THE KREMLIN

THE KREMLIN, IN MOSCOW MAY 2, 2011

On May 2, we started our last day in Moscow. Riding the same buses we had ridden for the previous three days, we headed to the Kremlin, the site of the heart and soul of the government of the powerful Russian Federation, we passed by the enormous, grayish building where the Russian Federation´s (Duma) congress meets, the Bolshoi´s ballet, and across it the monument to Karl Marx, the main brain of the Communist Ideology. I was glad to see that in behalf of billions of people around the free world, a group of pigeons were sitting on Marx´s head and shoulders, and they were happily depositing their digested food in the right place. By 10:30 A.M, we were making a line to enter into the most famous historical site of Russia, THE KREMLIN.

By 11:00 in the morning, we entered into this vast complex of historical many government buildings, cathedrals, churches, monuments and museums, constituting the entrails of the giant Russian bear.

THE KREMLIN´S BAND, CHANGING

GUARD AT 11:00 ON MAY 2, 2011

As we entered the complex, a large number of Kremlin Guards was leaving the area after completing their time on guard. May 2 was a normal working day in Moscow, after a long three day holiday, so, at the interior of those enormous buildings, the Russian government´s machine must have been busily working in business as usual, while we, a group of 156 tourists coming from the United States of America, were looking at everything with the natural curiosity and amazement of someone who is visiting a very important place for the first time.

THE YELLOW AND WHITE GOVENRNMENT

BUIKLDINGS WITHIN THE KREMLIN

I could not avoid thinking that nothing like this could have occurred only 25 years ago, when most Americans in Russia were seen as CIA spies if they were holding a camera, just as most Russians were seen in America as KGB spies. Well, those were the past days of the cold war, and I was very happy to be living this moment and enjoying every bit of it. After every step we took there seemed to appear a new great scenario for a new photo, and I could not keep pace with my wife and the other members of our group who were walking not very close behind our guides.

Our guide, Alexander, explained to us that the word Kremlin, in the Russian language means “refuge” or “fortress to protect a city from its potential and real enemies”, and that there are many “Kremlins” in Russia, although none of them is as famous and important to Russian History as the Moscow Kremlin. We were explained that Russians, who have been historically a people at war with its neighbors from all sides, used to build these fortresses wherever they felt they were menaced by their enemies and that the Moscow Kremlin, was built in the twelfth century after a hunting feast held atop a hill looking at the Moscow and Neglina Rivers within the dominions of Prince Yuri Dolgoruki, who was fighting the Mongol Empire which dominated vast Russian areas of what is now the immense Russian territory. That day, Yuri and his commanders decided that this was a perfect place to build a Kremlin, and so they did. Within a century, the town had risen to become an independent principality within the Mongol empire, and by the middle of the 14th century; its princes had gained such pre-eminence that Moscow was made the site of the Russian Orthodox Church and the center of the United Russian Empire.

It was under Tsar Ivan the Great, at the end of the 15^th century, that Muscovite rule extended over all of Russia, so ending three hundred years of Mongol dominance, and the Kremlin gained its role as the seat of Russian power, until Peter the Great transferred the capital of Russia to St. Petersburg a city he started from zero in what it was an enormous marshland. For centuries, then, the Kremlin served as the central stage for the magnificent and occasionally horrific history of the Tsars.

When the Bolsheviks chose Moscow as their capital in March 1918, the Moscow Kremlin returned it to preeminence, and during Soviet rule the Kremlin experienced its second life as a great center of power. Although the Soviet state certainly left its mark on the Kremlin, the centuries-old citadel very much retains the aura of early Tsarist Russia, especially in Cathedral (Red) Square, where the spirits of Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov, and the early Romanovs loom much larger than those of Stalin or even Lenin himself.

THE ASSUMPTION CATHEDRAL, WHERE THE

CORONATION OF THE TZARS USED TO TAKE PLACE

The magnificent Assumption Cathedral within the Kremlin walls, which was, for centuries, the site of the coronation of Russian Tsars is one of the most important icons of the Russian history. It was, just as most buildings within the Kremlin, completely destroyed by the French forces under Napoleon, before they left Moscow in full retreat, pursued by the Russian Army under the command of Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov in October of 1812.

As we extended our visit to this much historical places, I felt that I was going through history myself, at certain moments I felt like I was living the events that had taken place several centuries ago. I was, and I still am, fascinated by what I saw and heard. Entering the Cathedral where the coronation of the powerful Russian Tsars used to take place and looking at the chair where they used to take the oath of office, as it was so close to me, made me think of how ambivalent life can be. One moment, a man can be as powerful as a Russian Tsar, the undisputed master of life and land, and sooner or later that same man can be as insignificant as the ashes of any man in his tomb. I couldn´t help but think that we, all men and women, should act in our lives as if we knew we would be remembered only by those acts in our life which positively affect the lives of those around us, be them family, friends, community, country or the human kind. We all might be better as individuals if we could remember we are mortals and that eventually we will become just ashes in the wind.

THE LARGEST CANNON EVER BUILT

IT NEVER, EVER, SHOT A BULLET

We saw within the Kremlin, and took photos of the largest cannon that were ever built; a cannon that was ordered by Tsarina Catherine I, the daughter of Peter The Great in 1726, and that never ever shut a shot, because it was so big, there was no way to find the power to make it shoot a bullet. We saw within the Kremlin many of the Russian Executive branches of government, all of them painted in light yellow and white

THE LUXURIOUS CARRIAGES OF THE TZARS AS

EXHIBITED IN THE KREMLIN´S MUSEUM

We visited the Armory Chamber which preserves ancient state regalia, ceremonial Tsar’s vestments and Tsarinas´ unparalleled coronation dresses, vestments of the Russian Orthodox Church’s hierarchs, the largest collection of gold and silverware by Russian craftsmen, West European artistic silver, ceremonial weapons and arms, royal carriages and horse ceremonial harnesses.

ONE OF THE DRESSES OF CATHERINE

THE GREAT AS EXHIBITED IN THE KREMLIN

At 2:00 o´clock we completed our visit of the Kremlin; we had been into, and seen it from the inside, the very entrails of the giant bear. I never, ever, not even in my wildest dreams, had thought that I was going to be there. We came out fascinated from all we had seen and as we left the Kremlin from the Southern side, we saw the beautiful Moscow River and dozens of mid size vessels full all tourists navigating the Moskva River and viewing the Kremlin wall from the outside, in this sunny, magic, splendorous Spring day, in which Moscow was saying good bye to us and we were saying good bye to Moscow, as we were heading to the pier in a Moscow suburb where we were to board the Leo Tolstoy, the vessels in which we were set to navigate the Volga River, towards our next destination, the beautiful, the royal, the majestic, the unparalleled St. Petersburg.

In my next posting: NAVIGATING THE VOLGA

THE NEW MAIDEN CONVENT

THE ONION LOOKING GOLDEN DOMES OF

THE NOVODEVICHY MONASTERY AS

SEEN FROM THE DISTANCE

In order to avoid all the noise and streets blockages caused by the numerous parades celebrating Labor Day around the city of Moscow, on May 1^st, the most important Russian Holiday, we took an excursion to the famous Novodevichy Monastery known in English as The New Maiden Convent, situated about one hour away from Moscow. Our trip would include lunch at a typically Russian restaurant located a few blocks from the Monastery that is rightfully said to be one of Russia’s most stunning historical places, very pleasing to the eye, because of its white colored battlement walls and golden domes.

In our way to the Monastery we could see many suburban areas of Moscow, populated mainly by the Stalin–era four story buildings that are known mostly by their obscure and unforgettable past, than for their contributiuon to the well being of the Russians of the 30´s and 40´s. Subsequently remodeled, these buildings still exist as a monument to how a housing project should NOT be made and how people of any country in the world should NOT be treated.

After about forty minutes in the highway toward The New Maiden Convent, we entered an open area of the Russian country side, where immense forests on both sides of the road showed us with their young green leaves, the Russians most expected beginning of spring time.

THREE ECUADORIANS IN FRONT OF THE

MAIN CHURCH WITHIN THE MONASTERY

After about one hour on the bus, we arrived to the famous Monastery, and our guide, explained to us how much Russian history has close connections with religion. He explained to us that in the past, the monasteries used to play a very important role in the lives of all segments of the Russian people.

TWO ORTHODOX PRIEST AND ONE STUDENT.

THE LONG BEARD IS SINONIMOUS OF WISDOM

For many generations, monasteries were not only religious centers, but they were also places were history itself took place, not always in a pleasant way. The Novodevichy Monastery or New Maiden Convent is a fine example of this. Our guide explained to us that this monastery is associated with some major Russian historic events. One of them is the rivalry for the throne between Peter the Great and his sister Princess Sophia. After being defeated by her brother, Sophia was sent to this monastery by the new powerful monarch, where she died after many years in her “prison” where she became a nun. The current occupants of the Monastery, Orthodox priests and students they care of this Russian historical treasure of architecture and art.

The Monastery was founded by the Great Tsar, Vasily III, in the 16^th century and initially, was both a religious institution and a fortress at the same time, thus the monastery’s strong walls and 12 battlement towers. This place is probably the best example of architecture of the period between 16th and 19th centuries and occupies the land of a convent that used to be a nunnery for ladies of noble birth and it is occupied these days by a total of 36 orthodox monks and it is also a seminary for the formation of new monks of the orthodox church

OUR GUIDE TRANSLATES WHILE AN

ARMENIAN PRIEST EXPLAINS THE

HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY

Our visit to this monastery was very educational; as we had an Orthodox priest from Armenia, give us some insights of this historic place. The translation into English of this young priest´s brief recounting of the Monastery´s history was made by Alexander, our excellent guide. Afterwards, we were allowed to visit the many historical chapels and churches within this very large compound. Most of the chapels and churches within the monastery are now mostly museums where mastery paintings and sculptures are kept for future generations of Russians. By pure coincidence, however, the Patriarch of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was celebrating mass at the main cathedral of the Monastery, so, many of our tour companions attended at least part of this mass and came out amazed by the beauty of the church, the great art treasures that it guards, and the details of the Orthodox ceremonial mass they has just attended.

Meanwhile, not necessarily oblivious to the mass, but more interested in interconnecting with other visitors and Russian people, a couple of our companions and I, started a very interesting conversation with a group of about five young Russian primary students, who were also visiting the monastery. Surprisingly enough, they spoke good English so we were able to communicate fairly well with them. Dmitry, one of them was particularly interested in knowing who we were and where we came from.

ECUADORIANS POSING WITH RUSSIAN CHILDREN

WHILE TALKING ABOUT OUR COUNTRIES

The more we told them about us, the more questioning he became. He asked me if I could tell him a short story from my country, and, in about three minutes I told him my personal story without telling him it was my own. At the end, I asked him if he liked my story, and he happily answered that he was indeed very happy to have heard it, and that he would tell it to his peers and to his parents. By the way, he said, “I suspect the person whose story you have told us, its you, isn´t it? This was one of the highest points of my visit to Russia. I´ll never forget this young kid´s bewitched happy face.

As the Monastery´s story goes, during the course of time, the Monastery started to be used as a cemetery for Russia's intellectuals and merchants, and, in the 20th century, it became a cemetery for many of the Soviet Union's most well-known citizens. During the Soviet era, after the innicial looting and destruction, as order was restored, many art treasures were saved and the Monastery was converted into a Museum of Russian art.

At about one O´clock in the afternoon, we left the monastery and were taken to a typically Russian restaurant in the surrounding country side where crystal clear water converged from different brooks, while spring was showing its nascent green best in the surrounding hills.

SMALL RUSSIAN MERCHANTS SELLING

THEIR HAND MADE MERCHANDISE IN

THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE MONASTERY

Just as we see in Ecuador and in many other Latin American countries, as we walked to the restaurant, we could see many small merchants showing, on top of their small table-like stands, their merchandize for the tourists, consisting mostly of “matrushkas” and other Russian inexpensive souvenirs with prices in Russian currency (exchange rate about 28 Rubbles for one dollar) fluctuating between five and ten dollars apiece. Many of the people in our tour stopped for five to ten minutes to buy these souvenirs.

A RUSSIAN STYLE STEW ON OUR TABLE

NEAR NOVODEVICHY MONASTERY

The Restaurant was full with the 156 people in our tour, the service was not “great” to say the least, as only two waitresses were minding our whole group, but, at least for our group of Ecuadorians, the food was “ok”. It consisted of a cabbage salad, with the main course being a stew made with small peaces of beef, potato and tomato, tasting very much like a Hungarian Goulash, served in a casserole type of plate. This was the best of the three dishes finally served. The most important thing, it calmed our hungry stomachs. After lunch, and at about three in the afternoon, we were bussed back to Moscow, a trip during which everybody slept. By the time we arrived, all the fuzz from the many parades was gone.

This was going to be our last full day in Moscow, so we, the Ecuadorians decided that we wanted to eat Russian food at a good restaurant. The Café Pushkin, an icon of Moscow, and the place we wanted to go right from the beginning of our trip, unfortunately was out of the question, because it was closed for renovations, so we again requested the hotel´s front desk´s help to find a good place. They recommended a Kazakh restaurant on Tverskaya Ave. about three blocks from Mayakovskaya metro station. After a minor confusion about the address of the restaurant, we found it. We were the only foreigners in the whole palace which was patronized mainly by Russians, Armenians and Kazakhs. There we found a young man (Vassily), about 30, who knew (from the reservation made at the hotel) we were coming. He spoke a perfect English with a New York accent (as a student he had lived in New York City for five years), and introduced us to the rest of the waitresses and waiters in the whole floor. From then on, we were waited on as VIP’s. We ordered wine and every one of us was free to choose from the menu. At the end of dinner, everyone was very happy to have come to this place, where we shot many photos, including some with the personnel in the restaurant.

DINING AT A KAZAKH RESTAURANT IN MOSCOW

That was a nice way to say good bye to Moscow, a city which we had enjoyed from the beginning to the end. The icing on the cake had not been eaten yet, though, as our visit to the inside of the Kremlin was programmed for the following morning, after which we were programmed to get on board of the Leo Tolstoy, a nice looking vessel which had been used by the Kremlin’s big shots in Soviet times, and that had been reconditioned for tourism after the fall of the Soviet regime.

THE BEAUTIFUL AND ENIGMATIC RUSSIA

RAFAEL AND FANNY IN FRONT OF THE KREMLIN'S
MAIN TOWER, IN MOSCOW, RUSSIA,
ON APRIL 30, 2011

It has been about three weeks now since we returned from our trip to Russia, a fascinating experience, not only because of that country’s history, its culture, art, music, geography, science, industry and why not its politics; but mostly because of its people who have made possible all their achievements throughout history, in spite of the fact that they have been at war most of the time since their early history in the 9th century. In the following three or four postings I will try to tell you, my readers, about our experience during the three weeks we spent traveling through the largest country in the world; 6.6 million square miles (17 million square kilometers) or twice the size of the US, and 143 million people or less than one half the population of the US (10 times the population of Ecuador):
In September 2010, Fanny and I invited three couples of Ecuadorian friends to visit Russia and the three Baltic States’ capitals, traveling with Vantage Travel, a reputed travel agency based in Boston. The tour would start at the end of April, 2011, and would last for three weeks. Preparations for our tour started immediately and lasted until the very last minute when our Guayaquil friends Carol and Yolanda Morales, Celso and Silvia Santacruz finally obtained their visas to enter the Baltic States. Fernando and Mercedes Rivera, our Quito friends flew directly from Quito to Moscow via Amsterdam, whereas the rest of us flew from Orlando to Moscow via Washington DC. Moscow is the largest city in Europe and one of the largest in the world, with a population of approximately 14 million people.



SIX ECUADORIAN FRIENDS ARRIVING IN MOSCOW'S DOMODEDOVO AIRPORT IN THE MORNING OF APRIL 29, 2011

On April 29, at mid morning we arrived at the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, and contrary to what we had expected, based on anticipated weather reports, Moscow received us with clear skies and warm temperatures. Upon arrival, we were taken by a Vantage bus from the airport to the five star Moscow Grand Marriott Hotel (the hotel where President Clinton was housed while in an official visit to Moscow in 1999). The hotel is located in downtown Moscow on Tverskaya Ave., one of the main streets of Moscow, and at a 20 minute walking distance from the Red Square and the Kremlin, the official site of the Russian Government.
After a few hours of resting which allowed us to get over the jet lag, at about 9:30 PM and still with daylight, we ventured ourselves into the streets of Moscow heading on Tverskaya Ave. toward Red Square and the Kremlin. As we walked, we could see that on both sides of this very important avenue, very many western style fashion stores were open and minding their customers’ business just as we could see similar stores in New York, London or Paris. This was a clear indication that Russians are already living a capitalist economy, after only 20 years of having thrown away the sclerotic communist economy which so much damage caused to the Russian people and to the world. For the four men in our group, what impressed us the most, was the number and beauty of young Russian girls walking in the streets, they were all fair skinned, most of them blond or light browned hair, wearing very short miniskirts which allowed us to see their sculptural formed long legs, very high heels and their faces showing a nice and fashionable make up. They all looked to us like modeling girls in a sophisticated fashion parade prepared for us Ecuadorians who love to watch young and good looking blondes.

As we continued to walk, soon we could see at a short distance, the lights of St Basil Cathedral, the most recognizable icon of Moscow and the lights on top of the Kremlin wall as well. It was like a dream come true, as we all had wished at a certain point in our lives, to see these places personally, many times considering it an almost impossible dream.


FOUR ECUADORIAN VISITORS IN MOSCOW'S RED
SQUARE, ST. BASIL CATHEDRAL AND THE KREMLIN


We took many photos. Husbands took photos of their wives, wives took photos of their husbands, and we all took photos of one another, in couples and in groups. Deep in our minds, we felt the magic spell of being in a place most people would like to see and they will never be able to see in their lifetime. Our friend Carol Morales bought a Cossacks’ artificial fur hat which was a perfect fit for his bold head at a time when the temperature had dropped to the low 60’s and he needed to warm it up. Walking along the same avenue as we returned to the hotel at about midnight, we could see that Moscow, just as any big city in the capitalist world, was just beginning its night life and was full of young people preparing themselves to have a fun time with music, dancing and drinking. We felt extremely happy to be there, and to be part of this happy group of people glued to one another by one common feeling: friendship at its best.


FOUR ECUADORIANS INSIDE THE KREMLIN, AT A
SHORT DISTANCE FROM THE MAIN OFFICES OF THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT MEDVEDEV

By mid morning the following day, Vantage had scheduled a Moscow City Tour for all the 156 people in our tour, which altogether filled four bus loads. Our mini group “the Ecuador group” was assigned to the red banner bus to which a great tour guide was assigned; Alexander Kovalenko, a Languages and History teacher at the School of Tourism of the University of Moscow. By 10:30 AM we were taken inside Red Square and right in front of St Basil Cathedral, the iconic relic of the old Moscow Imperial times which is located at the Southern entrance to the Red Square, proudly showing its Byzantine Orthodox Architecture domes to the whole city of Moscow and to the world. Neither the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, nor its heirs during the following 70 years, had the guts to destroy this icon of the Russian culture, religion and civilization, in spite of their hatred for everything and anything that could remind the Russian people of their religious past and heritage.

Among other interesting things we could see that morning was the Bolshoi Theater (under renovation at the moment of our tour), the place where Russians show to the world their Bolshoi Ballet, the most famous ballet in the world. We visited the house where Alexander Pushkin, the greatest Russian poet of all times lived.


THREE ECUADORIAN LADIES IN MOSCOW, WITH THE
STATUE OF THE GREATEST RUSSIAN POET OF ALL TIMES
AND HIS WIFE IN THE BACKGROUND

We also passed by many monuments reminding to Russians and to the world of the heroes of the many wars the Russians had fought over the centuries. We saw the Moscow River (an important tributary of the Great Volga) and we could see the many bridges built to cross it within the city, some of which are true works of art and architecture. A brief but very important part of our Moscow city tour was our riding on the city’s famous subway system, built around the mid 1930’s. The subway runs about 150 feet below the surface as it was built with the idea in mind that it could eventually be utilized as a shelter from wars to come. History tells us that indeed, during WW II, the subway tunnels were a highly secure shelter for the people in Moscow when the city was attacked by the German Army. What makes the Moscow subway system unique in its class is the series of train stations that have been built with the idea of providing the subway users an opportunity to enjoy Russian art, particularly sculpture and painting as they pass by each station. Each station has, therefore, become a kind of an excellent museum of art for Muscovites to enjoy.
Of all the great things we saw and enjoyed during our Moscow city tour, it is relevant to note that most of the monuments, buildings, statues and churches that are at the core of this beautiful city and the tour guides are proud to show and talk about, were built before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and have been either well preserved during the communist regime or have been restored to their original beauty after the fall of the Soviets in 1989.

On the other hand, we were also allowed to see in Moscow, many of the housing projects built during the Stalin era, which have become a monument to the poor judgment and little common sense of the communist government when trying to solve the monumental problem of providing housing to a fast growing population of the Russian capital. They are enormous blocks of four story houses where people were forced to live in almost inhuman conditions; entire groups of six to eight family members had to live in 300 feet (30 square meters) apartments without a kitchen, without a toilet or a laundry room, as these luxuries had to be shared by ten to twelve families in one floor of the building. It wasn’t until the mid fifties, after the Stalin’s death and under Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev that a new massive housing program was initiated which included toilets and kitchens in each apartment, though the size of the apartments remained about the same.
The night of May 30, we decided to have dinner on our own and requested help from the Customer Service desk at the hotel. They sent us to the Kitezh restaurant, housed in the ground floor of an old style building next to the Petrovsky monastery in the heart of Moscow, a well known restaurant featuring Russian and international food, where we had a great dinner, drank wine and vodka and had a real good time, feeling the flavor of Moscow and Russia on our own. In our way back to the hotel we had to take a taxi so as to be on time for the Moscow at Night tour during which we saw almost the same places we had seen in the morning, but this time illuminated by the Moscow lights. The St Basil Cathedral, the Red Square the Kremlin and the largest shopping mall in Russia, right across the Kremlin, were especially illuminated for the celebration of May Day, one of the most important Russian holidays since the Soviet era.
The following day we had chosen to take a tour to visit the famous Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, one of the oldest, biggest and historically most famous Orthodox monasteries in Russia




VIEWS FROM MOSCOW, THE BEAUTIFUL CAPITAL OF RUSSIA

Following is a brief description of Moscow as taken from Wikipedia:
Moscow, the capital and the most populous city of Russia is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation center of Russia and the continent. Moscow is one of the most northern cities on Earth , with a population of approximately 14 million, the most populous city of Europe, and the sixth largest city in the world.
Moscow is situated on the banks of the Moskva (Moscow) River in Central European Russia. In the course of its history the city has served as the capital of a progression of states, from the medieval Grand Duchy of Moscow and the subsequent Tsardom of Russia to the Soviet Union. Moscow is the site of the Moscow Kremlin, an ancient fortress that is today the residence of the Russian President and of the executive branch of the Government of Russia. Both chambers of the Russian parliament (the State Duma and the Federation Council) also sit in Moscow.
The city is served by an extensive transit network, which includes four international airports, nine railroad terminals, and the Moscow Metro, second only to Tokyo in terms of ridership and recognized as one of the city's landmarks due to the rich and varied architecture of its 182 stations.

TIME OUT

DEAR READERS, FAMILY AND FRIENDS:
I'd like to apologize to all of you for my absence in my blog for the next several weeks, as I will be travelling to Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. I will be visiting Moscow and several Russian cities and villages on the shore of the great Volga River and Lake Onega, before arriving in St. Petersburg. I will be also visiting the three Baltic States that declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, before returning to the US.
Upon my return, I will tell you things in my blog about those fascinating countries and will show you pictures of the most interesting places I will be visiting.
Please do not forget me, I beg you to understand that I need to take some time off my blog, so as to refresh my mind and have new interesting things to tell you about.
I'm already looking forwards to visiting you again sometime in June and wish you all have a very happy Easter.

Rafico

MODERNIZATION CREATES RESISTANCE

By mid August 1984, our children were back in school. From a large, physically and academically well organized school with over one thousand three hundred students in Salta Lake City, they were transferred to a very small school in the Lomas de Urdesa, in Guayaquil; The Inter American Academy was a school with only 200 students, most of them the children of expatriate executives who had been, transferred from their countries of origin, such as the US, Europe and Asia, to Ecuador. Ecuador was living in these days a time of relative economic prosperity resulting from a rare period of political stability and government openness to private business and foreign investment. President Febres Cordero had just taken over and he was a supporter of private enterprise and free market, therefore, opportunities were opening for foreign investment and several companies were coming to the country to expand and or open their businesses.
All but a very few teachers in the school were American, they were a mix of mostly young teachers coming from different places in the US who had been hired in a special fair in Minneapolis where American schools around the world were offering working opportunities to teachers who wanted to have an overseas experience which would allow them to know the world and simultaneously make a buck before returning to the US after two or three years.
In spite of the youth of most teachers, the school was good; it kept good academic standards and prepared students very well for their future attendance to US or other International universities, through the International Baccalaureate program. Spanish as a second language was taught by local teachers with an impressive, almost astounding success. We felt our children were in good hands academically. By mid school year, my wife, Fanny who had been a teacher for many years, was invited to join the school as a teacher of Spanish as a second Language. She worked there for seventeen years until the year 2001 when our daughter Angie, the youngest in the family, graduated from the school.
At work, my mission continued. Among the innumerous deficiencies Molidor had as a result of decades of poor management, the company did not have a policy regarding salary revisions for its 130 people. The Blue collar workers were given a raise once a year when the government, generally at the beginning of each year, raised the minimum salary through a law that would barely recognize the effect of the previous years’ inflation on the workers’ salaries. As a result, all its blue collar workers’ salaries were kept at the minimum level allowed by law. The rest of the employees only had a raise whenever the big boss pleased to do so, without a policy, without following a procedure, and without regard to the reaction of the other employees around, not to mention the market. It was a really chaotic situation with which nobody was happy, but nobody would complain about either, for fear of being seen as a trouble maker, and therefore, becoming a candidate for dismissal. In those days, as it is today, Ecuador is one of those places where most qualified and educated workers consider themselves happy to have a job, so, they care for it as a precious thing that places them among the “privileged” to have a job. That is not necessarily the case with blue collar workers, especially when they belong to a union. Unionized workers feel very secure in their jobs because of a very protective Labor Code that severely penalizes the employer and rewards the worker if dismissed. As a result, the quality and productivity of labor is very low and gets worse as seniority becomes an additional rewarding issue when a worker is dismissed.
Considering the above, I started a program of periodical evaluations of the white collar workers, and encouraged the mill’s operations’ manager to start a program geared to reward productivity among the blue collar workers in the mill. A totally uneducated, quasi-illiterate operations manager, an American red neck from the Deep South, who considered the mill his private ground, and the workers in the mill like slaves in a Southern Cotton plantation, did not like my suggestions at all. He considered my suggestions as an unwelcome intromission in HIS private ground. I suspect he did not like me at all because I was ONLY an Ecuadorian, and as such, in his mind I was not qualified to make suggestions to him, a descendant of some kind of Lords from the South. That created a tense situation which led in a certain occasion to a confrontation of ideas, a field in which he had none, and he could only say that he thought I was “on the take”, something he brought abruptly and of course was never able to substantiate.
My evaluations program for the human resources started, as a sample format, I used the evaluation sheet we had been using at Northwest Pipeline, with some needed changes, of courses. Personal evaluations were to be made to all salaried white collar workers, at least once a year, on the day of the employee’s anniversary. Special care was put in making sure that the person was evaluated in all aspects of his or her work, placing special emphasis in their ability to create ideas and suggestions, to follow instructions and demonstrate leadership. The person’s weak as well as strong points had to be clearly indicated and the evaluation was to be personally discussed with the person being evaluated by the evaluating supervisor. A training program was to be suggested for the employee to work on his/her weak points and the person in charge of such training had to be suggested in the same sheet of paper. The evaluation sheet would be then delivered to me for a review, and then to the general manager for the final approval of the salary adjustment suggested. Soon things started to move forward, people started to work with an additional motivation; their expected salary adjustments would now be the result of a well thought of, and carefully prepared and discussed evaluation, which they will be very well made aware of. This created the need for a “Human Resources Department” replacing the existing “payroll desk” which did nothing but pay the people on the due time.
Back in 1984, the medical care provided by the Ecuadorian Social Security to its affiliates was very poor, and most often their doctors took the easy path of ordering the workers to go home and rest for three days to two weeks for a minor problem. This produced a lot of unproductive paid time to the workers, which I thought could be reduced, if the company paid a privately provided health care through an insurance policy. This is on top of the fact the company had an in house part-time doctor to take care for the workers’ minor health problems. Unproductive time could be reduced, I thought, and prepared an analysis of the lost time costs vs. a company paid private medical insurance for the workers, It was a no brainer, therefore, by 1985 such medical insurance for the workers was established and worked well for many years until the company was liquidated in 2008. The workers were happy to have a much better medical care for them and their dependants, while the company gained good will and reduced its lost time costs dramatically.
Believe it or not, up until 1984, Molidor, a wholly owned subsidiary of American companies, did not have its monthly financial statements translated to dollars as it has always been required for a reasonable understanding, by the shareholders, of the numbers therein. The monthly Sucre –denominated financial statements, as was the procedure, were mailed monthly to the Kansas City parent company office with no comments or footnotes whatsoever, and I guess, were placed somewhere in somebody’s files to never be looked at, or analyzed. A total waste of time and paper, as well as a total lack of information about the subsidiary’s operations for the entire year, until the external auditors did the translation of the year-end financial statements, on their own and without anybody in the company knowing how it was done, before submitting their annual auditors’ report to the shareholders in KC. That seemed to me one of the most important priorities I needed to work on. By September 1984, I had started already the process of conversion of the financial statements to dollars, following the regulations of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (“AICPA”). It took about three months of hard work to compile the historic dollar costs of all PP&E and Long-term Assets and Liabilities, for purposes of their translation to dollars using the corresponding historical exchange rates, but, as of December 31, 1984, and for the first time in the company’s history, we were able to submit our financial statements to the parent company, as prepared in-house, by our group, without any external help, following the rules and regulations of the AICPA. Our work was fully validated by the external auditors and, KPMG did not have to do that for us anymore. The general manager of the company, whose involvement in the day to day activities of the company was near nil, limited himself to applaud our achievements without a clear knowledge of what we were really doing.

In my next posting: CHANGES CONTINUE

THE FAMILY AND I BEGIN TO ADJUST

By June 1984, my family and I had moved from one place to another five times in the last nine years, First, it was from Guayaquil to Quito in 1975, then from Quito to Salt lake City in 1980, then from Salt Lake City to Houston in 1982, then back from Houston to Salt lake City in 1983, and now, in 1984, from Salt lake City to Guayaquil. Thinking about it, we could have been seen like a Gipsy family, but we were not.
It was just a series of changes from which we learned a lot, from which we enriched our lives and those of our children, for each change there was a good reason, in each change we moved ahead and strengthened our family ties, wherever we went, we grew some roots and flourished, in every place we lived there was a reason to be comfortable and there were many people we liked and were very much liked by. For many reasons we began feeling that we were citizens of the world. In one single way we definitely made headway, we became definitely bicultural, by respecting and maintaining our values and our culture, we honored our homeland and our forefathers, while by absorbing the American culture and values we bettered ourselves enormously.
Even twenty seven years after we left America to return to our country, we love America in the same way we loved it when we returned to Ecuador. Even after such a long time living in Ecuador, we appreciate the people around us not for the amount of money they have, for the fancy house they live in or the fancier car they drive, but for their personal and family values. As an example, we always keep in mind that the lack of punctuality is one of the facts that distinguish Ecuadorian from Americans, even if we sometimes are criticized by our friends we keep our acquired sense of respect for everybody else’s time by being punctual to our appointments, be they a doctor's appointment, a birthday party or a simple get together for a drink. That, we learned from our American friends, that we feel very proud about, and it is because of that, that we will keep in our minds that if we are called for an eight O’clock meeting, that means eight O’clock, not eight thirty or nine O’clock, it is because of that, that we won’t ever have to look for excuses to justify not being punctual to a meeting. In this respect, we are culturally Americans, and are very proud of being so.
Now that we were back where we belong, there were many reasons to be grateful and to be happy about. Our children didn’t take long to get adjusted. During the first two months after our arrival, they were on vacations from school, Mariuxi was 8, Rafael Jr. was 6 and both were fully bilingual, so they didn’t have any language problems to deal with. Little Angie was only 2 and a half and because her big sister and brother spoke English to her, she spoke mostly English but understood Spanish fairly well. It was amazing; in a matter of 30 days she was also speaking Spanish as she spent a lot of time with her Spanish speaking cousins.
By the time we moved out of the Oro Verde Hotel to our new home in Urdesa, she was already speaking and even screaming to her cousins and siblings in fluent Spanish. She was just like a little sponge, absorbing every bit of language she was exposed to. In the meantime, her big sister and brother began to adjust, while liking it very much, the concept of the larger family, which includes as members of one single family the cousins, the nephews, the nieces, the aunts, uncles, grandpas, grandmas, etc., which is a beautiful way of seeing someone's family.
Meanwhile, I began to learn about the rhythm of work at the mill, where an old style of management had prevailed in spite of changes in the management - which had included at least two expatriates at the top and one at the comptrollers’ level. Things had not changed very much in terms of management since the times of the old owner and founder of the mill, Mr. Francisco Illezcas. After all, this was one of those businesses where the management did not have to do much of an effort to promote the sale of its products. Selling wheat flour in Ecuador until just very recently, had been like selling hot bread in a good bakery. Customers not only used to make lines to buy the flour, but they actually used to pre-pay and wait in line for days so the mill would “make them the favor” of shipping the pre-paid sale.
Under those circumstances, it was no wonder that the previous two guys at the top, where just golfers and socialites who were concerned more about what was the next big party at the Union Club or what was the next golf tournament at the Guayaquil Country Club, than about how to improve the company’s sales or its bottom line, which was going to be good no matter what, unless someone smart and dishonest enough would play around with the money that was the only thing the company was not short off.
It was under those circumstances and business environment that I had to start my monumental task of putting Molidor on track as a modern, internationally owned business entity, first by planning and then by implementing policies, procedures and internal controls geared to make the company an organized corporation. When I look back at what I had to do at the time, the human team I had available to me, and the time frame I imposed myself to do it, I think I was extremely overly optimistic, however, as the time went by, and as I was little by little, but consistently advancing in my task, I realize how much one is able to achieve when you work with all your heart and mind put at the service of one cause.
I was able only then to realize that I was not alone in the task of doing the impossible things, I had a man behind me, whose honesty and knowledge of the company, because of his many years of service to it, was like an old, wide open gold mine, I was able to dig into, and extract almost pure, quasi elaborate gold for the purpose of my work.
That man was Jorge Luis Lazo, at the time a 42 year old man (same as me), who had worked for Molidor for over twenty two years in many positions, starting at the bottom, and who was the company’s head bookkeeper at the time of my arrival in Molidor. Jorge was the type of man who would put his heart in anything you asked to do, and he did it never challenging your ideas (his weakest point and one he was never able to overcome). Therefore, having him as my lieutenant was a great advantage because he was always a pusher, a leader who was always in the front, at the head of his group, but at the same time it was a great risk, because he would blindly follow the orders and the time lines without weighing the possibilities of the collateral risks involved, especially when making changes that would have long lasting effects in the organization.
Jorge had in his staff a group of four assistant bookkeepers, all very young and smart, and as such, very open minded, they had recently graduated from Colegio Mercantil, a well known local secondary school, reputed as the best business High School in Guayaquil, all of whom were, at the time, attending business school classes at the University of Guayaquil. That was another great advantage I found in the process of accomplishing my mission to transform Molidor into a modernly organized and well managed business entity. As my plan of modernizing Molidor advanced, getting to better know the people I had to work with, made a great difference, because before that, I thought to myself, almost literally, that my mission was going to be like going from the middle ages to the modern society, without having to go through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment stages of our Western civilization, with the little support of people who would not have a real understanding or sympathy for what I was trying to do.
After three months of working in the indoctrinating process with the accounting team, I felt very encouraged, and I was now ready to jump into what was going to be one of the most challenging and most rewarding missions I had ever faced in my whole career as a professional, Modernizing Molidor, taking it from the first half of the twentieth century to the fast developing management policies and procedures of the end of the century.
While going through the planning and execution of my plan, I thought many times, how rewarding for my ego would have been to show Don Robhom, that deformed mass of human fat in Kansas City, how much I was doing for the subsidiary of the company he was the VP-Finance, and for which he had done so little. Never mind, I did not have the chance to do that, because that physically and mentally deformed man, had been fired less than two months after I took over the comptrollership position at Molidor.
In my next posting: MODERNIZATION CREATES RESISTANCE

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