Having faith in our community - Opinion

Not too long ago while in Houston, my son Marc and I visited a friend, Peter Maffitt, an entrepreneur with a politically conservative view of life and a deep interest in Latin American affairs.

Do you know, Ernesto," he asked in a slow and deliberate manner, "that by the year 2050 some demographers are suggesting that the United States population will be slightly over four hundred million and that the combined number of people in Mexico, Central, and South America will be over one billion?"

Peter fixed his gaze directly on my eyes for a few fleeting seconds as though ready to read any sign of reaction.

"What's more important," he continued, "is that we're only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg of a number of these nations with failing economies. People are going to go somewhere to survive, and guess where they're going to go?"

I wasn't given time to answer.

"Right here!" he emphatically responded, pointing downward with the index finger of his right hand, a half amused, half smile on his face, to indicate the United States, "Right here!"

"I know, Peter," came my response. "And the only way that we're going to handle this challenge as a country is by training a very different kind of Latino leader--not the civil rights leader of the past, the ward-politician who gets into public office and remains there for years surrounded by a small constituency who keeps him in power. This time we're going to need skilled and educated leaders with the depth of experience and thinking to handle the unending complexity of human challenges."

"We're already seeing the movement of people cross the southern border, and it is beyond our capacities to monitor," he continued. "But what your children and grandchildren will experience in the years ahead will be unprecedented in our nation's history. The choice for our leaders in the future will be clear. Either they're going to allow a Beirut political situation to emerge out of a sheer need for survival, or they're going to be the designers of a Switzerland. And US-born Latinos, trained and educated here, will have to be part of that responsibility."

Peter knows I founded the National Hispanic Institute, 24 years ago to build on the Latino community's human assets and capacities. And one way of working towards that goal was to focus attention on training better-educated leaders through the community's more capable youth.

We started experimenting with leadership experiences specially tailored for high performing Latino students.

Since then the NHI has provided leadership training to well over 50,000 participants nationwide. More important than their 98% college enrollment rates and 90% college degree completion ratios is the caliber of institutions these young men and women are attending.

In 1985 Rice University, Houston claimed it couldn't find sufficient numbers of qualified Latino undergraduates. Today many of their freshmen are alumni of NHI leadership programs. Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, had less than 3% undergraduate Latino students in 1984. Since then, over 50% of their Latino graduates have not only come from NHI leadership programs, they have consistently demonstrated their academic capacities to compete at the top in comparison to other ethnic student groups and nationalities. And the same can be said for NHI students who yearly enroll at other highly competitive colleges and universities like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago, and Notre Dame, to mention a few. And it doesn't stop with attending top institutions. As these young men and women continue growing and maturing, they're also beginning to show their willingness to step forward and become involved in Latino community life as newly elected public officials, policy makers, heads of non-profit organizations, and leaders in Latino business and professional organizations.

NHI operates largely without the assistance of government, companies, or private foundations for its support, relying mainly on Latino parents who value the training their children receive and get involved financially and as groups of parent volunteers.

After nearly 25 years, the NHI remains true to its community, vision-nurturing the intellectual capacities of its more gifted and talented youth. Staff annually visit hundreds of high schools across the nation in their search for top candidates.

In other words, we want our future leaders to become visible and productive participants in community capacity building from within, not simply to point to problems and demand change. We want them to help cause a shift in thinking towards private community initiative and away from the traditional "agency approaches" of government that foster dependency. We want them to stop associating poverty or backwardness with being Latino and start seeing their community as an important destination in their lives, a global culture of interlinked societies, rather than something to leave behind at the first opportunity. As my father used to remind me, "Comienza con la mente y alma de la juventud primero. Al fin, eso cambia communidades enteras." First start with the mind and soul of youth. You'll change entire communities.)

Maybe we won't be able to answer all of Peter's concerns. But we do understand his anxiety, his uneasiness with the future.

We need a new generation of Latino leaders, who bring new thinking to the table, have traveled abroad, studied at the best universities, speak good Spanish, study the emerging Latino community, and plan to make life in it integral to their development and experience. At NMI, we aim to help this process.

Ernesto Nieto,

President of the National Hispanic Institute

San Antonio, TX

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