Carl Ja­cobs

An old­er gen­er­a­tion of T&T chess play­ers will re­mem­ber Flo­ren­cio Cam­po­manes with great af­fec­tion. Even while he had the ex­pand­ing prob­lems of world chess on his shoul­ders, the avun­cu­lar Fil­ipino was able to take a per­son­al in­ter­est in pro­mo­tion of the sport in T&T, vis­it­ing the coun­try a num­ber of times and as­sist­ing in a va­ri­ety of sig­nif­i­cant ways. Dur­ing the 13 years, 1982 to 1995, in which Cam­po­manes held the pres­i­den­cy of FIDE, the world chess body, the sport saw an un­prece­dent­ed ex­pan­sion across the globe thanks to his diplo­mat­ic yet dy­nam­ic lead­er­ship. Pur­su­ing a per­son­al dream, Cam­po, as he was af­fec­tion­ate­ly called, turned FIDE in­to a tru­ly uni­ver­sal body, with an ad­di­tion­al 50 na­tions, large­ly de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, be­com­ing mem­bers.

When he died, aged 83, on May 3, af­ter a pro­tract­ed bout with can­cer, the chess uni­verse, play­ers and of­fi­cials all over the world, paused to mourn the pass­ing of a gi­ant among them. Even world cham­pi­on Viswanathan Anand and chal­lenger Vaselin Topalov who were bat­tling for the world chess ti­tle in Sofia, Bul­gar­ia, stood for a mo­ment of si­lence to ho­n­our the fall­en leader. "He was a man who ded­i­cat­ed his whole life to the ad­vance­ment of chess," said Pros­pero 'Butch' Pichay, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Chess Fed­er­a­tion of the Philip­pines. "He left a big void that will be very hard to fill." Such was the great­ness of Cam­po's lead­er­ship that even as he en­gi­neered the growth of chess on a glob­al scale, woo­ing Asian, African and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries in­to the FIDE fold, he still found time to give the ef­forts of lit­tle T&T his per­son­al at­ten­tion and en­cour­age­ment.

"Cam­po vis­it­ed T&T and the Caribbean about four times dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy and helped us to grow in a va­ri­ety of ways," says Edi­son Raphael whose eight-year term as T&TCA pres­i­dent, 1994 to 2002, co­in­cid­ed part­ly with the FIDE pres­i­dent's tenure. "He as­sist­ed us with funds to at­tend Olympiads, with get­ting IM and GM coach­es, with chess equip­ment in­clud­ing books and clocks and most im­por­tant­ly on how to go about or­gan­is­ing in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments at home." "Cam­po helped us in the re­gion to broad­en our hori­zons," Raphael re­calls. Al­lan Her­bert of Bar­ba­dos, an­oth­er of Cam­po's pro­teges, is now chair­man of CACDEC. "As for my­self, I learned a lot from him as we de­vel­oped a close friend­ship. All the ideas I have put to use through the Foun­da­tion, in­clud­ing the or­gan­is­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments, have come from this great man. He was one of a kind."

It was from Cam­po's ad­vice and help that, in 1999, Raphael was able to or­gan­ise a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment at the Trinidad Hilton fea­tur­ing nine GMs and IMs. This suc­cess­ful event re­mains the strongest chess con­test ever held in the coun­try. "To fa­cil­i­tate the tour­na­ment, Cam­po sent us a lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ar­biter, Jorge Ve­ga, who lat­er be­came pres­i­dent of FIDE Amer­i­c­as," Rafael re­called. Cam­po's self­less de­vo­tion to the sport earned him the re­spect of chess play­ers at every lev­el. An il­lus­tra­tion of the kind of in­flu­ence he wield­ed oc­curred dur­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment or­gan­ised by the T&TCA at the Nor­mandie Ho­tel, St Ann's, in 1991. The event was threat­ened by the heat­ed in­dig­na­tion of GM John Fe­dorovich who was cau­tioned by ar­biter Clay­ton Gomez for col­lud­ing with GM Mikhail Gure­vich, fol­low­ing charges made by par­tic­i­pat­ing Cuban IMs.

It seems that Gomez, on in­ves­ti­gat­ing, had ac­tu­al­ly caught the GMs in the bath­room dis­cussing Gure­vich's game. High­ly in­censed by the charge, Fe­dorovich de­mand­ed the re­moval of the ar­biter. As fate would have it, Cam­po called Raphael at the same time to find out how the tour­na­ment was pro­gress­ing. The then T&TCA pres­i­dent in­formed the FIDE pres­i­dent about the in­ci­dent and the an­gry re­ac­tion of Fe­dorovich. "With a smile in his voice," Raphael re­called, "Cam­po in­struct­ed me to tell Fe­dorovich that 'Cam­po says hel­lo'. When I con­veyed this greet­ing to the ag­i­tat­ed GM it was like a mag­i­cal spell; his vex­a­tion dis­ap­peared and he played through the rest of the tour­na­ment with­out a mur­mur."

It may be use­ful to ex­plain that the GMs' vis­it to Port-of-Spain was part­ly fund­ed by CACDEC as ap­proved by the FIDE pres­i­dent. "Cam­po was al­ways will­ing to help, even in a per­son­al way. Dur­ing a vis­it to Brazil we asked him to come to Trinidad to at­tend our prize giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny. He read­i­ly oblig­ed, and was at the Kapok Ho­tel to present the Er­ic Williams tro­phy to na­tion­al cham­pi­on Chris­to Cave."

Dur­ing his term, the FIDE pres­i­dent raised mil­lions to meet the or­gan­i­sa­tion's bud­get and the cost of six world cham­pi­onship events.

Even­tu­al­ly, per­haps in­evitably, Cam­po be­came the sub­ject of sev­er­al leg­endary sto­ries. He had the rep­u­ta­tion of drink­ing oth­ers to the floor. He would sit him­self near a pot­ted plant which would prob­a­bly wilt from the amount of al­co­hol which Cam­po emp­tied in­to it. Cam­po could have eas­i­ly set­tled for a suc­cess­ful aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reer, hav­ing gained his doc­tor­ate in po­lit­i­cal sci­ence at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty, Wash­ing­ton in 1954. But his pas­sion for chess be­came all con­sum­ing. As a play­er he won the Philip­pine na­tion­al cham­pi­onship twice and rep­re­sent­ed his coun­try at five Olympiads. He be­came in­volved in FIDE as a na­tion­al del­e­gate and worked his way in­to promi­nence in Asian chess or­gan­i­sa­tion. The life mis­sion that he sub­se­quent­ly ful­filled in spread­ing chess all over the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly among de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, will re­main Cam­po's undy­ing and in­com­pa­ra­ble lega­cy.