BACK WHERE WE BELONG

We arrived in Guayaquil on June 15, 1984. The company housed us for a month at the Oro Verde Hotel, in downtown Guayaquil, while we were looking for the appropriate housing for our family, Fanny and a very competent realtor did most of the work and by the middle of July we had made a deal with the owner of a nice house located in the Urdesa subdivision, right on the edge of the Salado Estuary in one of the most beautiful residential areas in town. My kids would be only five minutes away from their school.

On Monday June 18, 1984, I showed up to work at the Molidor mill, only to find a big “CLOSED DOWN” seal at the mills’ quarters main gate. The seal had been placed there the previous Saturday by employees of the Guayaquil Municipality. After I identified myself with the guards at the gate, they allowed me to enter through the gate of the neighboring company INTERAMA, a subsidiary of Molidor which had a connecting door to the mill.

When I asked to the receptionist for the general manager Mr. Stuart, she told me he had been taken to the US in an ambulance plane because he was seriously ill. When I asked for the Head miller, I was told he was on vacations in the US, when I asked for the accountant, I was told Mr. Lazo was at his home, recuperating from a prostate surgery he had just gone through. When I asked for the company’s lawyer, I was told he was in the hiding because the government had issued an arrest warrant for him, related to a highly political case.

It all seemed a case for Ripley's Believe it or not. Finally, I was able to get a hold of Jorge Lazo, the accountant of the company for over 23 years, who, in fact, was at his home, still in bed. Through him, I was able to contact the company’s lawyer Ignacio (“Nacho”) Vidal, and I explained him briefly the situation the company was in, and asked him for advice on what to do in this unique circumstance. I told him that in my opinion, the first priority was to have the Closed Down seal off the main gate, so the mills’ operations could be resumed as soon as possible. Nacho, the company’s lawyer, who later on became and still is a great friend of mine, explained to me that he would not be able to help, but, he would ask one of his associates to assist me in what he thought was the path to take. In Fact, in less than one hour, Mr. Gomez, a lawyer, who many years later became the Chairman of the Country’s Supreme Court of Justice, came to Molidor and he and I discussed the course of action to take. First and above all, we needed to go to the municipality and talk to the man who signed the order to close down the mill (this was a commissary, a second rated municipal officer), which we did. The man could only say that the order was given by the city’s mayor, Mr. Bucaram and that the seal of closing down would be removed only after a fine was paid for the equivalent of $20,000.

When asked about the reason for the order from the city’s mayor, this second ranking officer could not say it, and repeated what he had said before; “just pay the fine and we will lift the closing down order”. Mr. Gomez, the lawyer accompanying me, took me aside and explained to me that this was really the way the city’s mayor was making money for himself. Facing as I was, to a clear act of administrative corruption, I asked the municipal officer to write down a receipt for the fine indicating the reason for the shut down, and I would try to clear the payment by talking to my superiors in the US, the officer told me they would NOT make a receipt, we just had to pay the fine, which in his own words was just “a contribution” in cash and the mill will be reopened. At this point I decided to call the company’s Senior VP in KC, Dick Myers, the very man who hired me, and I explained to him the whole situation. He asked me: “what should we do Rafael?”, I told him that in my opinion we should not give in to this clear case of corruption. I told him I would try my best to avoid paying the bribe and that I would keep in touch with him as frequently as possible until this case was resolved one way or the other.

By then, it had been one full day that the mill was shut down, not one bag of flour had gone to our customers and our sales department was desperately trying to calm them down. By five in the afternoon the lawyer and I went back to the man who had signed the order to close down the mill and I told the lawyer what I intended to do, and I got his full support. Five minutes later I was talking to the man and told him that “we were willing to pay the fine in order to have our mill reopened, but, there was no way, but no way, I would order that payment without an official receipt from the municipality indicating the reason for the fine, or “contribution”, and added “Mr. Commissary, if I don’t have the receipt I’m asking for, I will not be able to make any payment, and I will be forced to go from here to the three newspapers with the largest circulation in the city to make them know what is happening here”, besides, I added, “I will go to the Ecuadorian-American Chamber of Commerce and to the American Consulate, to tell them the story, because Molidor is a company owned by American shareholders”. The man stood before us for a moment without having anything to say, but suddenly he appeared to have gotten the message; he made a quick telephone call, which I assume it was to his boss, the city’s mayor, and immediately signed an order to reopen the mill. By six thirty that afternoon, we got back to the mill and got the closing down seal ripped apart. That was my first day at work at Molidor, and I could not get a hold of Dick Myers to tell the story until after eight O’clock the following morning. When I told him the story, he congratulated me for the stance I took and added: “Rafael, that is a heck of a lot of work you did in your first day at the mill, thanks and congratulations on the outcome”.

This was but only one of the very many examples I was either a witness of, or I heard about, of the rampant corruption going on at the Guayaquil Municipality in those days, and the years that followed until 1992, when finally a new Municipal administration took over and Ali Baba and his four thousand bandits were kicked away by the city’s voters.

Believe it or not, the very same guy who was the mayor of the city in 1982, and who headed the horde of bandits that converted the city of Guayaquil into a pile of rubbish and dust, only fourteen years later, became the president of the country and began the assault on the country, just as he did while he was a mayor, only in a much greater scale. His government plagued by unbelievable corruption lasted only about six months, because the whole country mounted in fury and did away with his disgraced administration. The man has lived in exile since, and he claims to be a victim of political persecution.

In my next posting: THE FAMILY BEGINS TO ADJUST

GOOD BYE TO SLC

Stuart invited me to lunch at the “Club de la Union”, a most exclusive social club in Guayaquil, where he had recently become a member. At lunch, I told him that, ”if chosen to the position of comptroller of Molidor, I would have to make a lot of changes in the accounting and management information systems of the company, for which I’d need his total support, which he promised I’ d have. I also told him that I would start working on a program for such changes as soon as I start working for the company, and, that if need be, I’d also need to make some changes/additions in the staff, which he also agreed to, in fact, he told me that since his knowledge of those areas was almost nil, I would have cart blanche to do what I would consider appropriate. I also mentioned to Stuart that one of the first things I would do if I became the company’s comptroller would be to change the accounting system to one that would require a modern, digital MIS, therefore we would have to buy a whole set of computers to support it. I was clear to mention that this project might require some personnel changes, as well as some investment, which he was agreeable to.

The next subject I discussed with Stuart was the schooling of my three children. He told me he had already arranged for me to have a meeting with the director of the local school where his own children were attending; the Inter American Academy, an English speaking school located at the top of a hill in the Urdesa subdivision, just about 20 minutes from the mill, in the Northern part of the city, and just a few minutes from Los Ceibos, the residential area where he lived and advised me to look for housing at. I told Stuart that my first priority was to find a good school for my children, and that I did not think it would be hard to find suitable housing for my family, therefore, I would leave that point for a later day when my wife and I, together, could take a look at, and decide upon.

That same day, in the afternoon I visited Dr. Brent Hudson, the director of the school. The guy, a mannered and very skinny man who looked like he had been face lifted more than a couple of times, was an American with a PHD in education, he had been the founder and the first Director of the school and was very proud of what he had achieved during the first five years. He explained to me that his school belonged to a non-profit association which was sponsored by the U.S. government through the American Consulate in Guayaquil and was mainly geared to provide education with international standards, mainly to the children of expatriates working for American companies, who would eventually have to send their children to universities in the United States and other countries around the world. Hudson was very proud of his school and was eager to help expediting the registration process for my children, in case we moved to Guayaquil.

Believe it or not, the most important hurdle for me to make a decision to change jobs and accept the Seaboard’s offer was to find a suitable school for my children. I believed then, as I believe today, that the very fact that my children become fully bilingual, would make them twice as valuable in the job market whenever their time came to find a job. I believe I made my decision to accept the new job, right after my visit to Dr. Hudson, as I found that my children would have no traumatic changes in their education as compared to the education they were having in their school in Utah. With the above done, I still had one more day to go before returning to SLC. That day I took to visit some friends and other relatives, and found that all of them were happy to hear there was a possibility for me to return to the homeland.

Back in SLC I discussed all my findings with Fanny, my head counselor, and we made a decision to return to Guayaquil if the salary and benefits offered by Seaboard (which were still to be discussed), were acceptable. The next day I called KC and talked to Dick Myers. I told him I was now ready to discuss the conditions offered by the company. He invited me to come over to KC again so we could discuss that issue personally, which I did. In the first week of May I was flying to KC and meeting Dick Myers. The compensation package offered to me by Seaboard was very good, it was like they say “an offer I couldn’t refuse”, so by the time we had finished lunch, we had a deal: I would give my current employer a 30 day notice that I was leaving, and would start work in Molidor on the Monday after my arrival in Guayaquil, which was planned for the second week of June 1984, when my children would already be in vacations from their school. Before leaving SLC for good, we would take a two week vacation and would go to Yellowstone for the second time in two years. The children were extremely happy with the decision to go back to Ecuador, and so we were.

Only a few months before I was leaving Northwest Pipeline, the company had been bought out by the Oklahoma based “The Williams Companies”, and therefore, the company in SLC had a whole new top management, however, I knew personally the new president of the company (Mr. Johnson), from a trip we made together to Argentina with the purpose of introducing him to the Argentine partners and get him acquainted with our operations down there. During that trip I was able to make a personal relationship with this man and his wife Barbara, so when I was about to leave the company I just thought it would be nice to tell him I was leaving, before officially telling it no anybody else, so I asked for an appointment with this man, during which I submitted my resignation to him personally (something out of the protocol). The man was very understanding, and even congratulated me on my decision, and wished me good luck in my new endeavors. Little did I know then, that on the same day, he had ordered the payroll department to issue a check for $40,000, payable to me as recognition for “special services” rendered to the company, but in fact he had mentioned that it was just fair for the company to pay for all expenses related to my repatriation to Ecuador. This was in spite of the fact that my new employer, just as it was fair to do it, was paying all expenses related to my moving to Ecuador. I did send a thank you note to Mr. Johnson right after I received the check, and I still feel very thankful for his demonstration of generosity.

The first two weeks of June 1984 were extremely busy for Fanny and I, as we decided that we were going to buy everything new for our house in Guayaquil, and, therefore, would sell or give away all our furniture and fixtures in our house in SLC to make room for all the new stuff. By the end of the second week of June, we were almost done, the moving company would come on June 12 to pack and ship everything we had, including eight brand new HP computers Seaboard was shipping for Molidor per my request. On the Saturday before the date we flew off to Guayaquil, our neighbors in Fontaine Bleu Dr. in Salt Lake City, invited us to a farewell party at the Adams’ at which at least twelve families showed up to wish us luck and success. This was one more occasion we had to appreciate the great people we lived around during our stay in Salt Lake City. Twenty seven years after we departed from SLC, we still keep in touch with those people.

On June 14 1984, we flew back to Guayaquil, back to our roots, back to our beloved homeland of Ecuador, leaving behind us four years of our lives, four years in which not only our kids grew up, but we did it too, we grew up perhaps more than our kids did, because we learned many things; we learned that there are good people everywhere; that everywhere there are many things to be grateful for, but above all, that by being yourself and maintaining your family values wherever you go, you will find a niche where you and your family can feel very comfortable at. We loved Salt Lake City, and we will always love the city and its people.

In my next posting: BACK WERE WE BELONG

GUAYAQUIL AND MOLIDOR

THE IGUANA MONUMENT
IN GUAYAQUIL

I took a plane from SLC to Atlanta, connecting to one going to Miami, which in turn was connecting to one going to Guayaquil. During those flights I had a notebook with me, on which I was writing down many of the things I needed to do in the planned three-day stay in my home town, including the questions I needed to ask while visiting the industrial facilities of the company I could potentially be working for in a relatively short time. My list included visiting to the school where my kids would have to continue their education (4th grade, 2nd grade and pre-kinder), the kind of housing I could get, the neighborhoods my family and I would be safe and comfortable at, and the pricing for the same.
It was kind of strange for me; I was coming to Guayaquil as a visitor for only three days. Instead of checking in at a hotel, I stayed with my sister Lilita, my adopting mother, my dearest friend and confidant. By doing so, I had a chance to see my nephews and my niece, who, as I have said before, were like my younger brothers and sister. They all were happy to see me and I was very happy to see them, we sat together while talking for hours and hours, it was a great family reunion after several years of absence, and they all felt very pleased that I had a chance to return. At this point, so did I.
The day after I went to visit Molidor mill, the subsidiary of Seaboard Corp for which the parent company was looking for a Comptroller. I met Joel Stuart, the general manager of the company, an American guy who had been in place for just a few months and had found very few reasons to trust the comptroller he found in place when he took over, so he decided to fire the guy and ask for a new one.
Molidor, as explained by Stuart, was a wheat milling company founded in the early 50’ by a Guayaquil businessman by the name of Francisco Illezcas Barreiro, who brought all the machinery and equipment from Italy, together with several Italian technicians and millers, and built a brand new mill in the Southern outskirts of Guayaquil, in what was called in those days the “Barrio Cuba” or the Cuban neighborhood, located at the Southern end of the city, which in those days was inhabited by 250,000 people.



THE MIGHTY GUAYAS RIVER
AS IT PASSES BY GUAYAQUIL

The business was a success right from the beginning, because it substituted the wheat flour imported mostly from Canada and the United States, with wheat flour “made in Ecuador” and benefited from certain tax protection accordingly. In 1965, the company had been acquired by Seaboard Corp., in a joint venture with Continental Grain, from the old Mr. Illezcas Barreiro who thought inadvisable to pass on the business to his son “Panchito” whom his father thought not to be “up to the task”.
The Two US companies bought the mill at the bargain price of $900,000. The mill had become a cash cow since the Americans took over, but still they did not pay enough attention to it until the early 80’s.
My meeting with Stuart was a very business like one, he asked the questions and I answered them straight forward, in our conversation we inadvertently alternated English and Spanish. Stuart, an American citizen was then 43 year old, he had graduated from Thunderbird,the American Graduate School for International Management and had served in the US Navy for some time, he had been unemployed and living in Miami for over a year, after being dismissed from a managerial position at ARMCO in Uruguay, for reasons he did not want to expand about, and I didn’t think it would have been polite to ask. It was a two hour meeting during which we talked about anything and everything, but concentrated on the idea of filling a position which was critical for the company in Ecuador, and for the parent company in the US.
Stuart spoke Spanish relatively fluent (he had lived in Colombia and Uruguay for over a decade), and didn’t seem to trust some of the people around him and wanted to have a new man take control of the company’s finances and the books as he thought that the recently dismissed comptroller had been, in his words “mickey mousing” with the very large cash balances of the company by favoring certain banks to others.


THE CIVIC CENTER AND THE
SURROUNDING PARK
ARE ICONS OF THE MODERN
GUAYAQUIL

After this introductory meeting, Stuart introduced me to some other people in his staff, including an Italian man (Cesar Innocenzi), whom I had known for very many years (he lived in one of the apartments in the same house where I lived with my sister Lilita when I was a bachelor), and who had been the Production Manager until recently, but had been displaced to accommodate an American miller in his position. I could see that his staff was made of long time employees, probably very loyal but unprepared to function in a modern business environment. The accounting books, for example were kept in a very old NCR accounting machine that had disappeared from the business world in the United States at least a decade and a half ago. Nobody in the company had ever seen a computer at work, and they had no idea what a computer was all about.
I could see that for all practical purposes, the company was living in the first half of the twentieth century and they all seemed to ignore what was going on in the rest of the world in terms of computers and computerized accounting and management information and communication systems. It was depressing, but, at the same time I saw it as a challenge, or I felt it that way, any way. Stuart and I seemed to have connected very well, he was happy to have had a chance to meet me and he said he would highly recommend that I be hired for the position of new comptroller of Molidor. He also told me he had interviewed a couple of candidates before, but he did not think they were prepared for the job.


THE NEW RIVER FRONT -
BUILT IN 2000, IS THE PRIDE
OF THE CITY

After these meetings, I was taken for a tour of the mill which is located on a 20 acre prime piece of land, right on the shore of the beautiful and mighty Guayas River, the river which brings me so many reminiscences from the time I was a little child crossing on the “Galapagos” vessel serving the railroad passengers arriving in the other side of the river and bound to Guayaquil.

Afterwards I was taken to the five story building housing the massive milling machinery built in the early 50’s but still noisily and efficiently running to produce 20% of the whole wheat flour consumed in the country in those days.
The mill manager was trying to explain to me all the intricacies of the milling process, beginning with the discharging facilities in the mill’s own dock, through which the wheat was unloaded from the vessels coming from the US; the conveyor line taking the wheat to the silos and flat storage warehouses within the five story building, to the complex grinding and sifting of the product in process, and the semi manual bagging of the flour and the totally manual bagging of byproducts. It was all new to me, and, in spite of the attention I tried to pay to the miller’s speech, I could barely understand it due to the hellish noise within the mill. That day I took a crash course in milling, and while I was doing so, I couldn’t help but remember the words of Don Robhom in KC, about a month before: “what is, young man, your experience in the milling industry?”.

I also remembered that my answer was short and precise “None”...

In my next posting: BACK TO SLC AND PREPARE FOR MOVING

TOUGH INTERVIEW, NICE OUTCOME

About a minute passed with a complete silence in the room, finally that mass of fat human flesh opened his mouth and asked without mentioning my name “what is, young man, your experience in the milling industry?”, “none” I said, and he immediately retorted “then, what does it make you think that you qualify for the position you are applying for?". The man had touched a very sensitive nerve, and I answered “who had told you I´m applying for this position?”, he remained silent for a moment and said “well, the fact you are seating here means to me that you are looking for the job, am I right”, “no” I said,”the fact that I’m seating right here only means I have been invited by your company to come for a series of interviews related to an open position in your Ecuadorian operation" and added "I haven’t been and I am not looking for this job”, “but”, I added, rising my voice to show my disgust with the guy’s attitude “if you are trying to fill the position of Comptroller in your Ecuadorian Operation, regardless of the fact I don’t have any experience in the milling industry, and because of my professional background and years of experience, I know I’m very qualified for that position”, and added even in a higher voice, “perhaps even over qualified”. The man was seating there, pale, it was evident he did not like either the tone nor the content of my answer, he looked at me like a poisonous snake ready to jump on its prey, then, he kind of realized I was not an easy prey and began to look like he was going to back down, he looked nervous and said nothing for several seconds, finally he said “good for you, I wish you luck”. I was ready to tell the guy that, if I was chosen for the position I and was going to have to report to him, I had no interest whatsoever in the job, but, before I opened my mouth to say it, Dick Myers came to my rescue, he opened the door, without knocking on it, and said, “Rafael, I had to take you to the airport, we are getting late”, I stood up, looked at Robhom’s eyes and purposely lied by saying to him “nice meeting you”, then, I said good bye to that voluminous mass of ugly human fat, without shaking hands and shut his office door behind me. Two minutes later Dick and I took the elevator down to the garage, and while going down, Dick said “how was your interview with Robhom?” and after looking at my face and my eyes, he smiled like saying “I know what happened”. Which he did indeed...or suspected what happened any way.
As we started walking toward the garage, Dick said to me in a soft voice; “Rafael, what happened in that interview is not important whatsoever, don’t worry about it”, which was more than enough for me.
In our way to the airport the airport, Dick didn’t want to expand on what he had just said, and I didn’t either, so, our conversation centered basically in my family, my children, my past experience with de Ecuadorian Government Tax Department, with Arthur Andersen, with Northwest Pipeline, in the banking industry with COFIEC, and finally with APCO Argentina. About thirty minutes later we arrived to the KC airport and Dick and I said good bye to each other, while looking at our eyes. I knew we had made a real good connection.
In my flight back to SLC, I was wondering what laid ahead in my life. It was highly likely that I found the Seaboard’s proposal very attractive, and, as a result I would take my family back with me to Ecuador, in a matter of weeks. I started to wonder whether I was doing the right thing for my family. It is true, our life in the US had been good in general terms, my children were growing in a very nice and quiet city environment, their school was one of the best in the area, they had learned English, in a very short period of time, they have gotten used to their surroundings, to the neighbors, to the geography, to the weather, to the skiing, etc., and I was going to uproot them from all of that and transplant them to a whole new life, a life I grew up at, but that was totally allien to my children. Am I doing the right thing? I questioned myself. Evidently, all this was going to be material to be discussed with Fanny, again and again.
Three days after I arrived in SLC, Bill Messett (the headhunter) called me; he wanted to get some feed back about the interviews in KC. I told him that “almost” everything went fine. He said why do you say “almost” and not just “everything went fine”. I told him about my interview with the big fat guy, he laughed wholeheartedly for about a full minute, then he said “what an asshole that moron is” and added “I know what happened in your interviews in KC. I talked to Dick Myers and the man was so happy with you, he seemed to have known you for a life time”. Then he added, “Dick believes you will be happy when you see Molidor and you meet the people you might have to work with”, and continued; “Regarding Robhom, Dick said he was so f...disgusted with his whole attitude and behavior that he didn’t think the guy will last more than three months”, to which I added “I don’t know much about it, but Dick Myers didn’t seem to have a bit of respect for this SOB”. Three month later, when I was already in Guayaquil doing my job as Molidor’s comptroller, I received a circular letter from KC indicating that “Don Robhom had been dismissed as the company’s VP-Finance, effective July 1, 1984, and that he had filed a suit against the company for $800,000 for “moral damages”. A few months later I received another letter indicating that the guy had lost the legal battle. Thereafter, for all practical purposes the man disappeared from the scene. From the distance I'm glad I didn't have to wish him luck!
Back from KC, and energized by the possibilities being opened in the horizon, and after fully discussing everything with my “head counselor” Fanny, I went back to my job as a Comptroller of APCO Argentina. I had to fly again to Buenos Aires, the Cayman Islands and Bonaire, so as to leave everything in order(without telling anybody about my possible departure from APCO), so for anyone coming to replace me, it would be just a matter of hitting and running; I discussed my horizon in a confidential way with my friends and Northwest officers, Curt Kennedy (Comptroller); Piero Ruffinengo (a lawyer and counselor to the president); Steve Dougherty (a lawyer and a member of the legal Counseling group), and they all coincided that what was ahead for me was very good; that at this point in my life I should not be shy to take a chance like the one that was being offered to me. They all reassured me that I should take the opportunity. “Opportunities come and go”, Steve said to me, “they just come and go, they don’t wait for you”. I felt encouraged, really encouraged and started to feel more and more enthusiastic about what was coming.
Through the third week of April, I worked tirelessly with the APCO filings, I had a great deal of help from Steve Daugherty, therefore, I was able to have our corporate and tax filings done by then, so I called Dick Myers in KC, and told him I should be ready to go visit Molidor by the end of April. Tickets were placed immediately for me, and on April 28, 1984, I was flying to Guayaquil.

In my next posting: GUAYAQUIL AND MOLIDOR