Serafino Romualdi

Serafino Romualdi (November 18, 1900 - November 1967) was the AFL-CIO's Inter-American representative for over two decades and the founding executive director of the AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development), which he built into the CIA's principal labor-movement instrument in Latin America. Born in Bastia Umbra, Perugia, Italy, Romualdi fled fascism in 1923 and built his anti-communist credentials through the ILGWU, wartime service in the CIAA and OSS, and nearly two decades as the AFL's roving labor ambassador to the hemisphere. The CIA assigned him the pseudonym "Charles Guymers" and the cryptonym ZRSIGN; Philip Agee identified him in print as "the principal CIA agent for labor operations in Latin America." His receipt in autumn 1963 of advance information about São Paulo Governor Adhemar de Barros's coup plans against Joao Goulart led directly to AIFLD's crash training of thirty-three Brazilian unionists whose subsequent role in the 1964 coup was publicly acknowledged by his successor, William Doherty Jr.

Early Life and Anti-Fascist Formation

Romualdi was born on November 18, 1900, in Bastia Umbra, in the Perugia province of Italy. He graduated from a teachers' college in Perugia in 1917 and worked briefly as a grade school teacher before becoming editor of the weekly labor paper "Il Progresso" in Pesaro in 1922. His opposition to Benito Mussolini's fascist movement forced him to leave Italy in 1923. He settled first in Chicago, where he edited "La Parola del Popolo" and worked as a linotype operator in the Typographers Union, before moving to New York in 1928 as an editorial writer for "Il Mondo," a daily newspaper jointly owned by Italian-language locals of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). He formally joined the ILGWU's editorial and publicity departments in 1933.¹

Wartime Service: CIAA and OSS

In July 1941, months before the United States entered the war, Romualdi traveled to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil as a representative of the Free Italy Committee, building Italian exile community networks against Axis influence. His intelligence reports on fascist activities in South America attracted the attention of Nelson Rockefeller's Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), which recruited him as a staff member. In 1942, the OCIAA sent him to organize an anti-fascist congress in Uruguay; in 1943 he returned to Washington to work in the OCIAA's labor division under John Herling. He joined the Office of Strategic Services in May 1944, was commissioned as a major, and was deployed to Italy in July 1944, remaining with OSS through April 1945.¹²

This wartime double track, operating simultaneously through labor networks and intelligence channels, became the template for his postwar career. The institutional relationships Romualdi built within the OCIAA, including contacts with the Rockefeller apparatus, carried forward directly into the AFL's postwar Latin American operations and, ultimately, into AIFLD's funding base.

AFL Latin American Representative, 1945-1962

Romualdi resumed his ILGWU work in fall 1945 and was immediately assigned by the American Federation of Labor to establish contacts with Latin American labor organizations. In January 1948 he attended the Lima conference that established the Inter-American Confederation of Workers (CIT). In March 1948 he was formally appointed the AFL's full-time Latin American representative. He was a founding figure of the ORIT (Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores) when the CIT reorganized in 1951; he served as ORIT's assistant secretary and edited its Inter-American Labor Bulletin. After the 1955 merger creating the AFL-CIO, he became Inter-American Representative of the unified federation and executive secretary of its Inter-American Affairs Committee.¹

During this period he worked in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, British Guiana, Italy, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.³

Guatemala, 1953-1954

In 1953 and 1954, Romualdi described Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz as running a "veritable communist trade union dictatorship" and used ORIT to help create the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Libres (UNTL) as a rival federation to undermine Arbenz-aligned labor. Many UNTL leaders subsequently participated in the movement supporting the CIA-backed 1954 coup that installed Carlos Castillo Armas. After the coup, Romualdi praised the new regime; AFL president George Meany announced that the AFL "rejoices over the downfall" of the Arbenz government.⁴

ORIT's Guatemalan files, including Romualdi's correspondence and reports spanning 1950 through 1958, are held at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University (Box 3, Folders 11-16 of the Serafino Romualdi Papers).³

British Guiana, 1962-1964

In April 1962, Romualdi visited British Guiana and identified young union leaders he regarded as needing "intensive training to combat Dr. Cheddi Jagan's efforts." Eight Guianese workers arrived in Washington in June 1962 for AIFLD's first training course; by September 1962, six graduates had returned to British Guiana on AIFLD internship stipends. When the CIA-funded general strike against Jagan's government began, Romualdi placed the institute's six interns at the disposal of the strike committee and extended their stipended internships from June 15 to August 15, 1963, to sustain operations during the strike. He subsequently declared pride in the graduates who "kept their places in the front lines" through what he called the "difficult and...sometimes bloody battle." Romualdi also sent papers to presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. itemizing Jagan's pro-communist record; those papers are now held in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.⁵

CIA funding for the British Guiana operations was channeled through the AFL-CIO and through AFSCME to labor organizers on the ground. The 80-day general strike in 1963, sustained in part by this funding, contributed to the electoral defeat of Jagan's party in December 1964 and the installation of Forbes Burnham as prime minister.⁵

AIFLD and Brazil

Romualdi became AIFLD's first executive director when the organization was formally established in 1961-1962, with a board that included Meany, J. Peter Grace of W.R. Grace and Company, and executives from major corporations with Latin American interests. AIFLD received approximately 92 percent of its budget from the U.S. government through the Agency for International Development (AID).

As early as 1960, Romualdi had cultivated Carlos Lacerda, the right-wing governor of Guanabara (Rio de Janeiro), as a political contact against the Goulart-aligned labor confederation. In early 1962, an ORIT delegation including Romualdi met with Goulart in Brasília; in parallel, AIFLD, ORIT, and the U.S. Embassy worked to break up the left-dominated CGT (Comando Geral dos Trabalhadores), Brazil's largest progressive labor body.

In autumn 1963, Romualdi and AIFLD vice-president Berent Friele, described as an "old Brazilian hand belonging to the Rockefeller entourage," met with São Paulo Governor Adhemar de Barros, one of Goulart's chief political opponents. De Barros disclosed plans already under way to mobilize "military and police contingents" against Goulart. When de Barros complained that the U.S. Embassy was not acting on this information, Romualdi wrote to the Embassy's labor attaché, John Fishburn, whose response was noncommittal.

Acting on the intelligence from de Barros, Romualdi arranged a special all-Brazilian training class of thirty-three participants at AIFLD's facilities in Washington, D.C. and at the Front Royal training center in Virginia. The trainees received instruction in U.S. history and anti-communist organizational tactics and were subsequently paid as AIFLD interns in exchange for intelligence reporting on Brazilian political conditions.

When the Brazilian military coup succeeded on April 1, 1964, Romualdi's successor as executive director, William Doherty Jr., stated at an AFL-CIO Labor News Conference in July 1964: "What happened in Brazil on April 1st did not just happen. It was planned, and planned months in advance." He specified that the thirty-three Brazilian union trainees "when they returned to Brazil, some of them... became intimately involved in some of the clandestine operations of the revolution before it took place."⁶

After the coup, AIFLD-affiliated workers maintained vital telephone lines during the military takeover despite the CGT's call for a general strike.⁷

CIA Connections and the ZRSIGN Program

Romualdi operated within the CIA's International Organizations (IO) Division. A CIA list of pseudonyms provided to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) identifies his CIA cover name as "Charles Guymers." The cryptonym ZRSIGN, documented in the Mary Ferrell Foundation's JFK assassination records database, designates his CIA program.

Declassified JFK-era CIA cables pertaining to Romualdi include:

• Document 104-10100-10229: October 17, 1963 cable documenting Romualdi's travel to Mexico City.
• Document 104-10093-10082: October 22, 1963 cable noting failed contact attempts in Mexico City.
• Document 104-10100-10270: October 24, 1963 cable indicating early return due to illness.
• Document 104-10076-10007: December 3, 1963 cable regarding anti-Cuban labor training initiatives.
• Document 104-10077-10445: December 13, 1963 cable on labor training courses, bearing the ZRSIGN slugline alongside the "GUYMERS" identifier.
• Document 104-10261-10051: June 26, 1960 memorandum on discussions with Cuban labor leaders regarding FRD operations.⁸

Philip Agee's 1975 book "CIA Diary" identified Romualdi as "the principal CIA agent for labor operations in Latin America," a characterization consistent with his IO Division role and the volume of CIA cable traffic under his pseudonym.⁹

AFL-CIO Operations and Succession

Romualdi built the AIFLD model in conjunction with AFL-CIO president George Meany and with Rockefeller-connected business figures whose Latin American commercial interests aligned with Cold War anti-communist objectives. By the early 1960s, AIFLD had trained over 133,000 workers in the hemisphere and operated housing programs, credit unions, and "social projects" funded through AID.

In September 1965, Romualdi retired from his posts with both the AFL-CIO and AIFLD to undertake consulting work and complete his memoirs. William Doherty Jr., who had served as AIFLD's Social Projects Director and had publicly acknowledged the AIFLD trainees' role in the 1964 Brazilian coup, became AIFLD executive director at that point.

After the 1964 coup, Romualdi's colleague Andrew McLellan traveled to Brazil to work with the Humberto Castelo Branco government through U.S. Military Attaché Vernon Walters on revised labor regulations for the post-coup order.¹⁰

Romualdi's memoirs, "Presidents and Peons: Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America," were published by Funk and Wagnalls in 1967. He died in November 1967.

Primary Source Collections

Romualdi's personal papers, spanning 1936 through 1968, are held at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University (KCL 05459). The collection covers all major countries of operation with dedicated files: Brazil correspondence, reports, and clippings are in Box 2, Folders 5-7; Guatemala correspondence and reports spanning 1950-1958 are in Box 3, Folders 11-16; British Guiana correspondence and clippings covering 1953-1964 are in Box 5, Folders 1-2 and Box 11, Folder 5.³

A second collection, AFL-CIO International Affairs Department Serafino Romualdi records, is held at the University of Maryland Special Collections (bulk dates 1946-1966).