Ramiro L. Colon
Encyclopedia
Ramiro L. Colón was the general manager of the Cooperativa de Cafeteros de Puerto Rico. He reorganized the company during its time of crisis and is credited with having saved the coffee
industry
in Puerto Rico
.
. There he received his primary
and secondary education
. Being raised in the country, he developed an intense love for the island's agriculture
. He went to work for the "Cooperativa de Cafeteros de Puerto Rico" (Cooperative
of Coffee Growers of Puerto Rico) in 1925, the same year it was founded, at the age of 21.
product
s, from outside imitators. The situation was the following: many merchant
s were importing coffee from other countries, of poor quality and freshness, and passing them off as locally produced. When tourists and local consumers tasted the coffee, they complained about how bad it was, and as a result sales declined drastically and the coffee industry suffered greatly. In 1928, hurricane San Felipe
destroyed most of the coffee plantation
s on the island, and the Great Depression
also affected the economy.
. With the money, he bought new equipment to replace the old and outdated equipment in the company. Colón was able to convince the Puerto Rican legislature
to pass a law against the then-rampant adulteration and contraband
of coffee.
plant
in which the local coffee was processed. Colon set out to gain access to the United States coffee market, helped the local coffee growers obtain lines of credit
from local bankers, and got financial help from the federal
and local government
for the export of the cooperative's coffee. This coffee was named "Cafe Rico
" and was well received locally and internationally, soon reestablishing the good fame of Puerto Rico's coffee worldwide. The cooperative became the first coffee manufacturer to sell its coffee in sealed cans. The quality of Cafe Rico has received numerous medals and recognitions in contests celebrated all over the world. Colón established the only coffee tasting laboratory
in Puerto Rico. One of Cafe Rico's byproducts, "San Carlos Selection", is the official coffee of Vatican City
.
processing company which calls its product "Huevos Rico" (Rich Eggs). The cooperative owns an insurance
company, its own credit corporation
that grants loans to farmer
s, and its own printing
plant that prints and distributes an agricultural magazine
worldwide. Recently, the cooperative has started to operate gasoline stations in San Juan
, Mayaguez
and Ponce.
When Colón took over the company in 1932 as a general manager the cooperative had only $284,000 in annual sales. By 1963 the cooperative had over $35 million in sales. The cooperative has office
s and warehouse
s in Ponce (main offices), San Juan, Mayagüez, Arecibo
, Yauco
, San Sebastian
, Utuado
, Adjuntas
, Jayuya
and Ciales
.
was adopted, creating the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and Colón was a member of the Constitutional Convention of Puerto Rico. He was a delegate to Republican National Convention
from Puerto Rico in the years 1948, 1952 and 1956. Ramiro L. Colón was Candidate for Governor in 1968 for the Republican Statehood Party.
Ramiro L. Colón died in the city of Ponce
, which honored his memory by naming a elementary school after him. He is remembered as the man who saved the Puerto Rican coffee industry.
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
industry
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
.
Early years
Colón (birth name: Ramiro L. Colón Colón), was born in and raised in the countryside of Ponce, Puerto RicoPonce, Puerto Rico
Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...
. There he received his primary
Primary education
A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
and secondary education
Secondary education
Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
. Being raised in the country, he developed an intense love for the island's agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
. He went to work for the "Cooperativa de Cafeteros de Puerto Rico" (Cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
of Coffee Growers of Puerto Rico) in 1925, the same year it was founded, at the age of 21.
"Cooperativa de Cafeteros de Puerto Rico"
The cooperative was the first one of its kind in Puerto Rico. It was founded to protect the coffee industry, which was one of the island's most important exportExport
The term export is derived from the conceptual meaning as to ship the goods and services out of the port of a country. The seller of such goods and services is referred to as an "exporter" who is based in the country of export whereas the overseas based buyer is referred to as an "importer"...
product
Product (business)
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...
s, from outside imitators. The situation was the following: many merchant
Merchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
s were importing coffee from other countries, of poor quality and freshness, and passing them off as locally produced. When tourists and local consumers tasted the coffee, they complained about how bad it was, and as a result sales declined drastically and the coffee industry suffered greatly. In 1928, hurricane San Felipe
1928 Okeechobee Hurricane
The Okeechobee hurricane, or San Felipe Segundo hurricane, was a deadly hurricane that struck the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Florida in September of the 1928 Atlantic hurricane season...
destroyed most of the coffee plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s on the island, and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
also affected the economy.
Colón becomes general manager
In 1932, Colón was named general manager of the cooperative and undertook the reorganization of the company during its time of crisis. The cooperative was almost bankrupt, and the first thing Colón did was to obtain a loan from the Department of Agriculture and CommerceCommerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
. With the money, he bought new equipment to replace the old and outdated equipment in the company. Colón was able to convince the Puerto Rican legislature
Legislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
to pass a law against the then-rampant adulteration and contraband
Contraband
The word contraband, reported in English since 1529, from Medieval French contrebande "a smuggling," denotes any item which, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold....
of coffee.
"Cafe Rico"
Colón was credited with convincing the government to impose import tariffs on coffee, thereby ensuring the island would not be invaded by cheap coffee of poor quality, which often was advertised as locally produced. The cooperative purchased and installed a new torrefactionTorrefaction
Torrefaction of biomass can be described as a mild form of pyrolysis at temperatures typically ranging between 200-320 °C. During torrefaction the biomass properties are changed to obtain a much better fuel quality for combustion and gasification applications...
plant
Physical plant
Physical plant or mechanical plant refers to the necessary infrastructure used in support and maintenance of a given facility. The operation of these facilities, or the department of an organization which does so, is called "plant operations" or facility management...
in which the local coffee was processed. Colon set out to gain access to the United States coffee market, helped the local coffee growers obtain lines of credit
Credit (finance)
Credit is the trust which allows one party to provide resources to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately , but instead arranges either to repay or return those resources at a later date. The resources provided may be financial Credit is the trust...
from local bankers, and got financial help from the federal
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
and local government
Local government
Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...
for the export of the cooperative's coffee. This coffee was named "Cafe Rico
Café Rico
Café Rico is a Puerto Rican corporation that manufactures coffee branded by the same name. The company's headquarters are located in Barrio San Antón in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, on Las Americas Avenue/Route 163 and Calle Comercio/Route 133...
" and was well received locally and internationally, soon reestablishing the good fame of Puerto Rico's coffee worldwide. The cooperative became the first coffee manufacturer to sell its coffee in sealed cans. The quality of Cafe Rico has received numerous medals and recognitions in contests celebrated all over the world. Colón established the only coffee tasting laboratory
Laboratory
A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...
in Puerto Rico. One of Cafe Rico's byproducts, "San Carlos Selection", is the official coffee of Vatican City
Vatican City
Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...
.
Cooperative expansion
Under Colon's leadership, the cooperative was able to expand and diversify. The company sells food and agricultural equipment with sales of over $5 million. It also owns and operates an eggEgg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...
processing company which calls its product "Huevos Rico" (Rich Eggs). The cooperative owns an insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
company, its own credit corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
that grants loans to farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
s, and its own printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
plant that prints and distributes an agricultural magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
worldwide. Recently, the cooperative has started to operate gasoline stations in San Juan
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...
, Mayaguez
Mayagüez, Puerto Rico
Mayagüez is the eighth-largest municipality of Puerto Rico. Originally founded as "Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria" it is also known as "La Sultana del Oeste" , "Ciudad de las Aguas Puras" , or "Ciudad del Mangó"...
and Ponce.
When Colón took over the company in 1932 as a general manager the cooperative had only $284,000 in annual sales. By 1963 the cooperative had over $35 million in sales. The cooperative has office
Office
An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...
s and warehouse
Warehouse
A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...
s in Ponce (main offices), San Juan, Mayagüez, Arecibo
Arecibo, Puerto Rico
Arecibo is a municipality in the northern midwest coast of Puerto Rico and located by the Atlantic Ocean, north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta, and Florida. Arecibo is spread over 18 wards and Arecibo Pueblo...
, Yauco
Yauco, Puerto Rico
Yauco is a city and municipality in southwestern Puerto Rico located in the southern coast of the island by the Caribbean, south of Maricao, Lares and Adjuntas; east of Sabana Grande and Guánica; and west of Guayanilla. Yauco is spread over 20 wards and Yauco Pueblo...
, San Sebastian
San Sebastián, Puerto Rico
San Sebastián is a municipality of Puerto Rico located northwest of the island south of Isabela and Quebradillas; north of Las Marías; east of Moca and Añasco; and west of Lares. San Sebastián is spread over twenty-four wards and San Sebastián Pueblo...
, Utuado
Utuado, Puerto Rico
Utuado is a municipality of Puerto Rico located in the central-western mountainous region of the island known as La Cordillera Central. It is located north of Adjuntas and Ponce; south of Hatillo and Arecibo; east of Lares; and west of Ciales and Jayuya. In land area it is the third-largest...
, Adjuntas
Adjuntas, Puerto Rico
Adjuntas is a small mountainside municipality in Puerto Rico located central midwest of the island on the Central Mountain range , north of Yauco, Guayanilla and Peñuelas; southeast of Utuado; east of Lares and Yauco; and west of Ponce. Adjuntas is spread over 16 wards and Adjuntas Pueblo...
, Jayuya
Jayuya, Puerto Rico
Jayuya is a municipality of Puerto Rico located in the mountainous center region of the island, north of Ponce; east of Utuado; and west of Ciales. Jayuya is spread over 18 wards and Jayuya Pueblo...
and Ciales
Ciales, Puerto Rico
Ciales is a municipality of Puerto Rico, located on the Central Mountain Range, northwest of Orocovis; south of Florida and Manatí; east of Utuado and Jayuya; and west of Morovis. Ciales is spread over eight wards and Ciales Pueblo...
.
Legacy
Colón served as a Senator, representing the district of Ponce in the Puerto Rican Senate and was named Administrator of the cooperative, a position he held until his retirement in 1965. In 1952 the Constitution of Puerto RicoConstitution of Puerto Rico
The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is the controlling government document of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is composed of nine articles detailing the structure of the government as well as the function of several of its institutions. The document also contains an extensive...
was adopted, creating the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and Colón was a member of the Constitutional Convention of Puerto Rico. He was a delegate to Republican National Convention
Republican National Convention
The Republican National Convention is the presidential nominating convention of the Republican Party of the United States. Convened by the Republican National Committee, the stated purpose of the convocation is to nominate an official candidate in an upcoming U.S...
from Puerto Rico in the years 1948, 1952 and 1956. Ramiro L. Colón was Candidate for Governor in 1968 for the Republican Statehood Party.
Ramiro L. Colón died in the city of Ponce
Ponce, Puerto Rico
Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...
, which honored his memory by naming a elementary school after him. He is remembered as the man who saved the Puerto Rican coffee industry.