Driving through Lafayette—or any other city for that matter—one rarely stops to think about where major thoroughfares got their names. Yet, many streets recognize important local or national leaders that have left lasting legacies on their communities. In the case of Ambassador Caffery Parkway, the road honors Jefferson Caffery who served as a U.S. ambassador and shaped U.S. foreign policy at a critical time. But Ambassador Caffery is not just a symbol of Lafayette’s past, it could symbolize a road toward the future.
Jefferson Caffery was born and raised in Lafayette, attending Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute, or what is today, UL, before heading to New Orleans’ Tulane University. In 1911, Caffery joined the U.S. State Department. While Caffery served across the globe — including as ambassador in France and Egypt — the bulk of his diplomatic career was spent in Latin America, serving as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador (1926-1928), Colombia (1928-1933), Cuba (1934-1937), and Brazil (1937-1944) as well as briefly serving as the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America (1933).
Caffery’s time in Latin America came at an important inflection point in U.S.-Latin American affairs. Caffery’s tenure in Latin America was marked by the shift from Gunboat Diplomacy and U.S. military intervention in the region to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration’s Good Neighbor Policy. The era of the good neighbor saw the Roosevelt administration seek to stabilize the depression era economy and compete with Axis influence in the Americas in the lead up to World War II, by developing deeper and more collaborative relations with the region through mutual respect, non-intervention and reducing tariffs. This resulted in a golden age of U.S. hemispheric relations that developed good will across the region, and led to widespread support for the United States during the war…