The three survivors from a family of seven. From Left to right: Pepe, Florcita and I
The school year 1964-1965 at the School of Economics of the U of G started in late May and I still did not have a job. I was willing to work in anything that would let me have the financial ability and independence to keep me in School. By mid June, the government of Ecuador made a call to qualifying university students who would like to enter public service in the Tax Division of the Ministry Of Finances, to submit their resumes and be ready to enter a training program which would prepare them to become tax auditors. “Qualifying” meant among other things that they had a high school diploma as “bookkeepers”, which I did not have, but many of my classmates had. A friend of mine was finally qualified to enter the eight week training program, and as a result he had to quit his job as an accounting teacher in a local private high school. He asked me if I would like to take his job, I said yes immediately, without taking into account the fact that I had just learned the very basics of accounting while preparing myself for the entrance test to the School of Economics, and that I was not really prepared to properly fill the opening.
I was between a rock and a hard place. I badly needed the job and the salary that came with it, but on the other hand I might not be prepared to do a good job as an accounting teacher. I decided that I was going to take the risk, but that I would prepare my classes day by day to make sure I was not going to “flunk” as a teacher in front of my students. I had a week to start, and a full week I studied to prepare classes for the first week. I did not do badly; some young students even told me that my teaching method was better than my predecessor’s. It was hard, but it was not excruciating. I continued working as an accounting teacher at the “Instituto Jose Enrique Rodo” for the rest of that year and the first quarter of the following school year. It actually worked very well for me because what I was teaching in my job was actually reinforcing what I was learning as a student in the first year of college at the School of Economics.
I finished my first year at the School of Economics with a point average equivalent to 3.95 and developed a reputation as “an excellent student”. By the beginning of my second year, the Government of Ecuador, made an agreement with the U.S.’s IRS in order to reform the obsolete and unjust Ecuadorian Tax system, and made another call to young students aged between 20 and 26, to submit their resumes and be ready to enter a training program which would prepare them to enter public service in the Revenue Department, under a program designed and supervised by the US’s IRS. This time, however, holding a “bookkeeper’s diploma from High School was not a pre-requisite; therefore, I qualified and submitted my resume among other 900 applicants.
The selection process was very detailed and well structured; it was supervised by Mr. Brown, a senior IRS officer. It all started with an IQ test for all the applicants, after which 50% of the applicants were discarded. The approximately 450 remaining applicants were then subjected to an eight week training program with tests taken at the end of each week. Those students who did not obtain a 70% grade average in the week were discarded for the following week and so on. At the end of the eight week program only 19 candidates were left and all were granted a position as “tax advisors” working for the National Department of Revenue. I was number one among the nineteen and we all were given our certificate of approval, together with the certificate of appointment to the new job, with a salary of 2,500 sucres a month, almost a fortune for me in those days. I couldn’t believe it, it was for real, I was a public servant having gained my appointment by my own right, fully using my own reserve of good arguments: my dedication to study and my personal determination to succeed. Everything looked brilliant, but best of all, my future.
A very interesting mission was assigned to our group working for the Revenue Department
All of this happened while still attending the second year at the School of Economics, where by now I felt like at home and actually I began to like it very much. Obviously I had to quit my teaching job, which I ended up feeling comfortable with in spite of the fact that I never had a real vocation to teach. Life had taught me an enduring lesson which I learned the very hard way: Many times you may not like what you have to do, but if you have to do it, do it the right way, and try to enjoy it, because if you don’t, you may end up out in the cold and hungry.
By July, 1965, I met Anita, a tiny 5’4” beautiful fair skinned green eyed and blond nineteen year old, born in Manabí, who was working as a secretary in our office. Anita and I had seen each other and chatted several times at the office, but it wasn’t until a couple of months later that we had a chance to get closer and dance at a party organized by one of the girls in our group. It was in this party that we felt attracted to each other and agreed to date
Our relationship soon developed into what she and I thought would be a serious thing, but her father found out that I was a divorcee and started an aggressive campaign to persuade his daughter of cutting off our relationship. Neither she nor I were willing to give up and continued to date anyway. Her father was not about to give up either, and within a few months he sent his daughter to live with a sister in the U.S. to force our break up. The separation only intensified our feelings and we started to correspond with three and four letters a week. Telephone communications were scarce and very expensive, so that was out of reach for us.
Meanwhile, a new Income Tax Law had been enacted in the country and it needed to be made known to businessmen, trade unions, students, professional associations, teachers and all sorts of groups who might be or eventually might become income tax taxpayers. Our group of 19 “tax advisors” was in charge of the task. Each one of us was assigned a number of groups and places where we would hold meetings with at least 30 people to whom we would first explain the contents of the new law, and then respond to questions from the audience.
The whole idea was to create a “taxpayers’ positive attitude toward the new law” in a country where paying personal taxes was considered little less than the dumbest thing to do. Ever since the Spanish colonial times, Ecuadorians considered tax cheating something like a national sport and, therefore, the more you cheated, the “smartest” you were considered. It was in this atmosphere of aversion to taxes that we, as a group, had to do our work. I believe we all did a superb job, and, by the end of the first six months of this program, we had gained a great reputation within the local business community and the press.
In my next posting: JOBLESS ONCE AGAIN
I was between a rock and a hard place. I badly needed the job and the salary that came with it, but on the other hand I might not be prepared to do a good job as an accounting teacher. I decided that I was going to take the risk, but that I would prepare my classes day by day to make sure I was not going to “flunk” as a teacher in front of my students. I had a week to start, and a full week I studied to prepare classes for the first week. I did not do badly; some young students even told me that my teaching method was better than my predecessor’s. It was hard, but it was not excruciating. I continued working as an accounting teacher at the “Instituto Jose Enrique Rodo” for the rest of that year and the first quarter of the following school year. It actually worked very well for me because what I was teaching in my job was actually reinforcing what I was learning as a student in the first year of college at the School of Economics.
I finished my first year at the School of Economics with a point average equivalent to 3.95 and developed a reputation as “an excellent student”. By the beginning of my second year, the Government of Ecuador, made an agreement with the U.S.’s IRS in order to reform the obsolete and unjust Ecuadorian Tax system, and made another call to young students aged between 20 and 26, to submit their resumes and be ready to enter a training program which would prepare them to enter public service in the Revenue Department, under a program designed and supervised by the US’s IRS. This time, however, holding a “bookkeeper’s diploma from High School was not a pre-requisite; therefore, I qualified and submitted my resume among other 900 applicants.
The selection process was very detailed and well structured; it was supervised by Mr. Brown, a senior IRS officer. It all started with an IQ test for all the applicants, after which 50% of the applicants were discarded. The approximately 450 remaining applicants were then subjected to an eight week training program with tests taken at the end of each week. Those students who did not obtain a 70% grade average in the week were discarded for the following week and so on. At the end of the eight week program only 19 candidates were left and all were granted a position as “tax advisors” working for the National Department of Revenue. I was number one among the nineteen and we all were given our certificate of approval, together with the certificate of appointment to the new job, with a salary of 2,500 sucres a month, almost a fortune for me in those days. I couldn’t believe it, it was for real, I was a public servant having gained my appointment by my own right, fully using my own reserve of good arguments: my dedication to study and my personal determination to succeed. Everything looked brilliant, but best of all, my future.
A very interesting mission was assigned to our group working for the Revenue Department
All of this happened while still attending the second year at the School of Economics, where by now I felt like at home and actually I began to like it very much. Obviously I had to quit my teaching job, which I ended up feeling comfortable with in spite of the fact that I never had a real vocation to teach. Life had taught me an enduring lesson which I learned the very hard way: Many times you may not like what you have to do, but if you have to do it, do it the right way, and try to enjoy it, because if you don’t, you may end up out in the cold and hungry.
By July, 1965, I met Anita, a tiny 5’4” beautiful fair skinned green eyed and blond nineteen year old, born in Manabí, who was working as a secretary in our office. Anita and I had seen each other and chatted several times at the office, but it wasn’t until a couple of months later that we had a chance to get closer and dance at a party organized by one of the girls in our group. It was in this party that we felt attracted to each other and agreed to date
Our relationship soon developed into what she and I thought would be a serious thing, but her father found out that I was a divorcee and started an aggressive campaign to persuade his daughter of cutting off our relationship. Neither she nor I were willing to give up and continued to date anyway. Her father was not about to give up either, and within a few months he sent his daughter to live with a sister in the U.S. to force our break up. The separation only intensified our feelings and we started to correspond with three and four letters a week. Telephone communications were scarce and very expensive, so that was out of reach for us.
Meanwhile, a new Income Tax Law had been enacted in the country and it needed to be made known to businessmen, trade unions, students, professional associations, teachers and all sorts of groups who might be or eventually might become income tax taxpayers. Our group of 19 “tax advisors” was in charge of the task. Each one of us was assigned a number of groups and places where we would hold meetings with at least 30 people to whom we would first explain the contents of the new law, and then respond to questions from the audience.
The whole idea was to create a “taxpayers’ positive attitude toward the new law” in a country where paying personal taxes was considered little less than the dumbest thing to do. Ever since the Spanish colonial times, Ecuadorians considered tax cheating something like a national sport and, therefore, the more you cheated, the “smartest” you were considered. It was in this atmosphere of aversion to taxes that we, as a group, had to do our work. I believe we all did a superb job, and, by the end of the first six months of this program, we had gained a great reputation within the local business community and the press.
In my next posting: JOBLESS ONCE AGAIN
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