*This is the first post in a series in which I unpack the insights I’ve been having specifically from our client interviews and education programming provided by Human Connections*
I am still emotionally and mentally reeling from our visit to Entre Amigos, a community center in San Pancho.
The visit served as an important piece I needed in order to frame a lot of the complicated emotions and insights I’ve been having since arriving three weeks ago.
One of the first things my Community Outreach coordinator told us was that our perspective about the local people and their livelihoods and lifestyle are the single most important things when trying to create a true respect for who they are.
“Los lancheros no son lancheros, sino capitanes”
“The fisherman are not fisherman, but rather captains.”
That simple reframing is incredibly beautiful to me and has certainly influenced how I think about my time here and the work that Human Connections does.
What has truly struck me after every client interview is how entrepreneurial everyone here is. And that statement is not as broad sweeping of a generality as one might initially think. Quite frankly, they have to be that way in order to gain some semblance of financial security. A couple hundred pesos here and there really makes a difference in most people’s lives here.
Even so, our understanding of the word “entrepreneurial” in the United States is soewhat elusive.
At my university, there is a minor titled “Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies.” My dad scoffed when he first heard that name: “You can’t teach someone how to be an entrepreneur! Either you have it or you don’t”
Nowadays, it seems like being an “entrepreneur” is the job of choice for recent graduates as it’s grayscale of legitimacy gives confused twenty-somethings a fancy term to define their own elusive search for any kind of job and figure out what it is that they want to do with their lives.
With such a narrow definition of success in American culture and a heavily cited new business failure rate of something like 8 out of 10 businesses, it’s easy to look at successful entrepreneurs and truly believe that the “entrepreneurial spirit” is only gifted to the few and far between.
Working here in Mexico, I am learning that we have it all wrong.
Part of the client intake survey that the Community Outreach team asks all new clients includes the questions “Why did you choose this line of work?” and “What is your favorite part about what you do?” Without fail, every single person has told us that they started their own business to gain economic independence and being able to make the kinds of decision that this independence affords them is what they like best.
And they find a way to make it work. They will do anything it takes to maintain their independence. And that is what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Yes, with an American frame-of-mind, these people are not “successful”.
Where is their five-year, ten-year, fifteen-year plan for growth and expansion? Many of them don’t even keep accounting books! Where is there balance sheet? Don’t they know they have to keep track of those things to buy the latest car?
Those rules and narrow definitions of success don’t apply here.
Yesterday, I interviewed six men from a cooperative that runs boating tours for sport fishing, snorkeling, whale watching. Every single one of them has another business, be it selling ice cream, a restaurant, running a general store, that their family helps out with and they focus more on during the low season. They make it work.
On every single business card that I received after the interview with the men from the cooperative, their job title is “Captain.”
That could not be more a better title for men with their entrepreneurial spirit. Men who didn’t want to sell out to big tourism companies, who wanted to own the boat they drove, and know that at the end of the day, if they came home without any money, they are accountable, not anyone else.
They are captains, they are bosses. They are not employees, as one of them described to me when I asked him about their biggest competition in the tourism industry, and they will never sacrifice that even if it meant perhaps a more steady paycheck and slightly more official-looking business cards.
Most of the people we interview are not rich in capital. They lack many resources. But they are rich in relationships, and it is that which makes them strong. Those are the relationships that compel them to be entrepreneurs and ignite their souls to fight for their livelihoods and independence. They are proud of the lives they have built - and they have every right to be.
I am overwhelmed and humbled by the spirit of the people I have spoken to. They move to a different rhythm than I am familiar with, they operate at a different pace. My hope for my own journey, which I now know will continue far beyond this internship, is to work to understand their rhythm as much as possible.
