|
EL SALVADOR
A TROUBLED COUNTRY
TPB impressions of El Salvador going back to the 1970s
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I was CFO of a US based international seafood company in the 1970s. One of my first assignments was to address the issue of profitability at our subsidiary companies in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
My first visit to El Salvador was interesting, to say the least. Our partners in El Salvador were very much at the top of society in the country. The President of our local subsidiary was also a major coffee grower and exporter and the company's local attorney and board member was active in an international organization to preserve Spanish culture and was the proud recipient of a gold medal from Franco himself. Both of these gentlemen were very competent and a pleasure to work with.
The shrimp fishing company had its trawlers based at Puerto del Triunfo on the Pacific coast. The shore facilities within a company compound included the docks, slipway, maintenance area, processing plant and cold store. There were also some guest quarters and reception area. All of these facilities were maintained in immaculate condition.
The local community was rural and poor. Local people were proud to work at the plant and be employed on the vessels. The company for its part invested modestly but significantly in things like water wells and clinical supplies for the community.
I had prepared myself ahead of time by learning some basic conversational spanish ... and though my language skills are modest at best, I was able to handle a fairly simple conversational social exchange. When I attended the local company's Board Meeting, I indicated that I would be able to follow in Spanish ... which was almost true. As the meeting progressed the level of disagreement grew and grew and the loudness and the conversational speed. Eventually, they turned to me and asked if I agreed? I indicated that I did and the meeeting was over. I thought I had agreed to a 5% bonus to the stockholders, but in fact I had agreed to a 50% bonus ... which did not go down very well with my boss back in the United States. I was lucky to keep my job ... but it taught me that I needed to be very careful in multilingual situations.
In some ways this mistake might well have been beneficial in that the local management became very supportive of myself and our company ... which was mutually beneficial over a considerable length of time.
Some of the time, I stayed in San Salvador, the capital. One evening I took a stroll through the city center and stopped to listen to someone who was making a speach to a growing crowd of people. Soon a column of people carrying banners came down one of the main roads into the square filling it up. It was pretty interesting ... and I stuck around at the back of the crowd taking it all in.
After a while I felt something poking me in the back ... turned round and found a soldier prodding me with his rifle and gesturing me to get out of the way. I looked further and saw armoured vehicles drawn up in all the side streets. While I do not scare easily ... or did not when I was younger ... it seemed like a rapid retreat to the safety of the hotel would be a good idea.
This 'manifestation' was the beginning of the 'troubles' in El Salvador. Our subsidiary in El Salvador kept going for quite a long time into this period, but eventually things had to change and we exited. The problem with violence is that it accelerates economic and social decline ... a lesson few people seem to hqave taken to heart.
For a long time I used to observe that my memories of El Salvador were from before the time when the international TV crews arrived.
Peter Burgess
|
