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  • From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Emilio Rojas Contreras, my business associate and dear friend
  • Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 15:06:03 -0700



I have been privileged in business association with a long list of highly competent people and three completely crooked ones---one I put out of business in Houston, one I got a multi-million dollar verdict against in Houston Court, one I would have killed, but for the fact I could do nothing worse than allow him to live to cope with a fourteen year-old daughter he had to keep in a padded cell within his house.

But the most talented economic broken-field runner had to be Emilio Rojas Contreras. Born to parents who started and ran the biggest jelly and jam factory in Chile they and he had to cope with the double disaster of Salvador Allende and Pinochet, which meant looking outside the country.

I ran into him in Esmeraldas, Ecuador where I was thinking about buying a shrimp-processing plant owned by one Robert Stills (you got it, father of the Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young musical group)

Found out Robert Stills was a crook, trying to dump his free factory (financed by a no-strings-attached $500,000 loan, really a gift from Balfour and Guthrie in Scotland) on us before it collapsed around his ears---he didn't pay anybody, not the shrimp fleet, not his suppliers of boxes, not the Communist metal fabricator in Esmeraldas who made his freezer trays (big mistake), not the banker who he conned into loaning him the Port Captain's payroll, not the Port Captain who is God in South American seaports (worst possible mistake.)

It began as a weird experience---a five and one-half hour drive from Guayaquil, by a maniac taxicab driver who knew only two throttle positions, wide open and idle---stopping at Army outposts to fish a bottle of Coca Cola from an ancient water-filled cooler, and through two inches of scum on the top. Then there were the encounters of the fourth kind---flying through herds of cattle and trucks headed the opposite direction on a road built for a single line of traffic.

Anyway, I finally got to Esmeraldas---then the problem became how the hell to get out and go to Quito---didn't want a repeat of the taxicab trip to Guayaquil, even if a taxicab were available in Esmeraldas for a long trip---which it wasn't.

So the owner of the tiny hotel in downtown Esmeraldas told me what to do---go to the airline ticket representative a couple blocks away, and buy an airline ticket to Quito.

The airline ticket representative turned out to be an ancient old lady running a tiny grocery. She sold me a ticket, and said to get to the Esmeraldas airport, I would have to take a taxi to the riverfront, where I could hire a boat to take me to the airport on the other side of the river. Not exactly the way it worked. I hired a taxi, hired a dugout canoe and operator, and headed for the open sea. Went about five miles out in the Pacific Ocean across sand flats I could touch with my hand, and five miles back up the other side of the river, plus another two or three miles to the crumbled relic of a bridge that used to carry traffic from Esmeraldas to the airport.

Oh, yeah, I forgot---anxious to not miss the airplane, I asked the old-woman ticket-seller if she was sure I would be at the airport when the airplant to Quito came in. She said sure, her taxicab-operator son would make sure the airplane did not leave without me.

Got out of the canoe, expecting the "airport" would be close by. That didn't happen either, trudged with my luggage across three miles of tall grass and brush to a grass strip that was the "airport", with a tin shed in which a radio-operator and dispatcher lurked. Showed him my ticket and was told the airplane to Quito would be in momentarily and I could board it.

He pointed to what turned out to not be not a DC-3, but a Cessna 205, barely visible it was dragging so low through the treetops. It landed, threw off a bundle of newpapers and taxied up to the tin shed, where it proceeded to load gasoline by a very suspicious procedure---no attempt to drain water out of the wing tanks via a drain-valve, and a fifty five gallon fuel drum was rolled to the airplane, its unfiltered and water-contaminated contents pumped into the wing tanks.

This is where I first met Emilio. As I inspected the plane he approached for the same purpose. I explained my doubts about fuel safety, and we made a physical inspection---the horizontal stabilizer and rudder severely damaged by flying through treetops, the thread showing on worn out tires, AND THE PROP, great balls of fire, THE PROP.
BIG crack for or five inches from the tip. I knew if that let go, the engine would rip out of the mounts.

Asked the pilot how the hell that happened. He shrugged and said he ran into a maintenance stand in Quayaquil, but the ower of the airplane told him to ignore it. Ignored bad weather too, flying through clouds almost at ground-level, a lot of which had solid rock centers, and accounting for flying through treetops at the Esmeraldas airport.

I told Emilio it would be suicide for us to fly to Quito in that wreck, he agreed and we took the long trek back to the Esmeraldas ticket-witch, across three miles of tall grass and brush, down seven miles of river out in the ocean, back five miles on the other side of the river, back to the ticket-witch for a refund and to buy a truck-taxicab ticket to Quito.

Hell on wheels, a five and one-half hour grind up a thirty-five degree angle incline, almost no places to pass, and similar truck-taxis coming at us head-on, brakes burned out and flying. No safety rails of course, a thousand-foot drop to the river valley below, and I knew how lucky we were when we arrived at Quito and read the daily obituary---the entire back page devoted to deaths on the road we travelled. I didn't even mention the physical problems of the trip---dusty, hot as hell, goats, chickens on board, together with their owners carrying gunnysacks full of clothes, foodstuffs and no small amount of homemade hooch.

Before we left Quito, Emilio wandered about sniffing for bargains. Found an old-time hardware dealer who had hard-to-sell items stored for decades on the upper floor. Part of those hard-to-sell items were five hundred genuine Tiffany lamps he bought for five dollars apiece and Ka-Ching!, sold for five hundred dollars apiece in New York.

But back to the Emilio history. To escape Arbenz and Pinochet he concocted a highly profitable "Transire" scheme. By mutual treaty in South America, all countries allow six-month duty-free operation of businessman automobiles during which businessmen can transact business and go on their merry way.

Emilio examined this fact and figured out how to turn it to his bank account advantage. He bought about fifty Mercedes automobiles and kept them rotating between his businessman clentele, never paid a dime import duty, and they divided the tax savings (100% or more on the high-priced Mercedes) and his suddenly fatter bank account let him explore other business opportunies.

Argentina being a safer business site than Chile, he went there next, and formed a partnership with a large meat packer who could use cheap foreign cattle---if they were categorized as expensive breeding cattle for Argentine breeders. Had to get around the currency blockage problem for common slaughter cattle though.


Easy, Emilio came to the U.S., met me at a Mid-Florida slaughter cattle auction---arranged for the slaughter-cattle to get papers as horribly expensive breeders, bought them cheap, sold them to his Argentine packer-partner as breeders and they pocketed the currency-exchange profit. Then, how to add to their profit by slaughtering them---sure as hell couldn't sell scrub cattle to savvy Argentine breeders.

So they slaughtered, packed and sent the scrub cattle by air to beef-poor Bolivia. As usual, gave up some of the profit to customs agents who live primarily on bribes, but there was plenty profit left to divide---the bank accounts swelled further.

After the Tiffany lamp experience, Emilio decided it would be nice to duplicate it in some fashion---and did. Bought hundreds of ancient duelling pistols in mint condition in Argentine, dating back to colonial times, complete with fancy boxes and ownership records from the factory. KA-CHING! again. So much profit he could hardly count it. I tole you Emilia was a genius at economic broken-field running.

Almost forgot, he developed and owned at least half of the world King Crab market. As Alaskan sources declined, his restaurant gourmet eating habits reminded him that he could turn that to his advantage.

He recruited fishing captains and their vessels in Punta Arenas, Chile, inducing them to drop fishing nets for King Crab nets and traps. Their iced cargo went by air (ridiculously low rates headed north---I used to ship air-freighted fresh fish, iced lobster tails from Panama to Miami for as low as seven cents a pound, never over nine cents, and no import duty whatsoever, only a very small import/export broker fee, who handled all the paperwork.)

So the King Crab you ate in the 1960's probably originated first in Emilio's imagination, then in his fishing and exporting procedures.

Lost track of Emilio after I arranged to buy popcorn shrimp from a Guayaquil shrimp-processing factory for eight cents a pound---in those days you coundn't give away popcorn shrimp, but with my Mainland China and Chinese-language background I knew Chinese restaurant-operators would buy every popcorn shrimp I could bring in. Emilio went on to bigger and better things.

I know Emilio is no longer around. He lived richly and too well, burned his candle at ten ends, but had a hell of a fascinating good time on this earth---rest in peace Emilio, 'twas good to know ye.







  • [Homestead] Emilio Rojas Contreras, my business associate and dear friend, Tvoivozhd, 09/19/2004

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