Pedro Martínez Fraga

Pedro Martínez Fraga was a Cuban lawyer, journalist, and specialist in international law. He attended the Versailles Peace Conference as an attaché in 1919 and graduated in law from the University of Havana in 1920. He studied under Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante and became his private secretary when Bustamante joined the Permanent Court of International Justice. ¹

He served as secretary to Cuban delegations at the 1927 Rio de Janeiro codification conference and the 1928 Havana inter-American conference. An associate editor of the Revista de Derecho Internacional, he also represented Santa Clara in Congress from 1931 to 1933. Diplomatic appointments in Belgium and the Netherlands, followed by Britain, preceded his presentation of credentials in Washington on 11 March 1937. ¹

In Washington, Martínez Fraga negotiated the supplementary trade agreement signed on 18 December 1939. Sugar quotas were a particular concern: he feared that Cuban sugar already landed but not cleared through American customs would count against the following year’s quota. He agreed to proceed with the agreement while leaving the administrative problem open for further discussion. His talks also covered Cuban rice imports and the timetable for ratification. ²