PART III

The Cultural Foundations of Leadership

CULTURE DEFINES REALITY. Even as a baby, you were swaddled in your cultural loincloth—a tight serape close to your mother’s chest, a papoose carrier that kept you strong and upright, a cradle rocking by your parents’ bedside, a bold, colorful kanga hanging from your mother’s back, or a buggy strolling through an urban neighborhood. Sounds, language tones, music, family size, food, home—all were determined by your cultural patterns. Most likely, everything you were taught and believed in was framed by a cultural lens.

Culture provides the focus through which groups of individuals define their world. It is described as collective programming.¹ Culture is tradition, customs, ethos, philosophy, and a way of life, the cloth that dresses our human experience. Culture is the norms—the dos and don’ts. One of its most significant functions is teaching values—the cultural ideal of how one should live.

Values are enduring beliefs describing ways of acting or being that are preferred by a given group. Cultures organize value systems and reinforce them through symbols, myths, education, role modeling, and oral communication. As noted, dichos (adages) are a shorthand way to infuse norms and values.

Two strong cultural streams that integrate Latino values are a humanist (people) orientation and a love of diversity. These dynamics fashion an accessible, inclusive culture that celebrates people’s uniqueness. Most Latinos value people and community before material wealth or individual achievement. Relationships are the heart of the culture! Many values, therefore, emphasize the way in which people should relate to and treat one another. We will explore the role that values play in framing Latino leadership. Leaders must model these values to be seen as part of the community and as someone people would want to follow.

Chapter 6 begins with the intriguing story of how a conglomerate of races, cultures, and nationalities became identified as Hispanics. Before the 1980 census, the 14.8 million people who identified as Hispanics were in a cultural no-man’s-land. In the next four decades, because of their inherent diversity, Latinos would restructure the US census and the way culture, race, and ethnicity are defined across the United States.