Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 209
CHAPTER 5
SERVICE
---051---
GIVE TO RECEIVE
Generosity appears to be one of the unspoken propositions on which our social system
is founded. America has indeed set standards for the world when it comes to helping
other people in need. Whether a hurricane, earthquake, flood, disastrous fire, volcano
eruption or tsunami wave, wherever in the world it occurs, American help gets there. I
have seen the anxiety, hope and relief with which foodstuff, first aid and other supplies
produce for the recipients. After the socialist government of Bolivia brutally redistributed
agricultural land then in use in the country, food production dropped to levels
inadequate to sustain the population. By mid-1953 hunger was rampant and the block
commissars rationed all basic staples.
Working through the Catholic relief organization known as Caritas, American taxpayers
sent packaged goods to feed the Bolivian population. I had two elderly spinster aunts,
Aunts Stella and Isolina, my Dad’s sisters, who had dedicated their lives to help the less
privileged. They worked in all sorts of charities and although the commissars didn’t
particularly like them, they needed my two church-going aunts to show American relief
workers that they had some people with a reputation of probity involved in the food
distribution network. Through my aunts I had my first taste of a morsel of cheddar
cheese, that delicious yellow concoction that I could never forget after that day! I saw
them distributing packaged foodstuffs and weighing portions of flour, lard, dry milk and
sugar to hand out in the long lines that were formed day and night until the products
were gone. I remember them complaining how a good part of the large bags that were
unloaded never made it to the distribution stores, going instead to the private
residences of the political bosses.
What amazed me even then was the fact that all this help came from the people whose
embassy and flag were desecrated over and over again through the underhanded
direction of the same leaders whose government the U.S. was saving. American
generosity went beyond self-interest. The same example repeats itself, even today,
everywhere in the world where we see need. American generosity is undeniable and
unprecedented in history.
Autobiography.doc 209 of 239