Oswaldo_Castro
A surge of statistical activity arose in Washington, DC beginning in mid-1946, peaking in 1947, and rippling beyond; and Castro was in the thick of it. The meetings, roundtables, and conferences that convened began dealing with the confluence of statistical methods, not only as applied to population and housing, but now also to incorporate the production of food and other land resources in order to reap the most from the forthcoming 1950 Census of the Americas. All this in view of rebuilding and ameliorating the sorry state of post-war economies. The idea was to put into practice Nobel Peace Prize recipient (and first Director General of FAO), John Boyd Orr's vision for alleviating world hunger through cooperation and harmony rather than dominance and conflict. Slowly but steadily, massive postwar geopolitical plates were moving. On March 15, 1946 Castro was conferred the Degree of Master of Science from the University of Michigan School of Public Health[non-primary source needed] and quickly left for Washington, D. C. to continue his work with his sponsoring agency, the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census. They sent him south, to North Carolina. "This will introduce Mr. Oswaldo Castro... to observe some of the pre-test in Wilmington, including the training of the enumerators and editing the schedules, in the local office," stated his perfunctory letter of introduction. Wilmington, North Carolina was a "test-tube" city, the first city in the United States where a comprehensive interim census was made, and Castro was its official foreign observer. Then back to Washington to await and study the Wilmington census results. Mid September, Halbert L. Dunn, Chief of the National Office of Vital Statistics, sent him back to the south, this time to observe the registration and tabulation of census data in Jackson, Mississippi, where he remained for over a month. In late October 1946 Castro was among the international demographers from fifteen countries in New York City invited by the Population Association of America. He attended the Association's meeting on October 25 and 26, 1946. On October 29 and 30, he participated in the "Post-war Problems of Migration" roundtable at the annual conference of the Milbank Memorial Fund. Back again in Washington, he attended a conference on census procedures given by the Bureau of Census, Department of Commerce on November 1, and on November 2 a roundtable on world population and nutrition given by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He filled the double role of delegate representing Ecuador as Director of Statistics and Census, and trainee of the United States Department of Commerce, Census Bureau. Perhaps it was here that the crucial link between his knowledge of statistics and of agricultural needs through his banking experience back home solidified. The standards for population statistics were being developed "under the auspices of the Inter-American Statistical Institute; those for agriculture under the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)." The doors of FAO began to open and soon he would be tapped to be their Liaison Officer for the southern part of Latin America, a post he would easily fill thanks to his communication and integrating skills. It was precisely these skills that enabled him to put to use the census practices he had observed in North Carolina and Mississippi and to bring together census experts he had met up north to work closely with their Ecuadorian counterparts. Hence, the road to the first census of Ecuador's capital, Quito, became quite smooth.