townsend establish SIL operations in South America.⁷

The State Department's Foreign Relations volumes for 1969-1976 (FRUS 1969-76) and the persons index for FRUS 1977-80, Vol. XV document Plaza's continued engagement with U.S. officials during and after his OAS tenure, identifying him in the index as having also served as President of Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal.¹⁰

Rockefeller Foundation Trusteeship

Plaza served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and remained in Rockefeller's personal diplomatic orbit through the 1960s. His willingness to act as Washington's parliamentary agent in Latin American venues, first at Chapultepec, then through his OAS tenure, placed him at the operational center of the inter-American system Rockefeller had designed.¹¹

Inter-American Dialogue

In 1982, Plaza co-founded the Inter-American Dialogue think tank with U.S. diplomat Sol M. Linowitz, former U.S. ambassador to the OAS. Linowitz had conceived the idea of assembling citizens from across the hemisphere to set a new regional agenda and proposed it to Plaza as a natural co-chair given his history at the OAS. The Dialogue held its first meeting in 1982 under the auspices of the Aspen Institute, with Plaza serving as the organization's first Latin American co-chair. The Dialogue positioned itself as an independent hemispheric policy forum distinct from official OAS channels.¹²

Death

Galo Plaza died of a heart attack on January 28, 1987, at a hospital in Quito. He was 80 years old. He was survived by his wife Rosario Pallares, whom he had married in 1933, and six children. The family's Hacienda Zuleta in Imbabura Province continued as a working agricultural estate; in 1995 the family established the Galo Plaza Lasso Foundation, a non-governmental organization focused on cultural preservation and community development in the Angochagua region.