Not too long ago the Pew Hispanic Center released a survey which posed a simple question: does the Latino community have a national leader? In 2010 that answer was a resounding no. When asked in an open-ended question to name the person they consider "the most important Latino leader in the country today," nearly two-thirds (64%) of Hispanic respondents said they did not know. An additional 10% said "no one." While there is not a more recent survey, it is a safe bet that if the same question was posed to most Hispanics today they would respond similarly.
At this point it is a cliché to note that the Hispanic community in the United States will double in size over the next 40 years, it also widely accepted that Hispanics will comprise more than 30% of the United States population by 2050. Given how much the Hispanic population is set to grow, there is nowhere near that level of representation in our political system. There are 31 Hispanic's serving in the 112th Congress, 5.7% of the total membership. Twenty-nine serve in the House and two in the Senate. There are only two Hispanic Governors in the entire country in Brian Sandoval from Nevada and Susana Martinez from New Mexico. The representation of the current crop of Hispanics is commendable; no one would say otherwise. However the broader question before anyone reading this is where will the next generation of Hispanic leaders come from?
While being a leader is not limited to political service, it sometimes feels as if there is a void in developing the next generation of Hispanic Leaders. That is where the Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) at Harvard's Center for Public Leadership comes in. It asks a very simple question of its participants: what is a leader, how does society create leaders. Perhaps most significantly on the question of what constitutes a "leader," the initiative puts the emphasis on the community.
Dario E. Collado, Program Manager of the initiative, puts it this way: "The most significant learning that we have seen while building and working on the LLI is that our community, the Latino community, and those that want to have it prosper and succeed really do care about the well being, outcome and importance of helping to build leadership capacity for the betterment of everyone."
All of the students participating in the program are confronted by this simple question, what is a leader? For those who have gone through the process that includes not only the Hispanic community's best and brightest but also those looking for a second chance at being leaders in their communities. This includes people like Channel Baez, a teen mother who graduated with her high school diploma in the summer of 2002 and gave birth to her daughter that September. Since, June of 2010 110 students have gone through this program. Baez is just one of these Hispanic undergraduates who has demonstrated enough interest in serving their community and the country as a whole to be given a spot at LLI.
According to Collado, giving those in the community the tools to be leaders in whatever endeavors they pursue after they leave Harvard is among the most important functions of the program. Ostensibly the programs objectives are to enhance the leadership capacity and understanding of students committed to serving the Hispanic community and the country as a whole. But the program is also about so much more than that, it is about giving back and growing the infrastructure of a larger Hispanic leadership apparatus nationally.
So back to that thorny question about how to foster greater national Hispanic leadership, perhaps the Latino Leadership Initiative has the answer, start in the community. The Latino Leadership Initiative is important, fostering more national leadership among Hispanics is important, but at the end of the day that journey starts in the community. The investment in that, the work and toil at the end of the day is the stuff that leadership is made of.
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Above all else, to lead is to do. To do with integrity, honor, veracity, conviction, intrinsically motivated, and grounded; do that way and others will follow. The United States is founded in the belief that it is the individual that matters whatever is his or her background, and that everyone has the right to equal: treatment, respect, protection, and expression of opinion. In short, the individual, as an individual, has the dignified right to be equal to any other individual. To be sure, the understanding of this plants the seed toward leadership.
While identifying a national leader in the Latino community is debated, of more importance at the grass roots level is to ensure that we have capable and prepared leaders serving in all sectors of our society and proudly representing the Latino community when critical decisions are made that impact our future and the future of America. The Latino community is not monolithic and finding that one leader capable of representing us all is far less important than having Latino leadership in our local communities as business owners, doctors, lawyers, judges, elected officials, neighbors, teachers, and successful students. Experience has taught us that leadership is the element that transcends all cultural, social, and economic backgrounds and redefines what it means to be a dreamer. When you ask the question “Where will the next generation of Hispanic leaders come from?” at CHCI we say it takes leaders to develop leaders. We praise the Latino Leadership Initiative at Harvard for its work and for joining us in our tireless efforts to develop the next generation of Latino leaders.
Let's look at this:
1. Castro enslaved an entire country and then installed his brother as Monarch-In-Chief...oh yeah that so democratic and such inspired leadership.
2. Che Guevara abandoned his wife and kids and told her to have a good life and to be sure to feed the kids while he was rolling around in the jungle with is commando buddies...hmmmm
3. Bauttista (sp?) robbed the coffers of Cuba to buy mansions all over the world and get lots of plastic surgery to erase his black roots, like Sammy Sosa today
4. Peron...he put his prostitute girlfriend as First "Lady"...yeah, quite the "leader".
I think you need to re-assess your "leadership" metric.
Isn't that what you really want ?