Oscar Chiquitó Sabán
Posted on Oct 1st, 2007
by 
FLOW
FLOW
I met Oscar Chiquitó Sabán over the weekend, a Guatemalen who is in the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship.
Oscar was raised in a one-room house made of cornstalks with his parents and four siblings. He begged his father to go to school but was told that the family needed him to stay at home and work on the farm. Finally when he was nine he managed to get someone to give him a scholarship at a private school, and he continued to work when he wasn't in school. He then won a scholarship to Universidad Francisco Marroquin, where he learned about entrepreneurship. For years his father would farm and his mother would sell the vegetables in the town. Oscar created a real business out of this arrangement, improving the quality and professionalism of what they sold and how. Now, just four years later, their family business is one of the largest businesses in his hometown, Sumpango, and they supply produce to the best organic restaurant in Guatemala City.
He simultaneously organized his church to buy a piece of land worth $300,000. He led the fun-raising campaign, in the course of which people in his village were donating their wristwatches, their television sets, anything they had. A widow died and donated her entire estate, $15, to the cause. They succeeded in purchasing the land last January (with help from church groups in the U.S.), and are now raising money to build a church, a hospital, and a school.
Oscar is bright, kind, smart, and ambitious. He is one of those people in whom one naturally has great confidence. I talked to him about creating a Sumpango free zone to fund his project, based on our paper on Women's Empowerment Free Zones, and he is very interested. Someone else told me that he intends to be president of Guatemala someday, which seems entirely possible.
One of his campaigns is to transform the passivity of the people in his town. He says that they all just sit waiting for the government to do something for them. Clearly he has a different ethos.
Certainly Oscar was born with many gifts. And, at the same time, I'm confident he is changing the culture of his hometown. He transformed his family from a poor, small time farmer to a highly successful business operation. His father and mother are the same people they were when they were living a simple life in their cornstalk house.
Oscar is a wonderful manifestation of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial culture. People fund his projects because they know that he will create something real with the money. We need to create educational processes that bring out the Oscar in all of us.
Oscar was raised in a one-room house made of cornstalks with his parents and four siblings. He begged his father to go to school but was told that the family needed him to stay at home and work on the farm. Finally when he was nine he managed to get someone to give him a scholarship at a private school, and he continued to work when he wasn't in school. He then won a scholarship to Universidad Francisco Marroquin, where he learned about entrepreneurship. For years his father would farm and his mother would sell the vegetables in the town. Oscar created a real business out of this arrangement, improving the quality and professionalism of what they sold and how. Now, just four years later, their family business is one of the largest businesses in his hometown, Sumpango, and they supply produce to the best organic restaurant in Guatemala City.
He simultaneously organized his church to buy a piece of land worth $300,000. He led the fun-raising campaign, in the course of which people in his village were donating their wristwatches, their television sets, anything they had. A widow died and donated her entire estate, $15, to the cause. They succeeded in purchasing the land last January (with help from church groups in the U.S.), and are now raising money to build a church, a hospital, and a school.
Oscar is bright, kind, smart, and ambitious. He is one of those people in whom one naturally has great confidence. I talked to him about creating a Sumpango free zone to fund his project, based on our paper on Women's Empowerment Free Zones, and he is very interested. Someone else told me that he intends to be president of Guatemala someday, which seems entirely possible.
One of his campaigns is to transform the passivity of the people in his town. He says that they all just sit waiting for the government to do something for them. Clearly he has a different ethos.
Certainly Oscar was born with many gifts. And, at the same time, I'm confident he is changing the culture of his hometown. He transformed his family from a poor, small time farmer to a highly successful business operation. His father and mother are the same people they were when they were living a simple life in their cornstalk house.
Oscar is a wonderful manifestation of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial culture. People fund his projects because they know that he will create something real with the money. We need to create educational processes that bring out the Oscar in all of us.
Access: Public
economic freedom
June 2008