LIFE GOES ON

CUENCA THE BEAUTIFUL, IS 7000 FEET HIGH UP IN THE ECUADORIAN ANDES


As an external auditor with Arthur Andersen, constant travelling to Quito and Cuenca continued to be a part of my work. Travelling did not bother me at all; in fact, I began to like it much. In one of the trips to Cuenca, I was the senior on the job to perform the final audit of Ecuadorian Rubber Co. the tires’ manufacturing company, a subsidiary of General Tires Co. from Dayton, Ohio; I was assisted by two young and brilliant colleagues; Cesar Lucín and Julio Chang. At the end of the first day of work, at about six PM, we decided to go eat at an Argentine type stake house, right across the Cuenca airport, only minutes away from our client’s premises. At about 7:30PM we had finished eating and since we were not in a mood to go to back to “El Dorado” hotel where we were staying, we decided that we wanted to explore and flavor a little of the night time life in Cuenca, so we took a taxi and asked the driver to take us wherever the Cuenca night life was; the answer, in the typical intonation of Cuenca Spanish was; “I’m sorry, but here in Cuenca, the nightlife takes place during the daylight time” (disculpen señores, pero aquí, en Cuenca, la vida nocturna es de día). We couldn’t help but laugh our hearts out to such a statement, but, laughable as it was, it was kind of true, Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was a very conservative city in those days, and there really wasn’t any nightlife worth being called so, within the boundaries of the city. Things have changed so much since (almost forty years ago), that Cuenca today has nightlife just as active as either Quito’s or Guayaquil’s. In fact, Cuenca, a beautiful city surrounded by four Sierra rivers, is a cosmopolitan city today, it has become a highly looked after place for American and European retirees who want a nice place to live in, at an affordable cost.



CUENCA KEEPS THE SPANISH HERITAGE INTACT IN ITS ARCHITECTURE



In mid May, 1972, only two and a half years after I joined The Firm, I was already being treated as if I already were a Manager and was sent to Mexico City for a Latin American meeting of AA&Co’s tax managers and Partners, where our discussions concentrated on how to help our clients to reduce their tax liabilities by maximizing the correct utilization of the Tax Law and its regulations. At the end of this meeting I took my first vacations and decided to go to Canada to visit my brother Guido who was living in Toronto. When I arrived in Toronto, I found that my nephew Leonardo (and his girl friend Anny), the oldest son of my sister Lilita, whose house I was living at in Guayaquil, were sharing with Guido a small apartment in downtown Toronto. Leonardo and his American girl friend had decided to live together and were only transitorily staying with Guido until such time when they found a definite place to live in. As a big brother which I felt (for Leonardo), I didn’t like seeing these two young people living like hippies and advised them to get back to the States, get steady jobs which would allow them to go back to college, and get married if they felt they belonged to each other and wanted to maintain a serious relationship. Soon after, Leonardo got a good job in upstate New York. They came to Ecuador and got married with the blessing of Leonardo’s parents and surrounded by the whole family, then, they went back to New York. Leonardo and Anny had four children, are now the grand parents of five beautiful children, they are very happy together and live in Guayaquil. They continue to blame me for their happy marriage. As for my brother Guido, he had a job as a cook in a nice steakhouse in Toronto, but he had split from his wife Monica, who never showed any interest in working, she only wanted to have a good time at the expense of her husband’s hard work. This is a story I will have to write a separate chapter about.
From Toronto I took a plane to Ottawa and from there I flew the newest intercontinental plane, the Jumbo 747, all the way to Amsterdam. It was a very nice flight, for the first time in my life I was “crossing the pond”, for the first time in my life I was taking a long transatlantic fly in a time when the airlines really babied you (even to their coach passengers like me) with excellent food, good wine and even after dinner liquor. I was beginning to fulfill my lifetime dream of visiting Europe, the continent I loved so much because of its History, because of its culture and because the heritage it had left in our continent and in our blood and genes.
I was taking a 40 day holiday tour and wanted to do it at my own pace, with no specific schedules or routes. I had planned to decide where to go on an “as you go” basis, and had bought a book to do it under a tight budget, “Europe on Twenty Dollars a Day”. It had all kinds of information and directions about Europe, including countries, cities, hotels, trains, restaurants, museums, monuments, shows and all other things and points of interest. The actual budget was not far away from the $20/day, if one really wanted to follow the book. Once I got there, however, I did not abstain from things I found attractive. I had brought with me a total of about $2000 in travelers’ checks and I had no intention of bringing back much of that with me. True, I abided by the book in many things, but when it came to shows, food and entertainment, I was not totally faithful to it.
As soon as I arrived in the Netherlands I bought a one month “Eurorailpass”, a train ticket which allowed me to travel throughout all Western Europe without restrictions. I stayed at a nice and clean hotel in Amsterdam for $10/night, but what mostly called my attention was the very small room I got, something that I had to get used to as my travelling went on, because it was the same thing throughout all the countries I visited in Europe. It made me miss the spacious rooms in all hotels I had been to in the Americas. I stayed in Amsterdam and made quick one day trips to various cities within the Netherlands. It was beautiful to see the blooming tulips everywhere I went and I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that most Netherlanders spoke very good English, which made my tour a lot easier and pleasant. At the end of the fourth day in The Netherlands I decided to go to Germany and took a train to go to go to Frankfurt and visit the in-laws of my senior Jerry Windham. The girl at the counter in Amsterdam told me in perfect English that I should change trains in Colony, which I was very alert to do it by watching the names of every station my train stopped at, except that I missed a minor detail: Colony, in German is spelled Köln and not as I expected. After a few hours on the train, an officer in the train approached me and asked for my ticket, which I showed to him. The train’s man looked at me with an angry face and started to speak in German, asking questions I had no clue of, because I did not understand a word of what the guy was saying. A bit intimidated as I fell, I asked the man if he spoke English, he shouted back “NO ENGLISH”, then, making use of my little French I asked if he spoke French, and the man answered “NO FRENCH”. I tried again asking if he spoke Spanish and he repeated in an even higher voice “NO SPANISH”. My frustration grew exponentially and at moment, and addressing to the rest of the people in the same car in the train, I asked if any one could help me speaking English, French, Italian, or Spanish or even Portuguese, but I only saw many faces staring at me. Only then I knew I was totally helpless.
In my next posting: BEAUTIFUL PARIS

A TRAGIC SAGA IN THE FAMILY BEGINS

GUATEMALA, THE CITY OF ANTIGUA NOT VERY FAR FROM WHERE THE PRISON OF EL SOCABON IS LOCATED

It was on a cold Thursday morning in May 1971. I was assigned to a four week job in Quito at our client, Ecuador Feed & Farms Co, a company in the poultry business, vertically integrated to produce from fertile eggs to life broiler chicken and the corresponding feed. Our working group was made up of a Manager (a fellow brought up specifically for the job from Lima, Peru), a semi-senior (me) and three assistants, all of us were staying at the Colon Hotel, a five star hotel located in the Northern part of town.
On that faithful day, I woke up at about 6:30 in the morning, and after taking a shower and getting dressed up for work, I went down to the cafeteria with the newspaper under my arm and ordered breakfast. As I started to read the Quito paper “El Comercio”. All of a sudden, I saw in the first page of the paper a title that immediately called my attention; it said “ECUADORIAN CITIZEN IS DETAINED IN GUATEMALA CARRYING 80 KILOS OF DRUG”. Though I had no reason to be concerned, I felt compelled to read the whole article, and, as I read it, I felt that the whole blood in my body was suddenly pumped up to my head. The article said that XX Romero (the name of one of my brothers), an Ecuadorian Citizen had been captured at a downtown hotel in Guatemala City, and 80 kilos of cocaine presumably processed in Colombia and destined to the U.S. had been seized by the Guatemalan police in his room; It added that the detainee had been sent to the “El Socabon” maximum security prison located in the outskirts of Guatemala City for farther investigation by the police, after which he would be submitted to the judgment by the Guatemalan Justice system.

I immediately fell into a state of total confusion. On one side, I didn’t know what to do, what to say, where to go, who to talk to, I felt nauseating and felt stomach aches; on the other side, I felt sorry for my brother, I thought of him behind bars, totally defenseless, far away from his wife and children, and, at the same time I felt a tremendous amount of irritation, indignation, frustration and anger at the fact that he had gotten himself in that kind business and trouble, while the rest of our family was doing almost the impossible to get our heads above the water within the boundaries of the personal integrity instilled by our elders and especially by our mother!.
I excused myself with the rest of our group who had joined me for breakfast, and went upstairs to my room from where I called Pepe García, my boss, whom I told everything I knew which was what I read in the paper. I told him I felt terribly embarrassed and I didn’t want to have The Firm get stained by these embarrassing facts. I told him almost weeping that I felt compelled to submit my resignation effective immediately, as I really felt it was the right thing to do. I told Pepe that I needed to be replaced in the job I was doing in Quito and, that whoever it was to replace me, shuld count on my full cooperation to take over my responsibilities. Such was the respect and admiration I had for The Firm and for Pepe, his representative in the country.
After a moment of silence which appeared endless, I got a response from Pepe. He said: “Rafael, I feel very sorry for you and your family for what has happened to your brother, however, I must tell you something that you should keep in your mind for as long as you live; “There may be felons or criminals in a family, but that doesn’t mean that that is a family of felons and criminals”, and he added; “as an adult, your brother is personally and solely responsible and liable for his own acts, whether they are good or bad, you have nothing to do with his behavior, absolutely nothing, period”, and, then he added; “please go back to your work Rafael, I fully trust you, I fully trust your integrity, your professionalism and your judgment”.

That was one, perhaps the best of the many lessons I got from Pepe while he was my boss. He was not only a gentleman, a professional by all means, but he was also a great human being, a friend, a confidant, almost a second father to me.
A few weeks after the above happened, I received a letter from my brother in which he told me his side of the story, he said he was a prisoner of his own mistakes, that he felt sorry for having caused such a pain and embarrassment to the whole family, he said that among his many mistakes in life, the number one was that he have thought he could compensate his lack of wisdom and education in his earlier years by making quick money, becoming a “mule” transporting Colombian originated cocaine to Central America, from where it would continue its route to the US. He lamented all the damage he had caused to his family whom he recognized had been left without any financial means to survive, and he asked me to help his wife and children. My brother also asked my help to finance the professional fees to be paid to the lawyer who would defend him in front of the Guatemalan Courts.

I felt in a real crossroads; in the first place, I felt sorry for the guy, but I felt even sorrier for his family, for the young children and their mother who had been left on their own. I also felt very sorry to know my brother was behind bars in one of the most lugubrious prisons in the Western Hemisphere, and he needed to be helped legally, at a cost someone had to pay, and I was afraid somehow I was going to have to pay the bill, or at least a good portion of it. I discussed the contents of his letter with my sisters and with Pepe, my big brother who at the time was working for another of the big five accounting firms. The fact of the matter is that my sisters, all of them, were as emotionally affected by what happened to our brother as I was, and offered to help, with their prayers…

Their prayers however did not bring food to our brothers’ children’s dining table, nor did they help paying for a lawyer. Pepe and I decided to help our jailed brother’s family with their day to day needs, and we both had to borrow money to help with his legal fees in Guatemala. About a year later, our brother was released from prison and one day he showed up back in our home town, Guayaquil.

We all celebrated our brother’s return with jubilation, we all felt extremely happy to have him back, but after the celebration Pepe and I decided to have a talk with our brothetr, at which we clearly told him how much damage his actions had caused to the whole family and to his children in particular. We were very clear in mentioning to him that by no means he should interpret our help during his months behind bars as an endorsement of his actions, we told him they were just a humanitarian, brotherly attitude, and a show of solidarity to his family and to our old and ailing father. We added that his actions had caused tremendous anxiety and pain to our elderly father. I personally told him that for the first time I felt glad our mother had passed away years ago, because if she had been alive, the news of her son being imprisoned in a foreign country for a crime such as his’, would have instantly caused her tremendous pain and perhaps even her death. We advised him to get his acts together, to become responsible for his own actions and not to expect any help from us in case he decided to backslide. He cried out loud, he promised in the name of our dead mother that he would change, that he would become a responsible father and an honorable member of our family. Subsequent facts which I will talk about later proved, much to the suffering of our whole family, that our dear brother was far from done with his wrongdoings.

In my next posting: LIFE GOES ON

IN THE FAST TRACK TO SUCCESS

My first year with AA&Co (“The Firm”), was a complete success; my work was highly appreciated by my senior Jerry Windham and my manager Pepe (García). At the end of every job with a client, we used to be rated by our supervisors, my ratings were always excellent. In fact, if the individual’s rating was outstanding, or extremely bad, The Firm had a policy of issuing what was called a “Green Sheet” which was discussed by the supervisor, with the individual. A copy of such “green sheet” was kept in the local files, while the original signed by the individual, his supervisor and the manager, was always sent to the headquarters in Chicago. I got three “Green Sheets” in my first year in the firm, something that was almost unheard of, or extremely unusual, and an indication of the high appreciation of my work by my supervisors, so, at the end of that season, I was promoted to the level of A-3 (Assistant Auditor 3) from where I was before (A-1).

My second year in The Firm was equally rewarding for me, I continued to learn and absorb more responsibilities in our work. Soon after the completion of the second audit season (April 1971), Pepe García called me to his office and asked me if I’d like to be transferred to the Tax Division, where most of my work would be related to the income tax of our clients. The division itself was nonexistent in our office, so I would be the first and only one to belong in this area. Pepe’s idea came from his reviewing one of my working papers in which I had focused on the insufficiency of the tax accrual of one of our clients, a matter I examined under my own initiative, because my senior did not have any experience in that area in Ecuador. This was an area I was well prepared for, given my experience in the Department of Revenue during the years 1965 and 1966. I accepted the challenge, so from then on, I was doing tax work besides audit work, the combination of which I enjoyed very much and excelled at. At the end of the second audit season, I was promoted to the level of A-5, or the equivalent of a semi-senior.

In February 1971, only two years after I started working for AA&Co., and while I was working in the external audit of Pintec, the local manufacturer of Glidden paint, I got my first tempting proposal to leave the Firm and go to work for a client. Carlos Vallarino, the general manager of the company (a local subsidiary of a US Corporation) called me to his office on a Friday afternoon, just before we left the office for the day and for the week. He was accompanied by Julio Coppa, his comptroller, a Cuban-American who was due to leave the country after completing his three year foreign assignment in Ecuador. After a few words of introduction, Carlos said; “Rafael, you know that Julio, my comptroller, has done a terrific job in these last three years in Guayaquil, but he is due to leave soon as he has to go back to Cleveland after completion of his assignment here. He and I have been discussing about the person who is going to replace him, and we both coincide that you can put on his shoes”, and added “We have been observing your work as a senior auditor and the way you command your auditors’ team and we are pretty sure you are the man we need!, in fact, the whole idea of this meeting is asking you to consider our proposal to become the new comptroller of our company in Ecuador”.

I was taken completely off base, I was surprised as much as I was flattered and at the moment I didn’t know what to say, except to thank both individuals for what I considered a compliment to my work. After a moment of doubt, and while I was thinking of what to answer, I told Carlos I felt very complimented by his words and that I needed to take some time to have a concrete answer for them. Both, Carlos and Julio smiled and told me to take my time, they said they did not think I was going to answer them immediately, however, they told me to consider their proposal seriously as they were pressed to find Julio’s replacement within the next three months as Julio was to leave the country in July, after his replacement had been trained in Cleveland, for about three months before taking over his new responsibilities.

I felt a mix of pride, happiness, anxiety and fear. For the first time in my life I was facing a situation where I was invited to cross a bridge I had the temptation to cross but wasn’t sure if doing so would be the right thing to do. I needed some expert’s advice, and I needed it badly. Fresh came to my mind the words I had with the other three recruits who joined the Firm the same day I did, back in January 19, 1969. I told then to my new colleagues that I wanted to make a career within the Firm, I told them I didn’t need, at least for the time being, more money than I was making in my new job. But the temptation of making more than triple the amount of money I was making (such was the offer from Glidden), was great, and I was afraid, more than that, I had fear of not being the right man for the job being offered to me, something I wouldn’t have the guts to say, for obvious reasons. I was almost completely sure that my two year experience as an external auditor did not quite qualify me for the responsibilities of a comptroller in a multinational company. After considering several alternatives, I did something that could be looked upon as a dumb thing. I went for advice to Pepe García, my big boss at AA&Co. His advice was straight forward: “Rafael”, he said, “I know you must feel flattered for this proposal, had I been in your shoes, I would’ve felt the same, however, I think I know you better than you think, I know you came here with your mind set on a long-term goal, and, at this point you haven’t reached that goal quite yet”. Then he continued: “I know, and you know as well, that you are doing extremely well in our Firm, if you keep the pace, Rafael, it won’t be long before you reach the level of compensation you would feel happy at, therefore, money shouldn’t be the primary motive in making your decision at this time”, then he concluded: “I’m sure that whatever your decision is in this matter, it will be the best for you, but, it’s all up to you Rafael, I can only hope you will decide to remain with us”. That was Pepe’s advice, the mature, the sound, the wise advice I needed and was looking for. I needed no more, but not less either.

Within the hour, I called Carlos Vallarino, and after thanking him for his proposal, I told him I had decided to decline accepting the position he offered to me. I believe Carlos was a bit upset by my decision, however, a gentleman as he always was, he didn’t change his attitude toward me during the rest of my assignment in his company. Three months later, the Glidden home office in Cleveland sent a new comptroller to their local subsidiary. Many years later, in 1987, I came across Carlos in the Guayaquil Country Club where I was just starting to play golf, while Carlos was a great golf player. Though he had already retired from his job at Glidden, he reminded me of our conversation in early 1971, his memory was intact, and he lamented that I did not accept his proposal. As for me, I never regretted having decided not to accept that tempting proposal at the age of 28.
In my next posting: A TRAGIC SAGA IN THE FAMILY BEGINS

BIG BROTHER AT THE AGE OF 27

At the end of September, 1969, my life had dramatically changed in more than one way. Without my mom, I did not have a family, since in many ways she was my whole family. I still had my father, of course, but since I was 12, he had been a distant figure in my life. True, I used to see him and he used to see me intermittently, and it was clear to me he was the head of our family, but he was not the father mentor, the father you want to imitate as you see him act, simply because he was physically and emotionally absent most of the time and his temper was always putting a barrier between his children (especially the boys) and himself. Besides, it wasn’t much clear to me at the time, but I was kind of vaguely aware of his rudeness with mom, a rudeness that was confirmed only recently when I got a written statement from my sister Florcita who was an eye witness of it. Still, I can say without fear of being mistaken, that I loved him and that I respected him without necessarily admiring him.
It was my sister Lilita, married to Lolo, the good looking man who had been a gigolo in his young years, but who became a model of a husband, a model of father and a model of a man after he married my sister, who “adopted” me as her son and gave me a new family, a family where I was given (o maybe I took it by myself), the role of a “big brother”.
Lilita and Lolo had five children, four boys and one girl. The oldest son, Leonardo, who was only nine years younger than me, was living in the US and had met, fell in love with, and decided to live together with the first and only sweetheart of his live, Ann, whom he married later and had four children with. The second child in Lilita’s family was Lilia Lucrecia (“Chachita”), who was one year younger than her big brother, the third child, Milton, was born in late 1954. Freddy, their fourth child was born in 1956, and their fifth and youngest child, Polo was born in 1957. So, at the age of 27, I became Lilita and Lolo’s “oldest child”. By the time, I had already gotten a certain reputation within the family, as a hard working and clear looking forward young man and Lilita told me she was happy to see me as the role model for her own children.
As I came back from Mexico and was warmly received in Lilita’s place, I can’t say who, of the five adopted siblings, gave me the nick name of “the powerful one” (“el poderoso”) with which they all have known me since. My new siblings promptly and happily adapted to the idea that I was one more in the family, but they all showed me the respect and consideration due to an older brother. They lived in a three bedroom apartment in those days, so I shared a room with two of my nephews, but at the same time Lilita and Lolo were building a new and bigger home at the Kennedy subdivision, a new middle class neighborhood nearby the School of Economics of the U of G. to which I came back in October 1969. A couple of months later we moved to the new house, where I shared a nice and spacious room with my nephew Freddy, 14 years younger than me, who by the time was one of the best ping pong players in Guayaquil. As a soccer fan that I always was, I used to take Freddy to watch the games in the nearby stadium, and, as for his own account, that is why he became an EMELEC (the best soccer team in the country) fan in a household where everybody else was a fan of the wrong team (Barcelona). As Freddy grew up and later on he got married, he had three children; all of them became fans of EMELEC. Freddy Jr., his first son, who is a successful CPA and works for a Public Accounting Firm near Philadelphia, has lived in the US for many years, he is now in the process of becoming a lawyer, but continues to be an EMELEC fan just as much as when he was a little kid and went to watch the games with his father. Good for him!
It was by this time that I bought my first car, a 1965, green, German Volkswagen Bug, which suddenly propelled me to the “upper class” of students at the U, and entered a “club” of the most looked up young people in the U campus at the same time. After all, I was young, not bad looking, had a great job, and was one of those privileged - one out of every 50 young students - who was driving his own car thru the streets of Guayaquil. My own girl’s harvest season had started, and it made me feel like the old Colombian song says: “the girls’ harvest never ends”.
Fanny and I were dating on and off, but neither she nor I was taking it very seriously. Fanny because she was not convinced that a man eight years her elder would be someone she’d like to seriously date with, and I was not ready to seriously date anyone because I still felt “not ready” for it for two main reasons, (1) The phantom of Anita was still floating in my mind, and I was really not willing to commit myself to a relationship of significance until that ghost was off my mind, and (2),I liked and enjoyed the way things were going out there with a quasi permanent “harvest of girls”. Still, I did not want to break up with Nena because I really liked her, and she was like “first among equals” as the opportunities with other girls multiplied.
A “ride home” to some of the girls at the U always became a great opportunity to flirt and I did not miss many of them. Friday night partying became an invariable part of my routine, so much so that in various opportunities my new “mom” Lilita, politely but firmly warned me about the risks of driving and drinking. Thank God, I never had an accident, though I remember several times arriving home late in the night (and sometimes early in the morning) and staying asleep in the car, till someone woke me up in the morning and sent me to bed. That was certainly not one of the “tutoring” lessons I was supposed to give my younger siblings and still feel a bit embarrassed when we talk about
School was really not a problem since most of the subjects I was taking were just a repetition of what I had already taken in NYC; however, as Pepe Garcia had told me, I needed to pursue the local school “diploma” as it would help me officially registering as an auditor, which was a requisite the Firm needed to comply with. In fact, my work required a lot of travelling within the country, which did not allow me to attend classes for relatively long periods of time, but that was not a problem because attendance was not a requisite at the U, but exams were, and I was always ready for them. I was always at the top of my class.
In November 1969, we started what the auditors used to call the “preliminary audits” in all of our clients. They consisted basically in reviewing and updating the policies and procedures of the companies and testing Balance Sheet and P & L Statement’s balances as of a preliminary closing date which was normally the closing of one of the last three months of the calendar year prior to December. The idea behind this work was to have most of the detail work done before the closing of the calendar year, to allow us for a fast completion of the full audit as soon as possible after December 31, and be able to issue the “Auditors Report” expressing an “opinion” on the reasonability of the Financial Statements of our clients before the end of March.
In my next posting: IN THE FAST TRACK TO SUCCESS

IN THE FAST TRACK TO SUCCESS

UNFORGETABLE LESSON

Pallatanga-The main square and the hill behind

After we buried mom, and for the following months and even today, she has been permanently present in my mind, I always think a lot about her life, her relentless dedication to her family, her permanent compassion for the poor in her village, her passion for the education of her children, her strong believe in God and His presence in our lives, her amazing strength to endure the duress of her life in poverty and hard work, but more than anything else, about her lessons of integrity and honesty in all the acts of our lives. There is one of those lessons I’d like to share with all of you because I believe it is emblematic of her character and her personality:

In January, 1950, in a foggy day after school, when I hadn´t reached eight yet, I was sent by my mom to bring the milk from the dairy farmer’s place. Carrying a tin pail I was walking slowly through a muddy, shadowy and solitary trail which snaked up a hill that was about one third of a mile up and a mile and a half away from our home. Suddenly, I bumped into a small bundle wrapped in an old and dirty looking handkerchief which was probably white long ago, when it was clean and new. I picked the bundle; it was kind of heavy, and when I unfolded it, I found it contained exactly ten sucres and ninety five cents in small change. “Gee”, I said to myself, “this is a lot of money, almost a fortune” (it really was like the equivalent of five dollars today), and I felt it was all mine, I had never owned so much money in my whole life… When I got back home with the pail full of milk, I told my mom what I had found, as I felt as happy as a morning bird, and I was sure she would share my happiness.

She was very happy too, indeed, but for a very different reason than mine. She took the little bundle and said “my dear son, what you have just found, most likely somebody very poor, has lost it, and must be looking for it, that person must be suffering for his or her loss and what we need to do is try to find who that person is”. After a moment of confusion, my answer was, “but mom, how are we going to find that person?”. “Don’t you worry my little son”, she said, “I will find a way to do it”. I was shocked, and at the time I was even a bit upset with my mom, because I did not understand what she was up to, but I let her manage the situation. I had no choice after all.

The next Sunday morning, my mom went to the church and talked to the priest and requested him to ask from the pulpit for the owner of the little bundle and the money in it. Sure enough, a very poor and old little lady approached the priest after mass and claimed for the little bundle and its content. Now it was the old little lady who was as happy as a morning bird, because the money she had lost was what she needed for her weekly shopping at the village´s market. That same day, before dinner, my mom said a prayer thanking God for allowing this very poor little lady to have recovered what was rightfully hers, and praising me for having found it and returned it. That night I understood the immense meaning of this lesson of integrity and compassion, which I will never forget.

On the day of her burial, we, the four brothers, her male children, took the casket with mom’s remains to their final site in the cemetery on our shoulders. My dad was crying as a motherless child and was being consoled by my sisters who followed right behind us. In our way we could see a long line of people we knew, wearing mourning clothing, but we also saw a great number of people who just did not have any mourning clothing to wear, and were just wearing what they could, those were the people from our village, the people my mother loved so much, the men and women who consider her as their benefactor, their healer, their provider and their mentor. I was so proud of her; that it is not an exaggeration to say that my pain was being alleviated as we approached her tomb and left her mortal body to rest. I was eye witnessing the caliber of her charisma, I was seeing and feeling the love she inspired in all those people whose only possession was their loyalty and their love for this woman they considered their big mom. I was then as I am today, and as I always will be, proud of being her son, proud of having her blood running in my veins!


The "Kitchen Room" in a peasant's house in Pallatanga, where guinea pigs were always a part of it.

A week after my mom was buried I was flying to Bogota, the Colombian Capital, where I took the first training in Auditing, it was actually a light introduction to Auditing, a preparation for the heavy one to be taken in Mexico City during the following four weeks. Before I took off from Guayaquil, my sister Lilita, the one of my three sisters who was the closest to my mom, asked me to come and live with her and her family upon my return from my training in September, which I accepted with enormous gratitude. In a way, she adopted me as a son, in fact, for the following four years, her five children grew up with me just as if was their big brother.

The Auditing training in Mexico City was a tough one too, but having successfully endured the Cali training, we were all prepared for it and I absorbed it as a sponge would’ve. The faculty at this training was made up mostly by AA& CO’s Mexican partners and managers whose experience in the field was a guarantee of success. Since I had some auditing field experience in the months of January thru May, mainly with Jerry Windham, I was a lot better prepared for this course than for the Cali training.

In the Mexico City Training, believe it or not, I learned more from the students than from the faculty itself, and it is not that I did not learn much from the latter, which I did, but my experience of befriending with young people of almost all Latin American countries (except Brazil), left me a very enduring knowledge of the idiosyncrasy of young Latin people. I learned that, barring some minor, almost unnoticeable differences, we are almost the same throughout the continent; after all, we all come from the same roots, and we share the same culture, we share our love for the music, we all love Cervantes as much as we love Pablo Neruda, we loved Los Panchos as much as we loved the Hermanos Silva, we loved the Peruvian Valses as much as we all loved Tangos, we loved Cumbias as much as we loved Boleros, and, of course, we all loved the Rancheras from Mexico. We all have a common past, a common History, a common present and hopefully a common future of democracy without extremism. Many of the friends I made in Mexico City in 1969,still remain my friends today, we do not see one another very much, but every time we have a chance to get together, we turn the clock 40 years back and return to our mid 20’s. We enjoy ourselves like little pigs in the mud. Such is the magic of true friendship!
In late September I returned from my training courses. I felt like having graduated from college for the second time. I felt like a pure breed horse that had been trained and was ready to start running in the racing tracks.

The technical knowledge I acquired between June and September 1969, was so transcendental and of such weight in my professional development, that I do not hesitate to say that this, coupled by my field experience in the firm, was my real college education. My theoretical training in Colombia and Mexico was immediately followed up by very well supervised, hands on work in Guayaquil, Quito and Cuenca where our clients were located. In addition to the formal technical education, we learned many other things from our instructors and professors, including business and social manners. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that when I returned from Mexico in late September, in many ways I was a quite different person from the young, a bit arrogant individual, who went out for training at the beginning of June. I went there as a junior staff member, fresh out of school, and returned as a junior professional, aware of my short comings and eager to continue my professional development. Ironic as it may sound, I was now a more humble person, aware of my limitations and more open to understand and be patient with the limitations of others around me.
In my next posting: BIG BROTHER FOR THE FIRST TIME

WHAT AN EMPTY WORLD

MY MOM IN 1960, WHEN SHE WAS ONLY 53


I was extremely worried; I tried to speak on the phone to my family without any success. I was really afraid of the worst but hopping for the best. I was unable to sleep during the whole nigh, and I even had nightmares about my mom passing away; the next plane going to Guayaquil did not take off until the following day at 7:00 PM, so I had to spend the whole day wondering what was really happening with my mom. Guillermo Villegas, one of my classmates and a member of the Firm’s staff in Cali took me to the Cali airport; he was very nice and comforting. The traffic to the airport was really heavy and at times I though I was going to miss the plane, but, I made it. The flight was really short, it took only about one hour and twenty minutes, but the day had been one of the longest days in my whole life. Finally I arrived in Guayaquil at about 9:00 PM, my brother Pepe was waiting for me at the airport, and I knew my worst fears had materialized even before we got close, I saw him from the distance that he was sobbing, weeping and uttering out loud as we embraced each other.

My mom had died the day before at 5:00 AM at my sister Flor’s home main gate, from a massive heart stroke as she was about to board my brother Pancho’s pick up truck in her way to Pallatanga. She was unable to make this last trip to see her husband, my dad, whom she loved so much for almost her entire life, and instead, she made the trip to Heaven, the place she had been preparing herself so much for, for a long time. She had passed away in the very way I would love to die myself, whenever my turn comes. One minute she was well and alive, and the next she was gone, no personal suffering and not a prolonged suffering of the family.

She died at the age of 62, forty one years ago, on July 24, 1969. The empty space she left in my life will never be filled, but I know that she’s still watching me and the rest of her family with the same love, with the same passion and with the same invariable care she had given us while we had her among us.

The world just didn’t seem to be the same without her, and it will never be, however, the longer the time she’s gone, the fresher I feel her image, her love and her wisdom, and the wiser and deeper her thoughts become. I truly believe she was a visionary and certainly she was de architect of my character, the omnipresent mentor and the wisest advisor anyone can have. She’s been gone physically from us for a long, long time, but she’s always present in all the relevant moments of my life, and in the life of all of her children and grandchildren and everyone she loved

In November 2002, when she was living in Kansas City, after graduating from Thunderbird, my daughter Mariuxi, now a mother of two very young and beautiful children, wrote a few lines describing her grandma, based on what she knew about her, through my conversations with my children throughout the years. Following are those lines which in my opinion are a perfect and true portrait of my mom:

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“My grandmother and I have never met. And yet, she has been a constant presence in my life. Like a beaming star that shines her guiding light, she is always with me.
Abuelita Luquita…she is like those timeless matriarchs you find in magical realism. She was an indomitable spirit that refused to bend to hardship. She was courageous and visionary, sage, mother, healer, provider and mentor. She was all these things and more to everyone around her. And even thirty three years after her death, Abuelita Luquita continues to be a vibrant influence on the lives of her loved ones.
Abuelita Luquita came from a well-to-do family of Spanish ancestry. She was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the strict tutelage of her maternal grandparents. She fell in love with a poor, uneducated farmer. Against the wishes of her family, she married my grandfather. Abuelita Luquita´s family never forgave her for marrying someone beneath her social position. They cut all ties with her and left her to fend for herself.
The village where my Abuelita was born, Pallatanga, is a small, impoverished town tucked away high in the Ecuadorian Sierra. Families live hand to mouth from the few crops they manage to cultivate. They exist in the same impoverished condition generation to generation. Conformity is a heavy blanket that smothers any dreams for self-improvement. Pallatangeños quietly resign themselves to their fate.
Despite the unrelenting hardships she endured, Abuelita Luquita fiercely believed there was a hope to escape the grips of conformity. My grandmother had a vision that transcended the limitations that poverty imposed on her. She understood that education and ambition was the key that would lead her children to a better life. Abuelita Luquita instilled in each of her seven children her vision. She inspired them to learn and excel academically. She fostered their ambition, tempering it with her strict code of ethics, compassion and solidarity. My grandmother gave her children the ability to dream for a better life, and then gave them the tools to achieve their dream.
And yet, although she encouraged her children to seek a future away from home, my grandmother devoted her life to the town of Pallatanga. She embraced the poor, fed their empty stomachs, nursed their bodies, and nourished their souls. Her sense of solidarity was unwavering even at the most difficult of times.
She is stranger and angel to me. I mourn her death though she passed away many years before I ever had a chance to hold her hand and feel her strength. Before she could say to me as she said to her children, “Go forth and achieve…” And yet, she has always been with me. She guides and inspires me to be ambitious, to work harder. The belief in self-improvement and love for education are her legacy. She passed it on to my father, who is the realization of all her dreams. And he, in turn, has passed it on to me.
As she looks down from heaven, I know she is smiling at me, proud of what I have achieved so far and beckoning me to achieve so much more”

The day we took my mom’s remains to the cemetery, I decided that more than just tear dropping and mourning for her departure, I was going to try hard to make my life a permanent homage to her memory, I also thought that in order to alleviate the terrible pain I felt for her departure, I was going to remember her in the best and in the happiest moments of her life. I may have failed sometimes to do that, after all I’m just another frail human being, but I keep that promise in my mind, and I will always do it. The memories I have from her are like an inexhaustible gold mine from which, without much digging, I always get some new treasures to learn and benefit from and to talk about.



MY FATHER IN 1968, ONE YEAR BEFORE MY MOM PASSED AWAY



Mom’s remains were exposed in her coffin in my sister Lilia’s apartment for the closest family’s last farewell. There, I saw my father crying with his head over my moms' coffin, and uttering words I never heard, but I assumed they were words he had wanted to say only to her, but did not have the courage to do it while she was still alive. He looked really aggreived, extremely sad.

At about noon time, we took mom's remains to the cemetery and placed them at the end of a big funerary room where a mass was to be celebrated in her memory. In this place, and before the mass was celebrated, I could see many people I had never seen before, or I did not remember seeing before, most of them were weeping like they had lost their own mother, most of them were very, very poor people, coming most likely for the first time to the big city, all the way from our village in Pallatanga, they came to pay their personal homage to the woman who was like their mentor, their protector, the person who cured their children many times over, who “fed their empty stomachs, nursed their bodies, and nourished their souls”. Thirty five years later, in 2004, when we attended a mass in my mother’s memory in Pallatanga, many of those same peasants were there, still lamenting her death and praying for her soul. They made me cry out of gratitude.
In my next posting: UNFORGETABLE LESSONS