In Diez Canseco
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Adelante Moving Forward © Raúl Diez Canseco Terry First Edition, January, 2018 © Of this edition Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola Fondo Editorial Av. La Fontana 750. La Molina Teléfono: 3171000, anexo 3705 Chief Editor: José Valdizán Ayala Editor: Luis Alberto Chávez, José Sotomayor Coordination: María Olivera Cano Copy editor: Rafael Felices Taboada Design and layout: Sergio Pastor Segura English translation and editing: Christopher J. Palasz Photography on cover taken on board the BAP Unión. September, 2017 Hecho el Depósito Legal en la Biblioteca Nacional del Perú Nº 2017-18124 Legal Deposit made at the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú under Nº 2017-18124 Printer: Industria Gráfica Cimagraf S.A.C. Psje. Sta. Rosa 140 - Ate, Lima - Perú January 2018 Print Run: 250 copies The total or partial reproduction of this book is strictly prohibited through whatever means without the express permission in writing from Fondo Editorial. Table of Contents √ Foreword 11 √ My early years With the eyes of a child Learning to grow Blazing the trail S.M.O. The 67 of ’67 27 √ New Ventures The Academy Political roots To undertake is to persevere 67 √ Yes, I am a politician Violeta, love and courage Fernando, body and soul Activist, Accion Popular Defeating terror 99 √ In the electoral arena The Ten (Diez) in Diez Canseco Lima for everyone Come hell or high water 141 √ Peru fi rst Back to the palace Promoting the country Presidential advice Slander and conspiracy 177 √ Entrepreneurs training entrepreneurs Entrepreneurs in education Believing to create Scholarships for talent Bridge to the future 245 √ The tree of life New dawn 303 To the thousands of young people and their parents, who throughout my life have trusted me with the development of entrepreneurial projects, to help build a country with a vision of the future and opportunities for everyone. “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” Winston Churchill FOREWORD Bogota, D.C. December 18, 2017 applaud the publication of “Moving Forward”, a work based on the experience and I career of an outstanding Peruvian, who embodies the fortunate symbiosis of a business leader and a public figure, always committed to the higher interests of his Country, Raul Diez Canseco Terry. Raul has made service to others a core element of his existence. This characteristic has accompanied him in his business ventures and his initiatives in education and politics. He gave his service when he surveyed trails in the Amazon Region as an assistant topographer, service in the Peruvian Navy, service in the San Ignacio de Loyola Pre-University Study Program, today evolved into the university known as Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola – USIL, service in his own business ventures, service in the management of the government program in community kitchens, and service in senior government official posts he has held such as Vice Minister of Tourism, Congressman, First Vice President of the Republic of Peru, and Minister of Industry, Tourism, Integration and International Business. Raul Diez Canseco´s ideas and decisions anticipated the challenges of the times. He is an example of the important, silent social revolution that is achieved when one works on behalf of private investment with social responsibility and in support of education as a basic tool used to open spaces of social mobility, to generate prosperity, justice and equality. During his tenure in the public sector, and faithful to the legacy of President Fernando Belaunde Terry, he has devoted himself exclusively to serve the collective interest of Peruvian nation, traveling to every corner of the country while defending democracy and its values. As he puts it so well, “politics is the natural space for making the great transformations that a country needs”, and this is reflected by the indelible mark he has left on an industry as important to Peru as the Tourism Industry, to name one. His long career has not been without challenges and fluctuations, but in all of them he has demonstrated solid leadership, derived from the coherency of his reasoning, solid convictions, his capacity for research, his discipline and his vocation for finding solutions to the great problems his Country faces. I must thank him for his generous pages and references made about some aspects of the governments I presided. Th ere is a bond between us based on sentiments of friendship that converge in the undeniable commitment that we both have toward the well-being of our people, and aptly summarized in one sentence: “Th e best compensation of public service, is precisely that: serving”. I hereby present you with sincere enthusiasm, the book FORGING AHEAD, so that the new generations become inspired by the concepts and living example of the person who is telling his own life story. Álvaro Uribe Vélez Lima, December 19, 2017 Dear Raúl: have read the original manuscripts of your new book with great interest, more so I because it is such a personal work. Surely, memoirs are only written when a man reaches a crucial point in the course of his life and is able to look back with composure and clarity. For this reason, I consider it a privilege that you chose to share them with me and make me one of their very first readers. I sense that writing a book of this nature is no easy matter. Recalling a life can turn out to be a discomforting task, particularly if the aim is to make an assessment without concessions, with the equanimity that allows us the distance required to tell the facts. In this sense, I admire your willingness to explore the past to salvage experiences, which when examined under the light of maturity, take on a new meaning. After all, tallying up the score of a lifetime only matters to the extent that we can truthfully assess the value of our actions and achieve a better understanding of ourselves. I thoroughly enjoyed the narration you provide of your childhood and adolescence, first in Chaclacayo and then in Lima, raised within a family that strove to instill sound values in you from an early age. During this learning phase of your life, swimming was one of your passions, a sport that you eagerly devoted yourself to in high school, and which would be decisive in shaping your character. “Swimming taught me to be competitive, to be consistent and persistent in the goals that one sets in life, to live and eat healthy, to be disciplined” you write. And you add an insight which, in my opinion, transcends the field of sports, because it distinguishes the roles that one assumes as an individual and a member of society: “When you step up onto the starting platform and dive into the water like an arrow, you are in two races. The first race is against yourself, a test of the results of your hard work; it rewards your efforts and consistency. You alone see this race. The second race is the one that tests you against all the others, it measures your achievements in comparison with the others, it assigns you a position in the order in which you reach the finish line. This is the race that everyone else sees”. It also caught my attention that at age 17, instead of taking a break and wait for the date of your university entrance exams, you decided to take a job building the Marginal Highway of the Jungle, that ground breaking project undertaken by President Fernando Belaunde Terry that sought to improve Peru’s integration and development. So there you went, leaving behind the comforts to which a young man from Miraflores was accustomed, to work as a simple topographer’s assistant on the stretch of highway extending from Tingo Maria to Moyobamba. You stayed at a camp located in the middle of the tropical rainforest and had to cope with a hostile environment, with prevailing hot temperatures, heavy rain and diseases. That first job experience was like a baptism of fire because you endured the hardships of nature first hand. Your wounds from insect bites became infected and you needed to be evacuated from the area. However, those long months that you spent in the jungle were very instructive and enlightening. Firstly, they permitted you to discover the most remote regions of Peru and made you aware of the enormous needs and shortcomings that affect the majority of our population. Another life event that stands out is your completion of mandatory military service after finishing your experience in the Amazon. You were drafted because you happened to be unemployed at the time and had not yet been admitted to the university and so you were not exempt. Of course, there was always the possibility of resorting to trickery that well to do families used to free their sons from this obligation. However, your parents guided themselves by other principles. It is true that they went to speak with President Belaunde Terry, who was your uncle, but they did not do this to obtain an exemption. On the contrary, they asked that you be admitted to the Peruvian Navy, a branch of the armed forces for which they held a special affinity. Indeed, you promptly joined the navy. For the second time you traveled to unknown regions of the country and were able fraternize with young recruits from different regions of the country while learning the naval arts. As you rightly say, the discipline, order and teamwork that you were accustomed to during your military service would become defining factors to execute your future projects with effectiveness.