The Book - Foreword by Carlos Fuentes

Gustavo Cisneros, The Pioneer
(“El Adelantado” -- A Man Ahead of His Time).

To undertake: the Dictionary defines this word as the action of “attempting and beginning a work...” And it adds this caveat: “...especially if it encompasses difficulty or danger.”

One could say that the Academy had Gustavo Cisneros in mind when it added that phrase, which the French Larousse confirms. To undertake is “to make the decision to do and initiate.” The biography of Gustavo Cisneros now being published is, first of all, a dynastic history that begins with his father, is complemented by his siblings, and is extended by his children. It is the history of an energetic youth who knew how to take advantage of the privileges granted by his inheritance and continue to grow more agile and skillful, never resting on the laurels of what has been acquired.

It is a history of risks that that are rewarded. And of errors that are admitted. It is a history of opportune changes of velocity. Cisneros moves from the business of mass consumption to the business of communications. From the generation of cash flow to the generation of value. And always, before the next step, internal consolidation. Cisneros’ entrepreneurial saga –worthy of being described by a Balzac or a Dreiser, if not by the Renaissance Fuggars—has, like every life, and above all every life of action, its lights and shadows, its defeats and victories, which are described in detail in this book.

But beneath—or above—the Cisneros saga, there are certain constants that explain better than any anecdote the personal, entrepreneurial, and collective values in the life of Gustavo Cisneros. His vertical strategy: each company should empower the other, and distribution should integrate, vertically as well, with content. Early identification of opportunities. Timely correction of mistakes. Tolerating errors made in good faith. Remaining open to dissident opinions within the company. Rewarding personal initiative. Insisting on teamwork.

These are the ethical and operational bases that explain the success of Gustavo Cisneros. He takes risks, but first he consolidates achievements. At times he dives into the pool at night without knowing if there is any water in it. He searches unceasingly for financial and operational equilibrium. That is: he proposes a model of democratic entrepreneurial organization that extends from the center to the periphery, thereby allowing the periphery an extremely high degree of autonomy.

One could claim that everything I have said simply goes without saying in a modern enterprise. If today it is taken for granted, if it is the norm, let us think for a moment about the negative Latin American tradition of the absentee landowner, the latifundista and the system of mortmain, the Ibero-America of stagnating riches, passive renters, dozing, if not venal, bureaucrats. And tyrants and petty despots, “masters of lives and property.”

It is true. We have not overcome all our evils. One might say that some are inherent, our curse, but the biography of Cisneros categorically negates this kind of fatalism. It demonstrates the organizational capacity of Latin Americans, the determination not to accept any problem without immediately offering a possible solution. It creates a corporate culture that allows Latin Americans to realize that on the other side of the artistic and literary culture that is our most profound and longest-lived tradition, there is now a comparably deep and enduring entrepreneurial culture. The burning question continues to be why we Latin Americans do not know how to transfer to politics the virtues of our esthetic and entrepreneurial cultures.

There is a dramatic recurrence of our political vices. When we believe we have consolidated imperfect but healthy democratic systems, the microbe of authoritarianism reappears with a melodramatic gesture, an operetta balcony, a condottiere’s costume and demagogic speechifying. How can we fortify democracy against the authoritarian virus?

I believe that the life and work of Gustavo Cisneros, in a variety of ways, can offer us some answers. The first is to see to it that our societies have a powerful educational base. We must penetrate the forest and the “sacred mountains” to which Guillermo de la Dehesa refers. Poverty does not create markets, Carlos Slim never tires of telling us, and Gustavo Cisneros concurs: there is a deadly relationship between low levels of education and poverty. We Latin Americans must wield our pencils as if they were daggers. Education assures that the creative energies of our compatriots can be released. Education liberates the personal talents and abilities of citizens who in no way are condemned to ignorance and destitution.

In his cultural work, Gustavo Cisneros has found a magnificent ally in his wife, Patricia Phelps. The Mozarteum, which introduces and promotes musical culture among young Venezuelans. The rescue of ethnographic objects. The collection of hundreds of thousands of photographs taken in the south of Venezuela. Patricia Phelps understands culture as an on-going gestation, and she assumes the responsibility of bringing together the works of a culture that is popular and unique—works that, in the long run, belong to the community.

There is, then, this base for local development. Basic education. But in a world of technical and educational development as rapid and globalized as the one in which we live, the base of local education faces two challenges. First, knowing that in our day education is on-going. It does not end dramatically in the sixth year of primary school, which often is the limit for millions of young Latin Americans. It does not end even upon receiving a university degree. Education ceases only when life is over.

This is in the first place. In the second is knowing that local education must modernize in order to confront the challenges of rapidly developing technologies. Bill Clinton recalled, in an address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, that when he assumed the presidency of the United States, there were only fifty sites on the worldwide web. When he left the White House eight years later, there were 350 million. Let us calculate the leap we can expect in the next ten or twenty years.

The technological revolution embraces both the local village and the global village. In nations with an extensive agrarian population, for instance in Latin America, the techno-informational revolution can radically alter living conditions. Access to the Internet transforms the relationship between agricultural supply and demand. It brings up-to-date information to rural workers. By means of a connection to the sources of information, the campesino can receive news in schools, community centers, and health centers. The pocket simputer even overcomes the barrier of illiteracy by converting text into words.

On the global level, it is a question of acceding to globalization that is not imposed but generated from within. Gustavo Cisneros has globalized his companies in two ways: from the periphery to the center, and from the center to the periphery. He has insisted on the qualitative evolution of his companies, providing them with increasingly advanced technologies. The new digital information society has been used by Cisneros to multiply services through a unique technological platform. Barriers of and to information fall away. Latin America cannot, yet again, “come late to the banquet of civilization,” as Alfonso Reyes once said.

Democracy is consubstantial with modern civilization. Gustavo Cisneros, nolens volens, represents a value and a political role in his native Venezuela. The cycle of boom and bust, the mirages of petrolification (“the devil’s deposits”), the decadence and frivolity of political parties and personalities created a suitable vacuum for the customary return of the eternal Latin American temptation to authoritarianism in the figure of Hugo Chávez. Elected like Hitler, histrionic like Mussolini, a populist like Perón, Chávez has unleashed (because he has not controlled it) a tide of divisions, economic regressions, and social illusions that could be contagious in an Ibero-America that congratulates itself on being democratic but also asks itself when it will have bread, a roof, a school, health care.

Winning the battle against the authoritarian temptation is a duty of democratic citizens in Latin America. Gustavo Cisneros occupies the democratic center and for this reason suffers attacks, calumnies, and other assaults from the Chavista basement. In the face of Chávez’ divisive policies, Cisneros is situated in a center not of insipidities but of commitments. A dangerous center—dangerous for demagogic authoritarianism. For Cisneros represents the capacity for organization that the authoritarian government lacks. He represents social balance as opposed to divisive disequilibrium. He represents the creation of sources of work and wealth in contrast to sterile bombast and the squandering of resources.

Gustavo Cisneros iS a trans-Atlantic entrepreneur. His relationship with Spain signifies the abolition of the ocean: the caravels have round-trip tickets. He is an inter-American entrepreneur. His presence on the continents of the New World—Ibero-America and Anglo-America—turns him into a man ahead of his time in mutually beneficial relationships, as he has demonstrated in multiple negotiations with North American companies, which never assume weakness or ceding of rights on our part, but rather an equality that is rational and honorable.

The creator of a business culture, a man ahead of his time in a political culture of equilibrium, a promoter of an educational culture that leaves no one behind, a defender of the Spanish language in the heart of Anglo-America, Gustavo Cisneros descended one day to the cavern of Sarisariñama, just as a character of Conan Doyle’s descended to the center of the earth and, when he touched it, heard a shout of pain. In his descent to the cavern, perhaps Gustavo Cisneros heard a shout of joy: “A fierce measure of manhood,” as Rómulo Gallegos exclaims in the pages of Canaima.