Nixon Fellowship

Article about my Nixon Fellowship/senior project written by by Ana Lilia Barraza:

GOOD FELLOW
Nixon Fellow Hansen Hunt ’08 Advocates “Traveling With a Conscience”

Hansen Hunt ’08 is one of two students awarded an inaugural Richard M. Nixon Fellowship, established at the College early last year. Hunt’s winning proposal capitalized on Nixon’s policies toward foreign markets and international cooperation in commerce, but noted that the idealized intent behind these policies has, in practice, eroded over the last several decades. His yearlong project has targeted small, local goods and services businesses in Tijuana (and Rosarito), Mexico, with a goal to determine which utilize and apply best practices, socially responsible means, and local resources. As a follow-up to his research, Hunt has begun work on a website to market these small companies, assisting their consumer reach among tourists and “travelers with a conscience” and promoting the distinctive culture of this small, artisan community.

On a mild and overcast Saturday morning in April, Hansen Hunt is walking across the border to Tijuana, Mexico. Heading away from the solitary, stern-faced border guard, he is progressively enveloped by a cloud of scents and sights and sounds divergent from the country he left behind; sizzling seasoned meats, buildings awash in sun-bright colors, and a cacophony of blaring car horns, thumping music, and shouting vendors are the norm here. The route Hunt takes is a familiar one, filled with shops and stands where he knows from experience he can get the best and cheapest carne asada tacos or a quality, handcrafted textile. As a San Diego native, he’s been coming here for years.

Hunt heads toward Avenida Revolucion, one of the most notorius streets in the city of Tijuana and one of the most popular for tourists. Known for its blend of goods, food, and “local color,” the street is over-populated with clamoring salesmen, hawking everything from fake designer purses to silver jewelry and crafts--even samples of the local tequila.

Today, though, Hunt is not looking for a bargain; he’s here on a fieldwork trip for his Nixon Fellowship project--work that he hopes will bring positive attention to the Tijuana artisan community struggling to survive in the face of stereotypes, bad press, and foreign competition. Hunt’s objective is to identify and promote—through the Internet and through targeted tourist and travel publications—native, local merchants who subscribe to a set of socially responsible “best practices” in the manufacture and retail of their products. What started out as a project focused on aiding these small businesses, though, has grown into what Hunt now describes as a charge to “preserve the culture” of this community.

“I grew up crossing the border to shop for unique products in Tijuana, and I loved it, loved the experience of it,” he says. “I don’t ever want that to change.”
Elaborating, Hunt says that with all the multinational companies moving into the region, and a spike in substandard labor conditions and general business practices, there’s a real danger of this district becoming, in a sense, “outsourced to China,” so it’s critical to address the situation now before it results in the disappearance or degeneration of the artisan community.

“Ultimately, I want more people to have the knowledge that I have about this area, and the opportunity to experience it. And that’s what I hope my project will help to do,” he states.

Fortunately, Hunt discovered he is not alone in his efforts. Typical to the way relationships are made in this small town, an innocuous conversation with a local bus driver led to Hunt’s connecting with an organization called CETURMEX. The nonprofit turned out to be a cohort of 40 small business owners in Tijuana who, according to Hunt, are working with the local government and chamber of commerce to promote a positive image of Mexico by improving the quality and authenticity of local artisan products and applying more socially responsible business practices. Coincidentally, this is the crux of Hunt’s research.

On this particular day, Hunt heads toward the shop of his new friend, Jorge Espinoza, the owner of a 60-year-old, family silversmith business and the president of CETURMEX. Upon reaching the shop, he’s greeted warmly by the gathered group trying to make the best of a slow work day: Espinoza, a couple of fellow craftsmen, and a painter who is working on a large landscape. During his visit, Hunt broaches topics that include outstanding project surveys and arrangements for Espinoza’s journey to Whittier College to guest lecture in an international business class—payback for a speech Hunt was invited to present (in Spanish) before the CETURMEX group, detailing his project and intended goals.

Leaving Espinoza’s, he will stop by other businesses serving as confirmed case studies in his research, many part of the CETURMEX association. To establish these working relationships, Hunt has made dozens of trips to Mexico over the last several months as part of his Fellowship fieldwork, networking with locals and investigating a significant number of prospective vendors to include in his research.

When determining what constitutes “socially responsible practices,” says Hunt, the definition can vary greatly from one country to another. For the purposes of his project, he has created his own benchmark for analysis of local companies in Mexico. Throughout his process, he looked for vendors who avoid certain practices common in Tijuana, such as harassing customers to draw them into a store, selling counterfeit products, price haggling, and using children to sell goods. He also examined differences in basic employee benefits, such as guaranteed wages (independent of actual sales), and social security, which is not a common benefit for artisans. Moreover, he searched out vendors who work to promote and preserve the local culture. As he puts it, “Store employees and owners must have deep understanding of the history of their product in order to effectively educate the customer.”
Hunt acknowledges that while the standards he chose to employ are rather high, local business owners must work together to establish a common set of standards for the specific community in which they operate. Still, when it comes to his project, Hunt intends to tell the unvarnished truth.

“In my research, I have not excluded companies who fail to reach my benchmark, nor will I exclude them from promotion, but I will advertise both their strong and weak points to travelers,” he says, referring to his intent to build a comprehensive website to market his results to travel publications. “The most important thing is not to present any sort of bias, just the facts. Sending tourists and travelers to only a handful of native businesses in Tijuana would be devastating for the rest, and therefore the community as a whole would suffer.”

Hunt’s website (www.unomos.com--“Traveling with a Conscience”) will ultimately be the repository of his research, geared at global consumers and area tourists and intended to drive people to these socially responsible businesses. Hunt will market his website by reaching out to travel magazines such as Sky Mall and travel guides such as Lonely Planet and Fodor’s.

“[With this project] I am trying to promote growth and [improve standards] among all the local businesses, even if they are not conducting operations in that way now. I am attempting to make agreements with store owners, since it is likely that as I market their companies through my project, their sales will increase. It is an incentive for them to meet the benchmark I create, so that consumers choose to shop at their businesses.”

Business professor Daniel Duran, Hunt’s faculty advisor, believes that part of what makes this project so compelling is through clear commitment and drive, Hunt has won critical acceptance among the proprietors--despite barriers of language, culture, and citizenry. “Hansen is helping businesses in this part of Baja articulate the importance of responsible business practice and quality standards in operation,” says Duran. “It’s clear that with his work, he’s truly built a reciprocal level of trust with this community.”

Duran also applauds Hunt’s intent to continue and expand his work well beyond the Fellowship’s one-year term and his graduation in May.

While his focus is primarily on Tijuana, Hunt has also been networking with business owners in Rosarito, a small coastal town located a half-hour south of Tijuana. He hopes to help establish an organization similar to CETURMEX, and he’s already made inroads that will help him replicate the work he’s done in Tijuana.

As Hunt leaves Espinoza’s shop, he walks down a short hallway to get back to Avenida Revolucion. On his way, he stops by a small crafts shop that sells colorful, beaded artwork from southern Mexico called Huichol art. He admires the different pieces, including a large wall hanging of an indigenous representation of the sun and moon. While the bigger piece is out of his price range, he says he’ll probably get the smaller piece that he will use as part of his Fellowship presentation. “I want to get something from every shop that I’ve worked with,” he says, momentarily distracted.

Turning his focus back to the work at hand, Hunt leaves the shop and heads for the avenue, noticeably more congested with traffic as peak hours approach. “Consumers and tourists need to know these towns in Mexico have much more to offer than the old stereotype—a dirty and dangerous environment, cheap labor, and an abundance of manufactured, imitation designer goods.

“That is not Mexico,” he says with a shake of his head. “It’s my plan—and my hope—that this project will help publicize its true culture and identity.”