Linguistic differences, even within the same language, often lead to misunderstandings and something like that might’ve been what happened at Nestlé Peru. When Carlos Velasco came to Lima last year from his native Mexico -where he occupied the post of Sales Director at Nestlé- to take on the position of CEO of Nestlé Peru, he’s likely to have met with some solicitous underling (or “assistant” as the company would say in its fondness for labor-neutral euphemisms) who rushed to warn him about how “pendejos,” or cunning, Peruvians were, unaware that for Mexicans the word means quite the opposite.

Although in his effort to win over the locals, in the April/September 2009 issue of Nestlé Peru Magazine Don Carlos had declared himself “a Mazamorra-eating Limenean, a Cholo by adoption and a Peruvian at heart,” throwing in as many references to the national culture as he could muster, he was obviously not that well-versed in the vernacular and the different meaning given in Peru to the word “pendejo” eluded him. While in Mexico “pendejo” is used to denote a “jerk,” a “fool” or a “dimwit,” in Peru it’s used to describe someone who’s “cunning” or “clever.”

Confident that the workers he was dealing with fell under the Mexican definition of “pendejo,” last month Don Carlos issued a communication under the title Hello Nestlé, where he discusses the company’s performance in the first quarter, both worldwide and in Nestlé Peru. Of the former he said results were very positive, as the company had experienced “a 6.5 percent growth.” But “results in Nestlé Peru did not accompany the global trend,” he says, “with March closing with a negative growth of 2.4 percent, when we had committed to a 5.6 percent annual growth rate, as reported in our recent Information Dialogues.”

The Nestlé worker who sent SIREL a copy of the newsletter was baffled by this analysis. “How did Velasco come to the conclusion that the company had yielded negative growth in the first quarter against a proposed annual growth?” he wondered. “What calculations had he made?” he asked. And the truth is that it’s impossible to know how he reached such a conclusion.

The first figure (the 6.5 percent global growth) is easy enough to calculate, as he compared the first quarter of 2010 with the same period of 2009. But how does Don Carlos come to a negative result of 2.4 percent for the quarter against an annual growth commitment? He’s probably so sure of his authority that he thinks that just because he says so, then there won’t be any room for doubt. He also speaks of having “committed to a 5.6 percent annual growth rate.” A commitment made by whom with whom and decided among whom? Don Carlos ends his message with pompous eloquence and on an optimistic note: “When we close this year we will celebrate our 70^th anniversary in style and welcome the new year with a flourish, as I’m convinced that by year’s end, together we will have reached the goal we set for ourselves.” This again raises the question of what goal he is talking about and who set it. Since the company’s workers were never consulted, it’s evident that Don Carlos is blatantly abusing his authority and taking the workers for fools, in line with his probable interpretation of the word “pendejo.” Whatever his interpretation may be, however, the truth is that he used this grandiose announcement to justify a number of cuts in expenses that will primarily affect workers.

At the same time, the company refuses to sit down with the National Sole Union of Workers of Nestlé Peru (SUNTRANEP) to negotiate the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The company has gone so far as to show up at the conciliation hearings held at the Labor Ministry with a ludicrous proposal to extend the Collective Bargaining Agreement to a term of three years with no raise in wages whatsoever for 2010 and a one percent raise for each of the following two years. It also refused to find a solution to existing problems, such as the violations to the principle of “equal pay for equal work” and the threats of outsourcing work, among other issues.

But, as is usually the case, the reality is hard to hide. On May 15, the magazine Perú21 published an interesting article entitled “Peru: Coffee consumption expected to grow by 20 percent,” where it notes that Nestlé Peru holds 62.5 percent of the Lima market, with brands like Nescafé and Ecco¹. Moreover, Óscar Hidalgo, Coffee and Beverage executive at Nestlé, has said that “the instant beverage market will see an 8 percent growth this year, above the estimated GDP growth.” And he added: “As the arrival of warmer temperatures was delayed this summer coffee sales increased by 10 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to data from the consulting firm Latin Panel.”

While coffee is just one of Nestlé Peru’s products, these statements are an acknowledgement that the company has seen concrete, measurable growth, and that puts Don Carlos’ claims of negative growth in question. The interesting thing here is that the growth mentioned was achieved with the same number of workers, so that the company cannot in any way expect these workers to step up their production even more while at the same time passively accepting a reduction in their wages.

The caustic humor so typical of Mexico has given rise to a host of characterizations of “pendejos.” One of these is the “telescopic pendejo,” used to describe “a jerk you can tell from miles away.” I think it’s a fitting description for some people at Nestlé Peru.