Guatemalan Cane Raiser
El Salto—waterfall or "the place where water jumps"—is a 10 000-acre finca in the Guatemalan highlands which, with its mill produces more than one-sixth of the nation's sugar crop.
Presiding over El Salto is ROBERT C. DORION'47, who doubles in brass in so many capacities that "versatile" pales as an applicable adjective. Explorer, naturalist, conservationist, geologist, leader in'efforts to improve the lot of Guatemala's agricultural workers: he has taken field trips to the Antarctic; had a sub-species offish named after him by the American Museum of Natural History; captained a commercial shark-fishing vessel; lectured at university symposia on Central American food needs and exports; and taught courses on the Natural History of the Whale and the Shark.
El Salto is on the site of a land grant to the caballero who repulsed a landing attempted by Sir Francis Drake. It was owned through the days of Spanish colonial domination by a religious order. In the early 20th century five farms in the lush fertile land surrounded by towering volcanic peaks were united as Finca El Salto, under the control of a British firm. It passed to Guatemalan ownership in 1952 when Dorion's father assumed operation and started a series of social and technological advances which have made El Salto a model of progress and production in an area of the world not traditionally noted for the quality of life its peasants enjoy.
Since his father's death in 1962, Robert Dorion has expanded benefits to the several thousand inhabitants of villages on the finca and, through increased internal cane production and exter- nal purchases and improved efficiency at the mill, has doubled production of sugar.
"El Salto pays the highest salaries in the Guatemalan sugar in- dustry as a general rule," Dorion reports with pride. Exceptions to the rule are to be found at the executive level. "Executives are usually the owners," he adds.
Fringe benefits the company provides include a first-class lower school, a first-class clinic with a full-time doctor, recreation halls and playing fields, free training courses at all levels of employment, and town improvements such as paving and waterworks. A union, rare in rural Guatemala, has been operating at El Salto for more than 25 years.
Dorion finds it hard to describe his motivation for such enlightened management, but not the results: "We have relatively few tensions, higher productivity, and more peaceful relations. No one is scared or afraid—yet everyone respects the line-up."
A new process by which sugar can be fortified with Vitamin A, recently developed at El Salto in cooperation with the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama, is a source of special pride to Dorion. Reporting the breakthrough last fall, The NewYork Times explained its importance: "80 percent of the Central American population suffers from Vitamin A deficiency ..., a leading cause of blindness in children" in the area.
The activities at El Salto are as varied as its president's interests. In addition to cane, the finca produces coffee, molasses, honey wood, and cattle. An International Biological Program for reporting on National Parks ties in with a responsibility orion shares with the Guatemalan Natural History Society. El Salto maintains a field station for the Organization of Tropical Studies—a consortium of 28 North and Central American un- iversities and institutes not, to his regret, including Dartmouth where classes in geography, limnology, geology, and biology are conducted. Wild areas of the finca are preserves for native species, and the populations of "ocelot, jaguarundi, deer, possum, raccoon, otter, fox, cavy, agouti, ferret, rabbit, kinkajou, squirrels, and an occasional wild peccary have been stabilized."
Dorion is the International Boy Scout Commissioner for Guatemala and one of ten members of the Interamerican World Scout Committee. Scouts from all over the country and some from El Salvador attend a permanent camp near the mill. In past years as many as 6000 boys and girls from poor areas of Guatemala have come for a week's vacation at Christmas time. As a member of the World Conservation Committee of the Boy Scouts, Dorion has Guatemalan scouts deeply involved in conservation and wildlife projects.
He is president,of the Movimiento Guatemalteco Reconstruction Rural, organized to "try and help via education, example, and action the formation and continuance of rural cooperatives for educational, health, and economic integration of isolated rural communities."
In the photo at the top of this column, the bearded youthful Dorion is seen in a remote mountain village in the Jalapa area of Guatemala getting a local leader "to crack a smile for the first time in a decade." Confidence and trust are important elements in dealing with underdeveloped rural populations, Dorion notes. "The locals tend to read right through the visitor with unnerving accuracy. And they all carry machetes! This is obviously no time or place to worry about the why's of a down-turning Nielson rating."
The Dartmouth contingent in Guatemala is a close-knit and influential group. Roberto Herrera '43 is Minister of Foreign Affairs. Three of seven directors of the MGRR - Dorion, Ismar Stahl '50, and Julio Herrera '55 - are Dartmouth men. They are also, to generalize from Dorion's example, intensely loyal alumni. A United States citizen, born in New York to a Cuban mother and a Guatemalan father, Dorion came to Dartmouth as a V-12 student and returned following his Navy discharge to complete his degree. Of the lasting effect of the College, he wrote recently, "Only a privileged few who have passed through Hanover can understand the full extent of its meaning."
