Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 224 As I recount with more detail in Freedom Fighters (Chapter 2), we opened up for business just at the time the pro-communist forces were staging a comeback in Bolivia. Circumstances demanded that we take a high profile in the face of threats and unfriendly authorities. In this case volunteerism went beyond just helping a community improvement project succeed. It also meant standing firm for my beliefs and being prepared to take the heat. I believe this last demand closed the circle of total dedication to a volunteer’s effort. My payoff was to have the best possible school for my children, but in the process many other causes were served and the community was definitely improved. My volunteering efforts while still in Bolivia also brought me in contact with other activities. This was the height of the Cold War and all political action was cast under that struggle. The local ideologue chieftains excelled at using ordinary citizens as instruments of their power plays. But, as my following example reveals, the confrontation among groups of society in Third World countries during the days of the Soviet Union was not always rooted in ideological principles. Often the communist neighborhood leaders attached such designation to their names because their bosses told them that is what they were. In fact, many of them just wanted a solution to their problems. Such was the case with a group of settlers who had bought, or were given by their labor unions, lots uphill from my Dad’s Aranjuez property at the northern edge of the valley. When my Dad bought his land in 1942, he also bought surface water rights from the mountain creek source and use of the conveyance canal built by my maternal great grandfather. On certain days of the month, he had rights to a specified number of hours of flow. I remember, even as a young child, when we walked up with him along the canal all the way to the mountain springs where the intake works had been built to ensure that no one was scalping any part of the precious flow. As these settlers began to proliferate in the early 1960s, they named their area Moscow Village to signify their adherence to communist ways. It was not rare to see hammer and sickle flags hanging on door thresholds. The graffiti was outright anti-capitalist and anti-American. At one point, the leaders simply stopped letting water flow past their village. I had recently returned after five years of absence studying in the United States and all this change was hard for me to believe. In consultation with my father, I contacted the leader of the community and began to know him, as he began to know me. He was a polite but poorly educated man of quick intellect. Although he responded to political leaders above him, he really wasn’t a bully or dogmatic about principle. In time we learned to cooperate with each other. My Dad and I realized that even though we had legal rights, the heavily politicized existing courts would not enforce them. In practice, the settlers were upstream from us, they were many and the small canal went through their streets and backyards. Instead of bitter confrontations, we Autobiography.doc 224 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 225 became pragmatic. Following centuries old tradition, we organized workers’ brigades and on Sundays 20 or 30 of us would go to the intake and upper reaches of the canal and with picks and shovels improved the flow. We also obtained steel pipes and built new aqueducts where needed. In sum, we enlarged the size of the pie instead of fighting over who received the larger piece of the smaller pie. We found a temporary accommodation but the odds were against us. Eventually, my Dad decided to abandon agricultural activities and instead moved to subdivide the property. My volunteer activities also drove me into the field of international relations. In the absence of geopolitical considerations or significant commerce between countries, fullfledged diplomatic missions are seldom kept in all world capitals. Bolivia and Denmark are literally continents apart and had very little trade with each other. Denmark’s ambassador to Peru, residing in Lima, was also its official representative to Bolivia. He visited on an irregular basis. Following the ousting of the socialist regime in Bolivia, my mother thought that it would be a good idea to link officially my native country with my then wife’s native country, Denmark. More particularly, she thought I would make a good honorary consul from Denmark for the departments (states) of Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and Beni. She made the necessary inquiries and received a positive welcome from Bolivia’s Foreign Secretary, who in turn suggested the idea to his Danish counterpart. In 1966 I was officially asked by the Royal Danish Government of Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II to serve as its Honorary Consul for these territories. An Honorary Consul is a volunteer who represents the general interests of a foreign nation in his/her country of residence. The post does not have diplomatic immunity and, at least in my case, was ad-honorem. Among the many duties such a volunteer takes on is the promotion of commerce between the two lands. Soon Danish industrialists and exporters began to contact me with requests for business connections. This gave me an opportunity to meet many of them and to enhance my profile in Bolivia. Denmark is a country without an abundance of raw materials, which it needs and must import for its industry. Therefore, the success of its economy is based on the amount and quality of its exports that generate the cash needed to pay for the imports. As such, it is a trading and seafaring country. Generating hard currency from trade is its lifeline. As time went on, I involved my then father-in-law, Mr. Axel Madsen, who himself was in the import-export trade, in some of these efforts. I advised him that an agency of the Bolivian Government (CBF) was promoting the establishment of a dairy industry in the valleys of Cochabamba and that the Danish Foreign Aid Department was prepared to offer financial help. He made the necessary contacts and helped structure a winning bid to supply the fixed plant equipment needed. The complete package eventually sold by other Danish suppliers involved an integrated plan including dairy livestock, milk trucks, bottling line, drying and sub-products plant and technical aid. This project became an Autobiography.doc 225 of 239
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Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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