Driving into Venezuela's capital city, Henrique Vollmer points, with a rueful half smile, to a handmade banner hanging from a highway overpass. "Welcome to Caracas," the graffiti reads. "Take care of your life."

The warning might not seem to apply to a man like Henrique Vollmer, who, along with his brother Alberto, runs the family rum company, a generations-old business dynasty. But it is exactly what the Vollmers have been trying to do for five years, not only by rescuing that family business from near-bankruptcy, but also by rehabilitating Venezuelan street gangs and helping homeless squatters.

In some profound, positive ways, the Vollmers are working both ends of Venezuela's economic spectrum. The tropical country's natural landscape is lush, and it is home to some spectacular wealth produced by natural resources like sugar cane and oil; the nation is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, the source of about 15 percent of the U.S. oil supply. But because Venezuela was an oligarchy for centuries, where a few rich and powerful ruled the many, there's an equally spectacular gap between rich and poor.

It's this gap the Vollmers are trying to bridge. In rural areas like the municipality of Revenga in the state of Aragua, where the Vollmer family lives, poverty and crime have been problems for decades. As the car proceeds from Caracas to the town of El Consejo, where the Vollmers' 209-year-old hacienda is located, slum dwellings increase - but Hacienda Santa Teresa certainly isn't one of them. Built in 1796 by the count of Tovar y Blanco, the expansive estate joined the extensive land holdings of the Vollmer brothers' great-grandfather, Gustavo Julio Vollmer Ribas, in 1885. It was converted to sugar cane fields, and by 1896, Santa Teresa was Venezuela's first rum-making operation.

Today, the 5,000-acre empire produces, blends, and ages the country's primo luxury rums and raises coffee, citrus, cattle, and cane. And politically, the Vollmer brothers' backgrounds could hardly, in the new world, be more old-world conservative and aristocratic. Their father was Venezuela's ambassador to the Vatican; their mother, a countess and a Palm Beach socialite.

Since taking over leadership of C.A. Ron Santa Teresa in 1999, however, President/CEO of CARST Alberto and President of Santa Teresa International Henrique have been raising cane in more ways than one - most spectacularly, through initiating corporate social responsibility initiatives so unprecedented, so ingenious, and so successful that they have already attracted attention from international political and business leaders. Most notably, their Proyecto Alcatraz, which Aragua officials estimate has cut local crime in half by rehabilitating gang members, is being used as a case study by Harvard University and nearly a dozen noted business schools in Spain and Latin America. Even Hugo Chavez, no friend to rich landowners, has praised the program as truly revolutionary, urging other businessmen to adopt similarly humanist economic approaches that might just save Venezuela.

"This country's never going to get fixed unless you fix the slums. But if you can turn this rubbish heap around, you can turn anything around," explains Alberto, who conceived Alcatraz and deliberately narrow-focuses all of Santa Teresa's social-action programs locally and beyond. "Once you set the example, you have something to show, to say, ‘Look here what we did with almost no resources. Imagine what could happen with resources.' That's what we want to do, get down to the nitty-gritty facts: We did this. Don't talk, do.

"We've done one or two things," he adds modestly. "All you have to have is a good idea, no?"

One of the other things they did while working to fix the slums was save C.A. Ron Santa Teresa from financial ruin.

Unlike most rums sold in the U.S., which are mixed but unaged, rum in Venezuela - where the spirit is serious business - must be aged a minimum of two years in order to be called rum. That makes even the less expensive rums Santa Teresa has marketed so far in the States (Grand Reserva, a fruity, woody, two-to-five-year-old golden añejo; Rhum Orange, an elegantly silky rum steeped with Valencia orange peel, not orange flavoring; and Araku, a sophisticated coffee-infused rum, to be introduced this summer) Cadillac quality, comparatively.

And 1796, the firm's top-of-the-line rum, is a Rolls Royce. The exquisitely balanced bicentennial brew is the world's only rum produced in a solera. A costly artisan system normally used for Spanish brandy and sherry, the solera system blends four- to 35-year-old rums, then ages and flavors the blend further in a stacked series of old French Limousin oak barrels. "I've seen some very commercial rums use the term ‘solera' on their labels while never using a true solera system, which requires patience and a lot of human attention," explains spirits evangelist Sean Ludford, whose website, www.spiritsexperts.com, analyzes liquors. "Rather, these commercial makers simply create a blend of rums of various ages."

In contrast, the true solera's finished product is rich, nutty, honeyed, and spicy, full-bodied but so smooth it practically purrs. It's rum capable of converting people who think they hate rum. And mixing it with Coke would be sinful. "'In terms of quality, 1796 joins the relatively small category of contemplative wood spirits like single­-malt scotch or cognac, and it can be used in the same way," enthuses Ludford. "It offers similarly complex aromas and flavors. You sit down after a good meal and enjoy it straight, when you want to relax."

"The Rhum Orange is also great for after eating," opines Edgar Leal, the James Beard House-honored chef and owner of Miami's premier Nuevo Latino restaurant, Cacao. "Even the elegant bottle design makes you see you're having something special."

But regardless of quality, Ron Santa Teresa­ was verging on bankruptcy in 1998. "After my father left for the Vatican in 1995, a number of other people, not from the family, were running the company. There wasn't really an identity or an identification with the company," Henrique says. Sales were low, but overhead, in the form of too many employees, was high. "And we'd had a merger with a distribution company that basically imported whiskey and brands from abroad. They had a philosophy toward distribution, not production. And those two philosophies clashed. We were importing whiskey, Champagne, wine, tequila, everything, and this one powerful board member who had basically taken over Santa Teresa said rum wasn't a viable business."

Though Alberto and Henrique have always been close, they have different per­sonas. In looks as well as charisma, Alberto resembles a young, Latino John F. Kennedy: the dynamic dreamer. Bespectacled Henrique is a dead ringer for Stargate SG-1's studious yet studly archaeologist/linguist Dr. Daniel Jackson. Fluent in four languages, he's never at a loss for words: a facts/details guy. But in this family crisis, they saw eye to eye. And what they saw was red. "No," corrects Henrique. "Purple!"

So they proposed a coup. "We told our father we were positive that if we took over, sent everyone packing, and kept just rum, focused only on that, we'd be successful," explains Henrique. "If you saw the numbers for what you get for a case of rum and of whiskey, you have to sell two or three times more rum. So a lot of people said we were mad, that it was impossible, that we were going to go bust two months later. But here we are. The year we took over we had a 27 percent loss. The following year we had a 4 percent loss. The year [after that] it was [a] 14 percent profit. This year we closed at 22 percent profit."

Among the specific restructuring steps the brothers took, Henrique ticks off, "We cut employees from 600 to 264. We've lowered costs. We've been much more effective at handling inventory. We've increased prices. We increased exports; we'd been very focused on domestic business and production and thought we were focused internationally­ because we had a guy in Spain, Italy, and Peru. But there wasn't a concerted effort towards that. We weren't even in the United States three years ago.

"On the domestic market we rebuilt our name. The presence of the sons of the owner out in the streets, doing the work and talking with clients, has really helped the esteem of the company and raised confidence. They hadn't seen the owner for a long time. They got the wrong message.

"And then there's a whole branch of activities we started to do to lift up the category: a lot of education on rum, product launches, tastings - high-end things. In other markets we've seen whiskey take an important part of markets and consumers' minds, and then vodka. We've seen tequila go boom. And I've been hearing that rum is the next category to rise, grow, be fashionable. Definitely, there are more people out there now prepared and educated enough to appreciate our product."

In targeting the upscale "sipping spirits" market, Ludford says, it was a sound strategy to introduce Santa Teresa to the U.S. through its highest-quality, highest-priced rum, 1796, rather than starting with a competitively priced product. "By leading with their prestige product, they set themselves apart from the pack of rum labels crowding the shelves," he explains. "They identified themselves as a serious spirits producer. In this way, the additional Santa Teresa products would be greeted with curiosity rather than with the yawns usually reserved for $15 rums."

Both brothers spent three years learning to run Santa Teresa by working in every aspect of the business from the bottom up. "When I first met Henrique, when I was just starting as a chef in Caracas, he was delivering the rum, completely the last person on the link of the company," laughs Leal. "I didn't even find out he was the owner­ till his third delivery. He drove this old Volks­wagen because his father said, ‘That's what you could afford on this salary.' [The brothers]­ really liked getting to know the people, and still do. When we've done fancy wine dinners together, we would sneak out from the estates and go to underground places, and they could always get people to talk to them freely because they're not cocky. They could be mistaken for anybody by their simplicity."

The brothers' common touch was an important factor in pulling Santa Teresa back together, Leal feels. "If you go to the hacienda, you can see how loyal their workers are," he says. But to aid in the complex machinations required to restructure the company, Alberto also took a postgraduate course in crisis negotiation at Harvard. It soon came in handy in ways he'd never imagined.

"ACTUALLY, I NEVER WANTED to be in business at all," Alberto confesses cheerfully. "I was always sort of the black sheep of the family." While Henrique never considered any career path but the family company (save for a short flirtation with the idea of becoming a pro rugby player), his older brother, who'd spent some of his early years at Valley Forge Military Academy and College - an attempt to instill discipline in the independent-minded young troublemaker - worked from age 18 to 28 as a photojournalist.

He also lived for a time in a squatters' shack, working on a project in Carapita, a Caracas barrio. "When I was studying civil engineering in college, I met these people who constructed alternative housing in very poor areas - beautiful houses, but using cheap, readily available local materials. So I thought, I'm going to move to a slum, teach construction, and see how far I can go."

At the time, the answer was not very. "The project had low impact," admits Alberto. "I didn't have the clout, so I wasn't able to attract attention and influence people. But the way I look at it, that learning in the slum was preparation for now."

One night in February 2000, over 400 families seized a large tract of the Vollmers' land, across from Hacienda Santa Teresa. Instead of calling the police to oust the squatters or allowing them to stay (establishing both a dangerous slum and a dangerous precedent for future takeovers), Alberto offered to donate 60 acres and architectural plans to build a 100-home model community, if the squatters provided the labor to build their own houses. Alberto is godfather to the grandson of the squatters' Chavista leader.

"Since we had that land invasion here, my theory has been, ‘Okay, invade my territory, I'll invade your mind,' " smiles Alberto.

Proyecto Alcatraz began with a more violent invasion: Three local gang members ambushed one of Santa Teresa's security guards, beat him, and stole his gun.

"It's quite a story. Our head of security, Jimin, caught one of the guys after three days, and took him to the police," Alberto relates. "But the police here, it's not like the States. They look on the computer: ‘Wanted for this, this, and this. Ah.' The worst prison you can imagine is the best alternative. Otherwise, they take you out in the jeep - which means you're dead. Jimin calls me up and says, ‘Listen, the police are taking this guy out to execute him. Green light or red light?' I said, ‘No, no, red light. Bring him over here.' They didn't want to give him over. But Jimin finally bought the guy for 50,000 Bolivares. That's something like 23 bucks. Amazing, no? Twenty-three dollars, the difference between life and death."

Improvising as he went along, Alberto presented the gang member with two options. "One, you go back to the police. Two, you work for three months, for nothing. Choose." The young perp was at Santa Teresa's office at seven Monday morning. When Alberto asked if he knew four or five others who'd be interested in a work/training program, 22 showed up - the entire gang.

Roughly 115 gang members are currently participants or graduates of the program, which has grown to include agricultural labor, education in values, psychological counseling, community service, and rugby training. After three months, graduates can opt for paid employment; the brothers­ themselves have hired four graduates as Santa Teresa marketing trainees. Or graduates can further their education in Cafe Alcatraz's coffee-growing program or the Taller del Constructar Popular, a builders' workshop where the young gang members - many of whom were formerly employed as professional hit men - learn complex computer architecture programs and remarkably intricate woodworking.

Touring El Consejo's barrio with Alberto these days is actually somewhat frustrating: So many residents stop him for chats and high-fives, it takes half an hour to walk half a block. There's a prolonged consultation, for instance, at a drug house that's being remodeled into a day care center. But it's also inspiring. When several gang members are asked how they feel about the project and themselves, one very serious 20-year-old breaks into a rap song he wrote detailing the disapproval with which people reacted to him before, and the admiration after. "He's called Patapiche, Smelly Feet," grins Alberto. "He was the most feared gang leader in the region."

"At first we thought it was a trap to kill us all," says Jose, a young guy in a red stocking hat. "Then we realized it was because they wanted us to change; they were giving us an opportunity."

But Alberto frankly admits that the brothers' do-gooder projects are also just good business, especially in a situation where the property of the rich faces confiscation or destruction. "The drive to do good comes from 208 years, because we had to preserve our land, our philosophy. And the only way to do that is to actually change your surroundings so our way of life is sustainable.

"So it has a very positive influence for society, but the social responsibility is not simply selfless. It's also self-preservation. It's got both."

"They have to spend time on social issues, because otherwise they seem like enemies of the people," Leal agrees. "So they are doing exactly the right thing for the company when they do projects in the country, and say, ‘Look, we're not bad. We build towns. We build people.'

"But on another level, they are always speaking about social issues. Definitely Alberto talks the most about that; Henrique takes care of a lot of company things Alberto doesn't have time for. But they are truly a team," Leal adds. "They both like to be different. They like to take risks. They both like a challenge, and are always looking for one. They're like dreamers. They dream about a better world, and then they make it happen."