Efraín Borrero E.
A few days ago, James William Brown Sweeney, who had always been called Jimmy, passed away; That’s how people knew him and that’s how I’m going to mention him with respect. He had a good load of years since he was born on February 16, 1929, in Gulfport, Mississippi, USA. Father of my dear friend Steve Brown Hidalgo, a well-known and appreciated professional in our environment.
Jimmy explained with singular style the era in which he was born so that people could locate themselves in time. He said it was a few months before the stock market crash that would lead the United States into its famous Great Depression; two days after the well-known St. Valentine’s Day massacre, when mobster Al Capone ordered the brutal murder of his rivals in a gruesome point-blank massacre. It was also the first year the Oscars were held, and when Herbert Hoover was about to be named president of the United States. People with average culture understood it perfectly.
“Gringo” Jimmy, as he was called in Ecuadorian territory years later, was a permanent traveler. He lived in various locations in the United States since his father, a proud graduate of the prestigious West Point Military Academy, was a professor of military strategy and the family moved wherever he was sent to teach.
His mother, who had a university degree and was an athlete, really liked nature; She had a preference for gardening and horticulture, which would later influence her destiny. In Jimmy’s words, she had an adventurous soul that conveyed her desire to go out into the world.
There is no doubt that his mother played a decisive role in his future. One day he came home carrying an American magazine in which there was an advertisement inviting people to colonize a region of a country that no one knew or had heard of: it was Santo Domingo de los Colorados in Ecuador, which on November 6, 2007 became be called Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, by virtue of the Law creating the province.
Land was offered at the ridiculous price of five dollars per hectare, clarifying that at that time the official currency in Ecuador was the sucre. The contact in Quito was a man named Dr. Jack Sheppard, who acted as promoter. The idea, as could be gleaned from the advertisement, was to create a colony that would make the land productive collectively, so that each person involved could receive a property title, although it ended up happening that when the people arrived at the site each one made things on their own.
Jimmy and his mother clearly understood that such colonization was the fact of settling on certain land for productive purposes and establishing one’s home there, and not the action of territorial domination as it is generally known.
Using international mail, which was almost non-existent and took months, the mother made inquiries to Sheppard in an epistolary manner, who answered each of the concerns with patience and detail. In addition, she provided quite informative and attractive literature about Ecuador.
He looked at his son Jimmy who was almost 19 years old and told him: here is your future, I know what you are capable of. Although their father did not like the idea, they planned a trip to Ecuador using the services of the Panagra airline, called “The friendliest airline in the world“, in order to obtain first-hand information and learn on the spot the reality of things.
Jimmy was passionate about mystery, being able to see and do things he never imagined and in places he didn’t even know existed. When he boarded the plane he really got excited. At the Quito airport, Dr. Sheppard was waiting for them, of whom they only had reference, both through correspondence and because he wrote in a magazine called “Cuentos y Senderos Tropicales”, whose purpose was to describe Ecuador.
They stayed in a small hostel near the Capitol Theatre, where other interested people Sheppard had contacted were also staying. There he met other gringos, especially the one who would become his first farm companion and the person with whom he would embark on his attempt to make a living on his own. Among those gringos were those who later introduced abacá and African palm to Santo Domingo.
As it turned out, Sheppard did not sell the land directly to them, but rather it was the competent entity of the national government that made the allocations. Sheppard was probably closely linked to the Quito Land Office and, surely, through his intermediation he received some commission.
When after a few days they arrived in Santo Domingo, which at that time had about a thousand inhabitants, they had organized a welcome dinner to which few people invited from the town attended, among them the inevitable commissioner who ate like a lion and wiped his mouth. with the tablecloth that had not been changed in months.
The next step was to see the room to live temporarily and know the places assigned to each one. The flies had a field day, which caused some to give up on the idea. Jimmy and other “gringos” kept it macho.
From then on, you can imagine everything Jimmy had to endure to conquer the jungle and turn it into productive land. There is no doubt that it was a titanic task full of bravery, courage, honor and sacrificed work.
Jimmy left the opportunities of the recovery of the United States after World War II and chose to come to a territory “located on the other side of a time warp,” to make the jungle of Santo Domingo his inheritance and love.
There he made his life doing what he liked. He became so fond of nature that after a few years, with his unwavering energy and passion for his achievements, he embarked on a mission to establish a wildlife refuge, which would later become the Wildlife Rescue Center Foundation. which bears its original name: James Brown.
However, he was not satisfied with the achievements achieved in his stronghold of Santo Domingo, and his desire to leave an even more significant mark led him to conceive his most ambitious initiative: the creation of the company James Brown Pharma CA, an industry dedicated to manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceutical and biological products for the Animal Health line, and pharmaceutical products for the Human Health line, becoming a national reference.
A few years after settling in Santo Domingo, Jimmy met the distinguished Loja lady María Olivia Hidalgo Gutiérrez, daughter of Alberto Hidalgo Jarrín, the man who with an iron will challenged the future and made the most important industrial project in the province of Santo Domingo a reality. Loja, starting in March 1962 when MALCA began sugar production.
The couple’s first meeting was by chance, at a cocktail party organized by the Ecuadorian-American Association in Quito. In 1950, a few months after meeting, they married in a simple ceremony, after which they moved to Playas de Villamil to enjoy their honeymoon.
Alberto Hidalgo proposed to Jimmy Brown to sell his properties to become a partner in the Compañía Industrial Azucarera Lojana, but he was deeply rooted in his estate in Santo Domingo and his projects were different.
He had also done it before with potential Lojana investors, he even published in Diario La Opinión del Sur an advertisement titled “From today shares can be subscribed for the Compañía Industrial Azucarera Lojana”, but unfortunately it was not received due to the disbelief of the people, until the successful results of 1962 left those doubters with their mouths open.
Jimmy Brown and María Olivia Hidalgo Gutiérrez had seven children: Alen, Felipe, James, unfortunately died on February 9, 2021; Susana, Steve, Carmen Inés and David Martín; All of them, except Susana, graduated from universities in the United States and had magnificent executive and business positions.
With this brief story I wish to pay posthumous tribute to an extraordinary man whose work history is admirable. I know his life in detail because he wrote about it in his book “Jimmy Brown Meets the Jungle,” which was generously given to me by my dear friend, Steve Brown Hidalgo, who was an outstanding manager of MALCA for 19 years, to whom I express my feelings of weigh.
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