Alfonso García

Robles
Biography

José Alfonso Eufemio Nicolás de

Jesús García Robles.
Was born in Zamora, Michoacan,
Mexico on March 20, 1911.
Died in September 2, 1991.
 • He was a Mexican diplomat,
awarded in 1982 with the
Nobel Peace Prize with the
Swedish Alva Reimer
Myrdal.
• His most outstanding work
was the signing of the Treaty
of Tlatelolco (1967) on
nuclear non-proliferation and
his participation in the
special sessions for the
disarmament of the UN
(ONU) General Assembly at
1978 and 1982.
¿Who was he?
Studies
He studied law, graduated from the National
Autonomous University of Mexico and carried out
postgraduate studies at the Institute of International
Studies, which is currently part of the University of
Paris II Panthéon-Assas, in 1936 and in the Academy of
Law International of The Hague in 1938.
In the Mexican
Foreign Service
• He joined the foreign service of his country in
1939 as the third Secretary of the Embassy of
Mexico in Sweden.
• He was transferred to Mexico in 1941 to join the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Secretaria de
Relaciones Exteriores), where he remained for
five years as deputy Director of political Affairs
of the diplomatic service.
With the position of Secretary of International
Affairs of the National Commission for Peace
Planning, he participated in the United Nations
Conference on International Organization in San
Francisco in 1945, where the legal bases of the
organization were laid United Nations (UN).
 As a United Nations
official
• From 1946 to 1956 settled in new York, working for
the UN as head of the political division of the
Department of Security Council Affairs.
• He was the representative of the UN at the Pan-
American Conference of Bogotá (1948), which signed
the Charter of the Organization of American States.
• In 1950 he married Juana María Szyszlo, a young
Peruvian, UN officer, with whom he would have two
children.
Return to the Mexican
foreign Service
• From 1958 to 1960 he was chief executive officer
for Europe, Asia and international organizations
in the SRE. At this time he was in charge of the
law of the Sea participating in conferences in
Geneva of 1958 and 1960.
• From 1962 to 1964 he held the position of
ambassador in Brazil.
• From 1964 to 1970 he was under Secretary of the
Secretariat of Foreign Affairs.
The Treaty of
Tlatelolco

• As President of the Preparatory

Commission for the Denuclearization of
Latin America, he presided over the
meetings held in Mexico City from 1964
and concluded with the opening to
signature on 14 February 1967 of the
Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear
weapons in Latin America, better known
as the Treaty of Tlatelolco.
• García Robles played a crucial role in
launching and implementing the agreement.
He's been called the father of the Tlatelolco
agreement. This, proposed by Adolfo Lopez
Mateos, president of Mexico at the time, was
the result of the crisis in Cuba. The idea was
to ensure the prohibition of nuclear
armaments and that this part of the world was
not involved in any conflict between the
great rival powers.
• The negotiations were conducted by García
Robles, his business skills and diplomacy
deserves a large measure of credit for the fact
that the agreement was successfully
concluded after a few years of negotiation.
 Honors and Nobel
Prize
• In 1981 the President of the Republic
appointed him Ambassador emeritus.
• In September 1982 he was awarded the
decoration of the Mexican Foreign Service. 1
• In October 1982 he received the Nobel Peace
Prize for "his magnificent work in the United
Nations disarmament negotiations", a
distinction he shared with Swedish diplomat
and writer Alva Reimer Myrdal.