Afrânio de Mello Franco Filho

Afrânio de Mello Franco Filho entered the Foreign Ministry in 1924 after studying law in Rio de Janeiro. Born in Belo Horizonte in 1901, he served in Montevideo, Bern, and Paris before moving to Santiago in 1939. In Switzerland he organized Brazil’s coffee pavilion at the 1931 hygiene exhibition. He also worked as private secretary to Foreign Minister Afrânio de Mello Franco and as secretary to Brazil’s delegation at the 1933 Montevideo inter-American conference. ¹

During the Second World War, Franco Filho headed the Foreign Ministry’s passport division and helped revise immigration and colonization laws. In 1946 he took charge of the division for international acts, congresses, and conferences. He served as an alternate delegate to the UN General Assembly in 1947. ³

Transferred to Washington as minister-counselor in August 1948, he repeatedly headed the embassy during the ambassador’s absences between 1949 and 1952. He served as an alternate delegate to the Japanese peace conference in San Francisco in 1951 and reached the diplomatic service’s first class minister rank in December 1952. ^{2, 3}

He subsequently served as ambassador to Costa Rica and Canada. In May 1958, President Juscelino Kubitschek nominated him to the embassy in Switzerland. ³