Tell Me What You Make and I’ll Tell You Who You Are

I recently acquired a copy of The Caribbean Business Book of Lists and began to peruse it.  What I found in it gave me the chills.  None of my opinions about the Puerto Rico economy were challenged. Instead, my opinion that the crisis in Puerto Rico is not fixable unless we completely change the economic structure of the island was strengthened, and now I have even more cold hard data to back it up.

Today I simply want to focus on the fact that we as a society make/produce next to nothing.  Please turn to page seventeen of The Caribbean Business Book of Lists. This page begins the list containing the top four hundred locally owned companies in Puerto Rico. Going through the list is a cringe-inducing exercise.

The first cringe comes from seeing that Popular, Inc., the number one company in Puerto Rico and logically its largest bank, had its revenue drop 18.79% from 2007 to 2008 (basically a cool $700 million).  The extinct W Holding Company Inc. and R&G FinancialCorp., entries number three and five correspondingly, local banks two and three, provide the next shock to the system.  Two out of the top five companies in Puerto Rico no longer exist.  Two out of the top three banks no longer exist.

There are many more troubling facts on the list, but I want to focus on how the it proves that Puerto Rico makes, produces, or manufactures pretty much nothing.  That this society consumes and consumes while it fails to contribute anything back.  Once we get to the last entry of the first page of the list, number twenty-four, we are faced with this inexorable fact.

Of the top twenty-four companies in Puerto Rico only two make anything.  Number fourteen, Empresas Fonalledas Inc., is a beverage manufacturer.  Of course, Tres Monjitas is the varnish of the Empresas Fonalledas Inc. empire, the real money comes in from their other businesses.  But still, even if on the side, they do make something.  Empresas Diaz Inc. rounds up the top twenty-four and is the second “maker” in the list.  They produce asphalt.  Hey, someone has to pave our many roads!  I wonder if either of these two companies exports any of their manufactured products.

Of the next twenty-four companies three produce something.  These are numbers thirty-five, forty-two, and forty-four: ElDia Inc., Destileria Serralles Inc., and Cervecera de Puerto Rico, respectively.  El Dia Inc. for those who are unaware makes “un gran periodico,” or a great newspaper.  Destileria Serralles Inc. distills liquor and Cervecera de Puerto Rico brews beer.  So a newspaper and alcohol, both of which are mostly for internal consumption.

Out of forty-eight companies, if we are generous, only five actually make anything, and most of what they make is solely for local consumption.  The pattern is developing.  Puerto Rican companies are mostly concerned with being service providers, chains, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, contractors, suppliers, and dealers.  Basically middlemen for other people’s products.

From companies forty-nine to one-hundred we fare no better.  Out of these fifty-two companies, using the same generous spirit we used before, only four actually make anything.  These are numbers fifty-two, Holsum de Puerto Rico Inc., eighty-one, Pan Pepin Inc., ninety-two, Ramallo Group, and ninety-five, Puerto Rico Coffee Roasters.  They are basically two bakeries, one printing press, and a coffee roaster.  Again, most of this is for local consumption; not much, if anything, is exported.  Thus, out of the top one-hundred Puerto Rican companies, if we are incredibly generous, nine produce anything, and one of them has any real exporting presence.

I wish that the next three hundred companies broke that pattern, but they don’t.  The pattern continues unabated.  What does this say about us as a society?  What kind of culture is this?  Should we keep these sobering facts in mind next time an unwarranted attack of Puerto Rico pride hits us?

These figures show that we as a society have our collective heads up our asses.  This list tells us that as a culture we need to snap out of it and begin to pay attention to important things such as: how the hell are we going to survive, instead of wasting time on idiotic political tirades.  It tells us that we all need to start thinking about what we can make and sell.  We need to manufacture what we consume so we don’t have to buy it from other people.  We need to manufacture so we can offer our products to other countries, so we can pay for what we consume from elsewhere.

Yes, we should think about this when the PR pride monster lurks around.  Let’s not waste any more energy trying to come up with ridiculous things to be proud of such as Miss Universe, the current local boxer, or geographical advantages we had no hand in securing.  Let’s instead be honest about the problems we have and get organized to tackle them.  Empty pride is just that – empty – and even the most patriotic lemming knows this deep down inside.  If we want to be proud of Puerto Rico it should be because we took our problems head on and fixed this economy.  Only with a stable and healthy economy can we then invest in creating a society we are truly and justifiably proud of.

Related posts:

1. The Politics of Language: Spanish Does Not Make the Rican