Donald Kendall is dead….at 99. This Blogger was busy being a bum in Larkspur, California, when he was recruited by a smooth-talking professional Recruiter. He told this Blogger that he had the perfect position for this Blogger, in Manhattan, Gotham City, on Park Avenue.
They flew this Blogger to New York, and he was interviewed. At the ultimate interview, Mr. Kendall, the chief honcho at PEPSICO, walked in, looked him over, shook his hand and approved a job offer.
The legendary actress Joan Crawford was still alive at the time. She had been married to a former President of PepsiCo. She hated Mr. Kendall’s guts.
She had an office in the Park Avenue building; when she was in the city, one of the chief duties of this recruited wunderkind were to bring her endless bottles of vodka. Mr. Kendall had been white haired since he was a teenager; Ms. Crawford called him WHITE FANG.
People often ask this Blogger what did Ms. Crawford look like? He could never reply, for he NEVER, as in NEVER, made eye contact with Ms. Crawford. He sneaked into her office, dropped off her daily consignment of vodka and slithered out, looking at the floor. He survived.
PepsiCo worked under the assumption that Latinos could tell the difference between Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola; and that Latinos liked Pepsi better.
Pepsi had a vast operation in Latin America; Pepsi salesmen and technicians were ubiquitous, even on restricted military bases.
In the obituary for Mr. Kendall in the NEW YOK TIMES, there is the following statement: “According to government documents and the 2007 book “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the C.I.A.,” by Tim Weiner, a former Times reporter, in 1970 Mr. Kendall introduced Nixon to a Chilean media magnate and Pepsi bottling-plant owner who was seeking Washington’s help in overthowing President Salvador Allende, who had been democratically elected in Chile on a Marxist platform. Mr. Allende was deposed in 1973 by the military and replaced by the dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet…..NEW YORK TIMES.”
That is a very modest statement; this Blogger can attest, from personal experience, that there would have been no putsch against President Allende without Don Kendall.
Before the Pinochet Coup, there had not been a successful military coup in Chile since 1932; that is eons in Latino political time.
Looking back on the Pinochet Coup, one is stunned by the ferocity of the Chilean Military during and after the coup. They were civilized Catholic officers and gentleman; it was as if they had spent the thirty years, the coup less interregnum, thinking up new cruelties. One can understand mass executions, torture, disappearing opponents, all tools in the acknowledged tool kit of coup makers. But who could possibly think up training dogs to rape female political prisoners? Who does that? Who gets the idea, the original idea, to do that?
Even people of dubious morality; morality made fluid by growing up surrounded by Mafioso in Brooklyn, were shocked into despair on the state of mankind, as exhibited by the actions of the Chilean Military. Pepsi lubricated the HEART OF DARKNESS.
Donald Kendall and his friend Richard Nixon
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