Jefferson Caffery (December 1, 1886 – April 13, 1974) was an American diplomat. He served as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador (1926–1928), Colombia (1928–1933), Cuba (1934–1937), Brazil (1937–1944), France (1944–1949), and Egypt (1949–1955). Early life Caffery was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, to Charles Duval Caffery and Mary Catherine (née Parkerson) Caffery. He was privately educated in primary and secondary school. He was a member of the first class of Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute, which later became the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He also graduated with a bachelor's degree from Tulane University in 1906. After graduation, he returned to Lafayette to teach at the Industrial Institute, including serving as its head football coach for at least one game, an 11-5 victory over Crowley in 1907. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1909. Caffery was a cousin of U.S. Senator Donelson Caffery and U.S. Representative Patrick T. Caffery. Career Caffery launched his career of international diplomacy in 1911 when he entered the Foreign Service as second secretary of the legation in Caracas in 1911 during the William Howard Taft administration. He traveled to Iran (then named Persia) in 1916, to Paris after World War I with President Wilson’s peacemakers, then to Washington, D.C., to arrange details for visits by the King of Belgium and the Prince of Wales. In 1920, he was named second-in-command at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. In 1933, Caffery briefly served as assistant secretary of state under Cordell Hull. Throughout his career he also worked in low ranking diplomatic posts in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Japan, Persia, Sweden, and Venezuela. Service in Colombia As the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Jefferson was heavily involved in the Banana Massacre that occurred in 1928 in the small, coastal town of Ciénaga. Tired of terrible working conditions and very little wages (workers were paid in United Fruit Company store credit), banana farmers went on strike in protest. In order to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company, Caffery reported to U.S. Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg that leaders of the strike would be immediately arrested and sent to prison in nearby Cartagena. Martial law was declared soon after and an unknown number of workers and their families were shot by a firing squad in the town square. On December 29, 1928, he wrote a dispatch from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá to the U.S. Secretary of State stating,