Federico Gamboa Iglesias

Federico Gamboa was a journalist, novelist, and diplomat whose writing grew alongside his foreign service. A year in New York during his youth gave him English; after abandoning legal studies he worked in newspapers and as a translator. He entered diplomatic service in 1888 and served in Central and South America before joining the Washington embassy. His novel Santa, published in 1903, became his best known work, but his output also included plays, autobiographical writing, and a long series of diaries. ¹

His Washington service included the embassy's protection work for Mexican nationals. In October 1904 John Hay sent him the Texas authorities' reports on Eulogio Zambrano, a Mexican who had been shot by a Texas Ranger. Ambassador Manuel Azpíroz had raised the complaint; Gamboa received the response while handling the embassy's correspondence. Accounts of the shooting differed sharply. ²

Gamboa again confronted American policy as Huerta's foreign secretary in 1913. In his reply to Woodrow Wilson's envoy John Lind, he rejected the proposed armistice and the demand that Huerta rule himself out of the presidential election. He defended the regime's claimed constitutional succession and proposed an exchange of ambassadors without prior conditions. The United States disputed Huerta's legitimacy. ³

He himself became the Catholic Party's presidential candidate that year. Exile followed the revolutionary defeat of the Huerta order. In later life he returned to literature, teaching, and leadership of the Mexican Academy of Language, while continuing his diary. ^{4, 1}