San Antonio Express-News
Change sought for Mexico
April 26, 2011
By David Hendricks
The flight of Mexico's upper class from the organized crime and drug cartel battles that plague their nation has created a community that should be willing to help change the conditions that led to their homeland's threatening atmosphere.
Other nations with population- or culture-based immigration and global dispersion have mechanisms that aim contributions and programs toward solving problems at home. Israel is an example.
On May 16 and 17, an important event in Washington, D.C., one with deep San Antonio roots, will launch such a mechanism for Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals living in the United States. The program, the Mexican American Leadership Initiative, will allow them to pool contributions and to boost programs to change Mexico at a grass-roots level.
The big draw of the event will be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will appear at a reception May 16 held by the U.S.-Mexico Foundation at the State Department building.
On May 17, former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros will speak on the “The Challenge of Shared Responsibility”during the first conference of the foundation's Mexican American Leadership Initiative. Appearing with Cisneros at the Woodrow Wilson Center will be Arturo Valenzuela, assistant U.S. secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
The New York-based U.S.-Mexico Foundation grew from a nonprofit organization initiated by the San Antonio-based North American Development Bank, which finances utility, street and energy projects along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Other San Antonians involved in the foundation are Raúl Rodriguez, a faculty member of the University of the Incarnate Word and a former NADBank managing director, and José Villarreal, a senior adviser at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld who last year was ambassador general commissioner for the U.S. Pavilionat the Shanghai World Expo.
The U.S.-Mexico Foundation already operates three programs within Mexico. One is a training program for public-school teachers and administrators. Another assists small-business producers with their marketing and commercialization efforts. The third seeks to strengthen Mexican laws protecting the rights of children.
More needs to be done to turn Mexican youths away from entering the world of gangs and crime.
“Mexican Americans are in a unique position to encourage engagement between Mexico and the United States,”foundation President and CEO James Polsfutsaid. “Other diaspora communities have engaged with their countries of origin, but that has not been the case with Mexican Americans,” Polsfut said.
Mexico's security situation is a reason Mexican Americans should become involved in the leadership initiative.“They are watching events in Mexico unfold and wanting (the foundation) to do all we can to be helpful,” Polsfut said.
When invitations for the May 16-17 event went out last week, about 100 were accepted within two days, half of the 200-person capacity. “The fact that Hillary Clinton wanted to participate underscores her belief” in the leadership initiative, Polsfut said. “She believes strongly that diaspora communities can serve as a bridge.”
The Washington event is not invitation-only. “We welcome anyone who wants to take part,” Polsfut said.
Mexican Americans and Mexicans living in San Antonio would make the city look good if they were among the leaders of this effort.
Government programs alone cannot do the job. Mexicans not living in Mexico must show they care.
My San Antonio
U.S.-Mexico Foundation has S.A. Roots
October 8, 2010
by David Hendricks
mysanantonio.com
Probably no other border in the world has so much wealth on one side and so much poverty on the other than the U.S.-Mexico border.
The United States loses ground by having a neighbor where the youth are so discouraged by dismal prospects for their future that they turn to crime. The United States and Mexico must aggressively establish partnerships to advance economic opportunity in Mexico.
Proposals for a North American union of the United States, Mexico and Canada, similar to the European Union in which resources cross borders to boost economic prospects, have gone nowhere in Congress. The debt-laden U.S. government cannot and will not do that. Others must take on the job.
With Mexico's civil society continuing to disintegrate into the violence of drug smuggling and organized crime, a private-sector effort is organizing in the United States and Mexico to foster systematic change in Mexico. The effort has strong roots in San Antonio, and the Obama administration is watching. The effort is called the U.S.-Mexico Foundation. The headquarters are in New York City and Mexico City, but the nonprofit designation comes from an organization spun off from San Antonio's North American Development Bank to Mexico's National Business Council.
Foundation board members from the United States include former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros; former San Antonio business consultant Roger Wallace, now of Dallas; and San Antonio bond lawyer José Villarreal, who also is U.S. ambassador commissioner general to the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Ex-NADBank Managing Director Raul Rodriguez was the foundation's initial treasurer and now is an advisory board member along with Carlos Slim Domit, son of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Villarreal said recently he will devote himself to the foundation once the Shanghai Expo ends. He recently briefed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the foundation. Clinton initially backed an organization called the Mexican-American Leadership Initiative, but that effort merged this summer with the U.S.-Mexico Foundation at Rodriguez's suggestion.
Recently hired as foundation president and CEO was James Polsfut, who possesses an extensive background in U.S.-Mexico relations, including working for GE Capital in Mexico City during the 1990s. Mexican board members include the foundation chairman, José Antonio Fernández, president of the giant soda bottler Grupo Femsa. Former Mexican Finance Secretary Pedro Aspe, Microsoft Mexico General Director Juan Alberto González Esparza and Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhán, also are on the board.
This high-powered group, which formed last year, seeks resources for programs to improve education, health and job opportunities in Mexico. Some projects already have started. Others will be added, Polsfut said.
“A lot of attention will be paid to opportunities for young people, both in education and job creation,” Polsfut said. Program funding will be sought from corporations, foundations and individuals on both sides of the border. Money raised in the United States will be matched in Mexico, Polsfut explained. The foundation should be the first place where Mexican Americans, and wealthy Mexicans living in the United States, especially San Antonio, can try to make a difference in Mexico.
Mexico's youth need hope and alternatives to crime. Otherwise, some parts of Mexican society will slide further into chaos and misery.
Click to view article
Mexican-Americans found group to stem Mexico violence
Sept. 21, 2010
by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
KPCC
Many Mexican-Americans in the United States have watched helplessly as drug violence has tightened its grip on the country of their ancestors. Some high-profile Mexican-Americans, including some from Los Angeles, are visiting Mexico City today where a cross-border group intends to start taking action.
The group is called the Mexican American Leadership Initiative. Former federal Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros helped to launch it earlier this year. Cisneros and a handful of other prominent Mexican-Americans wanted to gather people of similar heritage and achievement who’d expressed frustration that U.S. policy toward Mexico hasn’t helped to curb drug violence.
The group’s targeting people like James Blancarte, a partner at the law firm of Adorno Yoss Alvarado and Smith in downtown Los Angeles. "With over 300 lawyers nationwide, we’re the largest minority-owned law firm in the country," he said.
In a three-decade career, Blancarte has sued rock bands, defended white-collar criminals, and helped Latin Americans conduct business in the United States. As an American of 100 percent Mexican heritage, he says he’s concerned about what drug cartels are doing to his mother’s native country.
"Every time you pick up the paper and you read about the kind of atrocities and the kind of violence that’s going on in Mexico and you realize you’ve been in that town, that you’ve been in that region, you’ve been in that part of the country, and you’ve enjoyed being there, and you then think of what’s going on in those areas, it’s obviously very disturbing on a personal level," he said.
A few weeks ago, Blancarte co-hosted a meeting of prominent L.A. Mexican-Americans at the exclusive City Club downtown. Former politicians, medical researchers, academics and cultural leaders turned out. A staffer pledged the support of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Mexican American Leadership Initiative is organizing under the auspices of the US-Mexico Foundation – a bi-national non-profit that’s funded grants for dropout prevention programs in places where drug cartels recruit disaffected young people.
Martha Smith de Rangel, the interim CEO of the Foundation, is an American who’s lived in Mexico for three decades. "This initiative is a call to action basically to Mexican-Americans in California and all over the country to join us," she said. Mexican-Americans should help repair the social fabric of Mexican communities torn by drug cartel murders and corruption, she added.
Loyola Marymount University professor David Ayon is enlisting members and securing financial support for the group in this, the country’s largest Latino metropolis. Ayon says he wants the group to influence U.S. policy in the same way Jewish-American and Cuban-American organizations do. "I mentioned at our event tonight, the Armenian community, the Irish community, the Polish community. The Polish community was very active in lobbying for the expansion of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, during the Clinton Administration," he said.
Four people – all to become board members of the U.S. Mexico Foundation – will lead the initiative: Ayon, Henry Cisneros, former Clinton Administration policy adviser Maria Echaveste and Texas lawyer and Democratic fundraiser Jose Villareal. They and others plan to form a larger group, the Mexican American Leadership Council, in the coming months.
Even with talent like that on board, the group’s got a tough road ahead, says Jim Gerber, a U.S.-Mexico relations expert at San Diego State University. But the establishment of the Mexican American Leadership Initiative, he says, arrives at the right time.
"I think to some degree it feels like we’ve sort of turned our backs on the problems in Mexico and that the intractibleness of the drug problems, and the scariness of the drug problems, have really I think, caused many Americans to see it as, as somewhat of a hopeless case at this point about which we can’t do much except fortify the border and try to protect ourselves from whatever influence it might have in the U.S.," Gerber said.
The Mexican American Leadership Initiative plans to meet with prominent Mexican-Americans in San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago and Washington, D.C. The group plans a national conference in the nation’s capital next May.
