Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 104
because many Bolivian families heeded my advice and example and began sending
their children to school at Texas A&M. In time the number of returning Bolivian Aggies
grew considerably and they kept the tradition after the Galindo brothers left the country.
One of them, Jorge Quiroga Ramirez, a distant cousin of mine, became president of
Bolivia in 2001. I saw him in May 2002 at a lunch hosted by Texas Gov. Perry at The
Governor’s Mansion and learned that he had eleven Aggies on his top staff. Aggies
were running Bolivia! The 1998 A&M Former Students directory lists ninety-two
Bolivians in its roster. I know of at least thirty more who no longer have a Bolivian
address. I don’t think I would be too far from reality to claim that around two hundred
Bolivian students have attended A&M since I first “discovered” it. Just between my
siblings and our children we count thirteen, with twelve bachelor’s, four master’s and
two doctoral degrees earned at the College Station campus. This is living proof of the
worldwide success of TAMU’s quality education, the strength of its traditions and its
contribution to international progress. I am very proud to have been the instrument to
extend its reach into Bolivia.
In 1969 my firm was retained by the Bolivian Airport Authority (AASANA) to design
improvements to the country’s main four airports. The jet age had finally arrived and the
airports needed to be made ready. One of the projects was to build a new paved
landing runway in the city of Trinidad, Beni Department, in the lowlands of Northeastern
Bolivia. This area was cutoff from the rest of the country by its geography and distance.
An overland trip from Trinidad to Cochabamba was a life risking experience that could
easily last a month.
The major problems we confronted in Trinidad were caused by its almost complete
isolation. It was nearly impossible to deliver and operate heavy construction equipment,
and since there was a total lack of rock or stone quarries for hundreds of miles around,
there were no native rocky materials to use. Although it is certainly not the only one I
survived, the anecdote that follows is intended to illustrate the adventurous nature of my
professional practice in Bolivia. My brother Chris and my other colleagues at the firm
experienced many similar life-risking adventures in connection with our work. It should
never be said that the life of an engineer in a developing country is not interesting.
Small planes able to land on grass strips had been the lifeline of Trinidad since German
entrepreneurs brought them to the country in the mid 1920s. The area was excellent for
cattle raising and by the time I became involved, it had become the principal meat
supplier to the Andean population. In the late 1950s World War II vintage aircraft with
heavier cargo capacity were added to the fleet. Coordinating the timing of the slaughter
and transportation operations solved the refrigeration problem. The plane arrived with
the last rays of dusk, by which time the cattle were already penned up in corrals next to
the runway. Slaughtering took place by campfire all through the night and the plane was
loaded at dawn with the fresh carcasses. At cruising altitude the non-insulated plane
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