 |
 Educational
and Personal Background
For nearly a quarter of a century, my personal goal has been to challenge the
future leaders of North America to pursue a richer understanding and
appreciation of each other, their cultures, and their shared values. Given
today's polarized debate about North American relations, what better way might
we prepare for a more enlightened and collaborative future?
Before I explain my ideas about Mexico and recount my years on what I call “The
Mexico Trail,” I would like to review some of my educational and personal
background. One of my main areas of study at Dartmouth College concerned the
writings of the renowned Oxford historian Christopher Dawson who pioneered the
study of the anthropological and religious dynamics of world cultures. Late in
life, Dawson became the first holder of the Charles Chauncey Stillman Chair of
Roman Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard University. About twenty years
later, Dawson and his writings challenged me to think through the common roots
of human experience, especially as they related to religion and culture. While
at Dartmouth, I also took a number of Spanish courses, including a trimester in
Salamanca, Spain. Generalissimo Franco had just gone to his “reward” and it was
an interesting time to watch the birth pangs of a new democracy.
In the 1981-82 academic year, I continued my studies in history as a Special
Student at Harvard University and I had the great pleasure of “sitting at the
feet” of Professor Bernard Bailyn, Adams University Professor and James Duncan
Phillips Professor of Early American History, whose historical work centered on
early American history, the American Revolution, and the Anglo-American world in
the pre-industrial era.
Following a brief and unrewarding experience in New York City advertising, I
began my career in education as a teacher of history and Spanish at two Catholic
secondary schools, serving one year in Chicago and five in Boston. In the winter
of 1986, I was invited by an educational foundation to inaugurate a summer
service project to Mexico for college students. Little did I know what an
enormous impact this adventure would have upon my future life and imagination.
Beginning my journey on “The Mexican Trail”
I was taking my first steps on “The Mexico Trail,” my allusion to historian
Francis Parkman’s “The Oregon Trail” narrative of his years spent with the
Plains Indians in the 1840s. Parkman had gone to live with these tribes so as to
get a better understanding of the French & Indian War of the previous century.
He almost killed himself in the process. My objective was different. Parkman was
looking for understanding about the past, while I was looking for answers for
the future.
My immediate assignment was fairly simple: to create a summer service project
for a few college students in Mexico City in the wake of its devastating
earthquake. Together with a small band of daring volunteers, we made contact
with an underserved community and helped them to improve their neighborhood
conditions. In the next summer I brought more volunteers to the same locale and
together we undertook a much more ambitious construction project that
significantly improved their drainage problems. As time passed, I began to
listen to what the local people wanted from us. They were not asking for urban
renewal projects. They were asking for English classes for their children. In
the subsequent three years I incorporated modest English instruction into the
program, while maintaining the service work element. I also began to introduce
classes for the American volunteers about Mexican history and culture so that
they might have a richer understanding of whom we were dealing with day after
day. After five years I phased myself out of this program which still continues.
My conclusion at the end of these many intensive visits was that the service
experience, while well intentioned, is not an ideal means for getting Americans
to know the poor of Mexico. In fact, there is a risk that the service experience
may reinforce a paternalistic attitude from donor to recipient. This is because,
by its very nature, international service does not foster a level playing field.
This is the same whether building latrines or teaching English. Under these
conditions, the American volunteer is not challenged to view the poor of Mexico
as people with the same dignity and potential as anyone back home. As a result,
I began to consider what might be a more productive way to bring Americans into
contact with the poor of Mexico who make up 70% of the population and the vast
majority of migrant workers to our country.
I came to believe then and still do now that it is of critical importance for
our country to assume its responsibilities as a highly educated society to
proactively seek to reconcile the cultural differences implicit in the
“browning” of America. By 2050, one in four Americans will have Hispanic blood.
Meanwhile, the eyes of our foreign policy elites look east and west, and rarely
turn south unless there is a catastrophe looming. It is indispensable that we
take a greater interest in the people who are becoming our future.
Because I became ever more convinced of these ideas and inasmuch as Mexicans and
their culture never ceased to fascinate me, I took it upon myself to find the
answer to this question. I knew that I had to learn more about these people and
their way of life from first hand experience. I decided to move to Mexico and I
spent much of the 1990s living, working and studying there. And so, I kept
traveling further and further along “The Mexico Trail.”
My total immersion with the Mexican people
In 1993, I began my life in Mexico City as an English teacher and later on as
a salesman for an English language magazine. Afterwards, I found a much better
job working at the regional headquarters of FedEx in corporate training and
quality assurance. I
was part of a concerted effort to introduce the corporate culture into a newly
acquired subsidiary. During my four years with the company I worked with and
trained a large number of employees in different levels of the company and
locations throughout Mexico and Central America. I created a quality assurance
measurement for our region that helped us to increase productivity.
I was very gratified at my total immersion in Mexican society, even though it
did mean surviving a stunning devaluation (I was being paid in pesos as an
employee of a Mexican company). I socialized almost exclusively with Mexicans of
every social condition. I soon began taking classes at different Mexican
universities to prepare me for a master’s degree in business administration. In
the summer of 1996 I was admitted to the inaugural class of the Executive M.B.A.
offered by The University of Texas at Austin every other weekend in Mexico City
in conjunction with El Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de
Monterrey (Mexico City Campus). I joined sixteen rising executives from the
country’s top businesses for this intensive eighteen-month program of studies.
In the spring of 1998, we graduated with degrees from both institutions.
All of this time I had never ceased deliberating about how best to resolve my
educational conundrum. I don’t remember exactly when, but there came a time when
I realized the greater value of “learning” over “serving.” It was then a
relatively short step from my wanting to educate underserved Mexicans to my
wanting to enlighten volunteer Americans. Which was the more urgent task? Which
was the one that I was better suited for? Which could lead to the greatest
benefit for all parties? I decided to focus my energies upon the education of my
own kind by means of a well-considered model aimed at learning from the poor of
Mexico. I had come full circle as an educator, from the mission fields back to
the American classroom.
In 1999 and 2000, I got a chance to work in my Mexican alma mater as an
administrator, fundraiser and English professor. It proved very interesting to
be “on the inside” of one of the most prestigious university systems in Mexico
and Latin America. That summer I made sure to be on hand to witness the amazing
event of Vicente Fox becoming the first freely elected president of Mexico.
I thereafter returned to the United States and decided to enhance my educational
background by becoming a professional fundraiser. Being a fundraiser – being a
successful fundraiser – means being a successful educator and motivator. I have
spent the past seven years running campaigns for Catholic schools and parishes
throughout the country. Out of sixteen campaigns, four surpassed their goal by
20 to 60%. Six of these efforts were bi-lingual and bi-cultural in English and
Spanish. I facilitated the efforts of volunteer teams in their appeals to
migrant workers in Washington State to hospitality workers in Anchorage, Alaska
to newly middle-class citizens in Central Falls, Rhode Island. In 2003 and 2004,
I led two major corporate campaigns for scholarships for the neediest students
attending Rhode Island’s Catholic schools. The 2004 campaign for this, the
“Anchor of Hope Scholarship Fund” raised 30% over our public goal. In addition,
our volunteer team quadrupled the annual Award Dinner auction revenues from the
previous record year. I know that these skills will always come in good stead
whenever I will be advocating an educational cause that I feel passionately
about.
“The Mexico Trail” as an educational foundation
In March 2000, I joined with two longtime friends to organize, on a voluntary
basis, the North American Educational Initiatives Foundation, Inc. (www.naeif.org).
The purpose of this organization is to help North American university leaders
understand authentic human dignity and regional solidarity based on a proper
grasp of friendship. In other words, the foundation has not been created to help
the poor of Mexico but to help their northern neighbors see them in a truer
light. It was a new iteration of my journey on “The Mexico Trail.”
The foundation (NAIEF) has a variety of programs underway. We are very proud of
our essay series based on Aristotle’s theories of friendship by a world
authority (www.naeif.org/essay.html). Aristotle
taught that a friend is “another self.” I find this very applicable to how we
might improve the paradigm for how Canadians and Americans view the people of
Mexico, especially its poor.
NAEIF has also been involved with a Mexican foundation’s (www.mas.org.mx)
medical center in an indigenous zone in a mountainous region many miles
southwest of the capital (Tlapa, Guerrero). From 2001 to 2003, I made many
visits to this valley, usually as a guide for medical students and “pre-meds”
from Northwestern University. In the course of these visits, I have been
thinking about the appeal of “multi-cultural encounters and learning” in the
sense of having American students come to Mexico with a prior training in
Spanish and in an indigenous dialect.
Probably the most exciting venture that NAEIF is involved in is our North
American Leadership Institute. We have created an exciting 17-day summer program
in Mexico that brings North American university leaders and indigenous
communities together for a unique learning experience. The students are
challenged to study Aristotle’s teachings on friendship and the way each North
American country has treated their indigenous peoples. They then put their
learning into action in guided contact with indigenous communities. You can read
more about this program on the NAEIF website. Please contact me or the
foundation should you or your university want further information about this
exciting educational program.
Where does “The Mexico Trail” end?
In conclusion, after all these years in my most unique journeys and
encounters with the Mexican people and North America's future leaders, I am
still ambling along with a great many ideas and hopes about leadership education
related to the philosophy of friendship and the pursuit of shared cultural
values. I am eager to continue working with like-minded individuals and learning
organizations to advance such promising opportunities.
|
|
