Latino Business Summit - (6/28)
by Irasema Romero, Reporter
Eastfield hosted the First Latino Business Summit on Wednesday with keynote speaker Dr. Juan Hernandez, author of the new book “The New American Pioneers: Why Are We Afraid of Mexican Immigrants?”
The summit was part of the Conference Room Seminars series, a selection of seminars and conferences organized by Eastfield’s Industry Corporate Contract Training and Continuing Education Workforce Development programs. They are designed to provide free training on a topic that interests the business community. The topic for this summit was the new immigration laws and their impact on Latino businesses and the U.S. economy.
Hernandez talked about the buying power of immigrants and how few businesses are taking advantage of it. He said more people watched “Selena Vive!” on Univision than the Super Bowl.
“It is going to affect our every day life in the business world,” said Alma Villalpando, Eastfield program director of business and industry contact training. “It’s got the potential to make a tremendous drift on our economy or agricultural momentum.”
Board of trustees’ member Martha Sanchez Metzger attended the Hernandez’s speech.
“It allows us to know that the workforce has changed,” she said.
Hernandez was director of the President’s Office of Mexicans Abroad, under Mexico’s president Vicente Fox, before the position was abolished.
He mentioned a woman in the April 9 mega march dressed in a wedding gown holding a sign that declared, “Marry me America.” He said the march was a beautiful scene.
“We are richer for having two options,” Hernandez said.
He talked about his childhood and not fitting in because his father was Mexican and his mother was Texan. He said that even his own grandparents in Mexico treated the darker-skinned grandchildren better and his maternal grandmother, who lived in Fort Worth, did not accept his parents’ matrimony.
“It showed us two points of view, the Anglo-American and the Mexican-American,” said Metzger, of the speech.
Hernandez said, all of his life he has tried to decide his position. If he were asked to choose between Mexico and the United States, he would not be able to decide because it would be like choosing between his father and mother.
Even though Hernandez was born in Fort Worth, it was at the age of eight when he returned to the United States, after living in Mexico. He did not know English but Ms. White, his teacher, taught him to read using comic books and Louis L’Amour novels. Because of this, he had experiences that taught him about the culture, he said.
Hernandez said that since the 1960s, the United States has been through many changes, including 42 million Hispanics who have family members south of the border.
“We made some surprises in this nation in the past two years, no one predicted we would be the greatest minority,” Hernandez said about Hispanics. “We surprised ourselves in the marches and the boycotts.”
“We have awakened and we are going to give it our all,” said Hernandez about Hispanics and immigration. “We won’t go back. |
