Building Diverse Business Communities Requires more than Business Management Skills

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on November 7, 2007

Over the last three weeks I have been running a marathon of meetings, conferences, presentations, and catching up on e-mails and office work.

One of the highlights was an invitation I received by Jaci Smith at the Northfield News to present on October 29th, on the issues of the growing Latino/a population in Northfield and the context (economic, social, political) affecting its ability to integrate into the wider community.  The presentation was their way to kick-off their United Way fund drive for 2007.

This and many other opportunities are well appreciated as I find myself engaged in education of the public, engaging leaders in discussions of issues that affect our community (affordable housing, jobs, etc.), and other aspects of building the stepping stones and public relations so that our emerging Latino/a entrepreneurs can thrive in rural Minnesota.  Though we are a long way from succeeding at this job, our impact is now visible and measurable.

On October 22nd, and 23rd, I had an opportunity to participate at an "after NAFTA" conference organized by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and sponsored by our own Main Street Project.  Just to be clear, at the Latino Enterprise Center and Main Street Project, we are all about supporting international trade and business development.  But we do this with the society in mind, with the rural communities engaged, and with consideration for the social, environmental, and economic consequences of what we do.  In short, we think of this trade issues under a set of principles considered under the international movement for fair trade and the environment.  These systems do not pursue enriching the top minority of the already wealthiest people in this country or in developing nations, but a system with a reasonably equitable distribution of the benefits of trading goods and services among people and nations.

Under the fair trade measuring stick, NAFTA is by far one of the largest social economic model failures according to a diversity of experts.  I was surprised to see such high level of governmental representation from Canada and Mexico, and the general agreement on NAFTA’s connection to the migration of more than 6 million people who cross the border undocumented and come from rural areas of Mexico in the last 12 years.

In the picture above is Congressman Miguel Luna Hernández (right), President of the House of Representatives of Mexico. On the podium, is Peter Julian, who addressed the conference at the start, he is a member of the Canadian Parliament.  Following the keynote, there was a panel of experts which include Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and Jose Antonio Almazan – Federal Deputy (PRD), Mexican Parliament, among other national leaders.

At another event, the Rural Summit at Iowa State University in Ames, IA, I heard a similar story from economists, social scientists and even our aspiring presidential candidates   that came for the second day of the conference to address the participants on their plans, specially on fixing NAFTA.

Since all of these events happened, I have been trying to make sense of them in terms of the immigration debate, our own local rural issues related to integration of the Latino communities, and the economic, social and political environment in which we are trying to do the work.  These local issues have a way of rising to the larger national and international context with the same sense of urgency that I find in Northfield, Crookston, Fargo/Moorhead, Faribault, Austin, Worthington, etc..

This deeper awareness and understanding has made me rethink many issues in regards to our strategy, building support networks and the way us at the LEC approach our work, specially because our business is not measured only through the bottom line. Though we have to do well on the profit side just as any other business, the "external" factors such as the social, economic and political conditions of our communities directly affects our effectiveness and defines our strategy.  This strategy has now come to be base solidly in the concept of promoting profitable businesses for social and environmental responsibility.

One outcome of these last three weeks work is that I have started to become less responsive to arguments of anti-immigrant groups and individuals working against so called "illegal" immigrants and their rights to be in this country.  I may agree that coming to this country undocumented is a problem, but I understand poverty myself and will never blame anyone for trying to find a way to feed their family.

To make sense of this, I like to look at the whole picture first and then brake it down into different levels, until I reach the level at which I can do something.  This brings me back to our rural Minnesota communities where we evaluate our strategies for building diverse communities within this larger reality.  One thing more people need to understand better is that we are living in a time of incredible migration movements worldwide.  Most of this movement are the consequences of conflicts over natural resources, and power structures.  Global and transnational corporations are at the center of the debate over gaining control of these resources, the political systems that enforce the laws that control them, the markets that consume them, and the structures that make them extractable and deliverable to the end users.

NAFTA is one of the tools that allows these structures to work without public accountability or input.  Back to the connection with immigration as a result of economic displacement, this happens without much of a chance of actually achieving much of an "economic dream" but purely pursuing the basic human instinct to survive.  In this country it is legal to act in self-defense, and the attacker needs to compensate the victim if proven guilty.  It should also be legal to act in "self-survival" especially if one comes from a rural village under the attack of global faceless trade policies. The problem here is that the ones making the laws are the ones who judge them, this posses a question about the fundamental concept of building a democratic system.

I know I went a little far on this, but the truth is that I actually did not say much new, most of the arguments I am presenting here were widely discussed at the NAFTA conference I mentioned, at the Rural Summit in Ames, Iowa and at the Latino Leadership Conference in Marshalltown, Iowa last weekend, which I also attended.

Comments

One Response to “Building Diverse Business Communities Requires more than Business Management Skills”

1. Daniel says:

   November 10, 2007 at 12:56 pm

   I couldn’t understand some parts of this article , but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.