Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 117
this would be difficult to accomplish while operating as a Bolivian company. My friend
Sandy White had also been transferred to Paraguay, and I went there too in search of
new opportunities.
To facilitate international expansion, I decided to position my base of operations in an
offshore haven. From there, I could offer consulting engineering services in other South
American countries. To acquire an international aura and for tax reasons, on March 17,
1970, I incorporated Galco Engineering Co. in Nassau, Bahamas. Despite several trips
to these South American countries to offer engineering services, my efforts in this
respect did not pan out. However, I realized that because of contemporaneous U.S. tax
laws, Galco was the perfect vehicle to make passive investments in the U.S. I would refocus
the purpose of Galco Engineering from a South American engineering services
provider to a U.S. real estate investment firm. Thus, after a couple of disappointing
meetings with President Banzer in 1972, in which I respectfully informed him of bribing
demands made to me by his Secretary of Public Works, with whose department we had
some consulting engineering work pending, I decided that the time to return to the
United States had arrived. By mid 1973 I had been able to put aside some $ 53,000 in
cash, which I decided I would use as the base for my new adventure. With the help of a
major law firm in Houston, I completed my research to make my investment there.
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TEXAS REAL ESTATE.
My experience as an owner-engineer had introduced me, as a very interested observer,
to the topside view of the person in charge, in whose world the engineering part
becomes only a narrow and time-limited component of the whole. I dreamed that some
day I would attempt to move up from engineering to project ownership. I now
considered it was the time to try. I could not fathom how I could own a dam, or highway
or an airport, but I had learned how to develop land when my father retained CGL to
subdivide his suburban orchard in Cochabamba (See Give to Receive, Chapter 5). My
friend Jaime Pero, who at the time was the lead engineer for Boyle Engineering’s office
in Bolivia, gave me valuable lessons in land usage when I tackled this project. Thus,
armed with what I perfunctorily thought were sterling credentials and with an open mind
to learn, I opted to become a real estate developer. In time I captured the essence of
my work when I wrote the introduction to one of my company’s brochures:
Of all natural resources God has put on this earth, land is perhaps
the most valuable. Therefore, responsible use of the land for Real
Estate purposes is the developer’s underlying basic responsibility.
At R. A. Galindo, Inc. real estate development begins, proceeds and
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