BIRTH AND OBJECTIVES OF THE CASTILLA DEL ORO FOUNDATION
President of the Castilla del Oro Foundation in Panamá: “What we can feel the proudest of is that along with Engineer Richard Fifer – Carles, we decreased the infant mortality rate in the zone of the project (a hundred thousand people), from twenty five to one percent”
Dr. Pascual Montañés Duato: “We have a unique global tourist offer for those seeking spiritual and religious tourist destinations”
President of the Castilla del Oro Foundation in Panamá: “We will restore the best from history and we will face future´s greatest challenges”.
BIRTH AND OBJECTIVES OF THE CASTILLA DEL ORO FOUNDATION
An example of second-generation Social Responsibility
“We will restore the best from history and we will face future´s greatest challenges” one of Professor Pascual Montañés Duato´s inspiring and challenging phrases.
Professor of strategy at one of the best business schools in the world, Doctor of law, and now main figure-president of a sustainability project; promoting wealth, values and spirituality. He, along with Richard Fifer Carles –Panamanian entrepreneur – are carrying out a valuable project on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. We invite you to the unveiling of the beginning of this great challenge with a great history at the hand of its President. The President of the Castilla del Oro Foundation in Panamá, Pascual Montañés Duato.
Madrid, August 22nd 2011
Texts and pictures: GBG
Professor, how and why was Castilla del Oro born?
It was born at Richard Fifer-Carles´s house, a pioneer in the responsible mining industry and of mining in Panama. At his home, he told me about everything his Panamanian heart and his business head had led him to do in a 50 km radius around the “Petaquilla” mining project.
I like to say that it´s not a mine, it´s a “mine with a garden”, that´s how I describe the Petaquilla mine of Cerro Petaquilla.
At the time he told me about the radius, in which a hundred thousand people lived, that he had established, and everything he was doing.
At the end of our conversation we both ended up agreeing with the Chinese proverb “if someone is hungry teach them how to fish”
A VERY LONG TERM VISION
Engineer Fifer – Carles´s vision is of a very long term, and mining has a due date, an expiration date, a very short term. In that sense, all the good done for those hundred thousand people that live in the 50 km around the mine, will end at some point in the next twenty to twenty five years.
A SECOND GENERATION SOCIAL RESPONSABILITY PROJECT
Then, during a candid conversation amongst friends, we got to thinking and discovered the possibility of promoting a second generation social responsibility project.
The difference from the first one is that when the Company that began this responsibility finishes, the project wont, it will have a life of its own, don’t give a man fish, teach him how to fish.
Nowadays, a lot is being done for this audience, we have witnessed this, but as you said yourself, it is limited in time (gold extraction), so what is left for later?
That is correct, economic development has very evident, tangible traits, such as schools, roads, hospitals, but also some intangible aspects of much more value.
(A pause in the conversation and then Professor Montañés continues)
… When I look back at my life, I feel that I have contributed in decreasing the infant mortality rate that existed in that zone: out of a hundred thousand people, we have reduced it from twenty five to one percent.
Infant mortality rate is measured by the number of deaths that occur during the first year of life, and to have lowered that is something to be proud of.
WE WILL CREATE AN ECONOMICALLY PARALLEL SECTOR WITH A LONGER LIFE SPAN
But we also feel the responsibility of asking ourselves what will happen once the mine is finished? Will the infant mortality rate go back to what it used to be before the mine? That´s when the idea of developing an economically parallel sector with a longer life span than the mine and mineral resources was.
Then came tourism. For a lot of people and global economies, tourism is the gold, it is an economical sector that generates a lot of wealth very quickly and in that sense it can also be considered a golden sector.
We then thought, what would be the unique touristic attraction? What is the competitive advantage that we could find in this region? Region that on the other hand has Costa Rica, who has the leadership in ecological tourism for a neighbor.
Why Castilla del Oro?
Mr. Fifer-Carles is a history aficionado as a matter of fact, and not in vain, he spent six months devoting his time to studying the archives of “The Americas” in the 90´s in Sevilla until he found out what area in Panama Christopher Columbus had referred to during his fourth voyage when he said “never had I seen so much gold like what the Indians were wearing”
And while studying he discovered that the gold, most likely, came from a hill (Cerro), Cerro Petaquilla, where Mr. Fifer-Carles began the project.
Is that the project that has Castilla del Oro as a Foundation?
People ignore history; the fact that for 60 or 70 years, (over 500 years ago) the four central provinces and the province of Colon were known as La Castilla del Oro. Initially La Castilla del Oro was in Venezuela, then in Colombia, but in neither of these places could they find enough gold to justify such a name. And it was definitely during Christopher Columbus’s fourth voyage that it was determined that that area was, indeed, Castilla del Oro. So much gold was found, that between 1506 and 1560 Spain extracted twenty one tons of gold from Castilla del Oro and used it to finance the largest empire the world has ever known, the empire of Charles V, on which the sun never set.
¿Is that were the Foundation´s name came from?
Yes. Restoring the best from our history and facing the biggest challenges of the future.
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