Carlos Dávila

Infobox_President | name=Carlos Dávila


order=President of Government Junta of Chile
term_start=June 16, 1932
term_end=July 8, 1932
predecessor=Arturo Puga
successor="Himself"
order2=President of Chile
term_start2=July 8, 1932
term_end2=September 13, 1932
predecessor2="Himself"
successor2=Bartolomé Blanche
order3=Secretary General of the Organization of American States
term_start3=1954
term_end3=October 19, 1955
predecessor3=Alberto Lleras Camargo
successor3=José A. Mora
birth_date=birth date|1887|9|15|mf=y
birth_place= Los Ángeles, Chile
death_date=death date and age|1955|10|19|1887|9|15|mf=y
death_place=Massachusetts, United States
spouse=Herminia Arrate
spouse2=Frances Adams Moore

Carlos Gregorio Dávila Espinoza (September 15, 1887 - October 19 1955), was a Chilean political figure, Chairman of Government Junta of Chile in 1932, and Secretary General of the Organization of American States from 1954 until his death in 1955.

Early life

Dávila was born in Los Ángeles, Chile to Luis Dávila and Emilia Espinoza. He graduated from the University of Santiago, Chile (then called School of Arts and Crafts) in 1907. In 1911, he entered Law School at the University of Chile, but dropped out three years later to work for newspaper “El Mercurio”, of Santiago. He left that paper in 1917 to establish “La Nación” of the same city, which he directed until 1927. In 1932, he founded the Chilean magazine, “Hoy”.

Political career

From 1927 to 1931, Dávila served as Chilean Ambassador to the United States. In 1929, he received an honorary LL.D. from Columbia University, and another the same year from the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles.

In 1932 Dávila was a member of the Government Junta and for several months provisional President of Chile. In 1933, Dávila was visiting Professor of International Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Later he came to the United States and was associated for many years with the Editors’ Press Service, and acted as correspondent for numerous important South American newspapers. In 1941 he received the Maria Moors Cabot Award from Columbia University for his distinguished journalistic contribution in the service of the Americas. A prolific writer, Dávila is the author of “We of the Americas”, published in 1949 and has contributed many analytical studies on politics and economics to leading American publications.

Dávila served on the Council of UNRRA from 1943 to 1946, and was Chilean Representative to the Inter-American Financial and Economic Advisory Committee in 1940. In the same year, he became the author of the “Dávila plan”, which created the Inter-American Development Commission. In 1946, he served as a member of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Dávila’s first wife, Herminia Arrate de Dávila, died in Chile in 1941, and Dávila returned to the United States with their two daughters, Luz and Paz. In 1950, he remarried, this time to Frances Adams Moore of Massachusetts, a widow with a daughter, “Dolly”, by her first husband. Dávila died while serving as Secretary General of the OAS, in 1955.

References

* [http://www.oas.org/children/SecGen/davila.html OAS Children's site]
* [http://icarito.latercera.cl/biografias/1925-1958/bios/davila.htm Icarito]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,753332-1,00.html "Progressive Socialism" in Chile - Time Magazine (1932)]