Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 214
end-of-year reports, which I submitted to all parties involved while I was chairman of the
group, reflected a very positive synergy from the cooperation of US AID (State
Department), the North Carolina group, Peace Corps volunteers, the peasant
communities involved and our Cochabamba group. It truly was stimulating to see the
results we obtained by helping people help themselves. The difference we were making
could be seen and touched.
One of the most noteworthy projects to me involved a lesson in banking, credit and
fiscal responsibility for a group of peasant girls from the Sacaba countryside. It
happened that in that small rural town in a valley next to Cochabamba, there was a
convent of nuns who operated a trade school for girls. These young ladies were just
then beginning to incorporate themselves into the ranks of productive society, coming
mostly from self-sustaining households that lived at subsistence levels. The nuns taught
them how to sew on sewing machines. The problem was that after a year of some
education, the girls had no means to continue sewing after they left school.
It occurred to Lisa Ohm and me that we could extend credit to them to purchase a
sewing machine and thus help them obtain an additional source of income for their
households. The nuns agreed to help by explaining the program and selecting the most
worthy girls. We took the money to the bank to collateralize the loans and obtain a very
attractive rate, paying only for loan administration. Although the borrowers had never
seen a bank before and could barely read or write, the first year we approved more than
25 loans and didn’t have one default. The nuns helped greatly, ensuring that the girls
made their payments. With the funds thus repaid, we repeated the program again for a
couple of years afterwards. In this fashion (literally), many families in the area
bootstrapped themselves into better living by increasing their means of production and
escaping their bondage to subsistence farming.
I was particularly proud that at the time the Cochabamba group did not receive any
subsidy for its operations. The members did all the work themselves as volunteers and,
as I did, used their small companies’ means to make the “Partners” group successful.
Years later, it came to my attention that the U.S. Embassy had began paying for office,
secretary, telephone, etc., and even paying travel expenses for North Carolinians who
found some curiosity in Cochabamba. I think this was bad public policy because, at the
expense of the American taxpayer, it only benefited the managers of the funds and not
the Bolivian dispossessed. This is a typical example of the morbid tendency of
bureaucracies to form and grow.
Politicians, civic association and business leaders are constantly searching for public
policies to relieve the ills of society. The Third World is full of opportunities to try new
and old initiatives, as we were trying through our alliance with the North Carolinians and
the Peace Corps volunteers. What neither politicians nor civic or business leaders have
been able to do on a massive scale is to provide the internal motivation that
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