Music

HISPANIC MAGAZINE: How did MATT come to be?
LIONEL SOSA: The genesis came from a group of businesspeople right here in San Antonio. The core of them are Mexican citizens, but they also have American passports, they have dual citizenship. They have homes in Mexico, and they have homes in San Antonio.
They love both countries but they realize that before they can really do a lot of business between both countries, they have to take a role in helping to solve the problems affecting both our countries. And of course, as we all know, so many of our problems have to do with immigration. Immigration is at the core of every issue having to do with the U.S. and Mexico.

HM: So when we’re talking about immigration, we’re also talking about business?
LS: We can do business together, but it’s going to be limited unless we get our relationship on a more even keel.

HM: Why do we need Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans searching for solutions to these issues? Why don’t we just leave these issues to Euro-Americans to solve?
LS: Our mission [at MATT] is to encourage bicultural Mexicans and Americans to come together to help solve the problems confronting our two countries to the benefit of both people.
This is not just Mexican Americans, it’s Mexicans and Americans, meaning all Mexicans in Mexico and the U.S., meaning Mexican Americans, Anglos, Asians, anybody whose life is affected by the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. And that also means politicians, and community leaders and corporate leaders, and so far we’ve had a lot of different op-ed pieces posted from these leaders.
And we want to be very fair and balanced. We want to give the moderates and extremists on both sides of the left and right a chance to vent, to be able to [have an open dialogue] with others that feel the way they do, or differently from the way they do. And encourage them to come together and solve problems and we’ve begun to do it in a very real way.
For instance, at the core of almost every opinion [there’s the understanding that] we have to make Mexico more attractive and the U.S. less attractive for workers. Well, yes, we need to do that, but how do we make Mexico more attractive, or how do we help create jobs in Mexico? Well, we’re about to launch a service of MATT microloans where you can create a job in Mexico for as little as $50.
We have built a partnership in Mexico with people that have the infrastructure to find the people who need the loans, to be able to make the loans with our money, or the money of our members.
We’ve already had over 5.5 million hits on our website. We have 60,000 full-fledged members and have a very, very active website of people coming in and giving us their opinions every day on what they think is important on issues that relate to Mexico and the U.S.

HM: And you are taking your findings and ideas from MATT.org to the White House?
LS:We are making presentations with congressmen and senators and we’re sharing this information with political leaders, with the White House, and we’ll share it with everyone from the president of the U.S. on down, whoever wants to listen.

HM: What are non-Latin Republicans missing in the immigration debate?
LS: I think that a lot of people simply don’t understand the immigrant contribution to America. I think that some people either turn a blind eye to it, or they simply don’t stop to think that almost everything that they consume in life is less expensive because the immigrant is here; that almost every aspect of their lives is touched by immigrants, whether it’s the fine wine that they are drinking from California, or the fruits and vegetables that they eat, or the buildings that they work in, the offices that are being cleaned there, or who’s doing the yard at home, or cleaning their home, and so forth, who is cooking their food in the restaurant, or cleaning your rooms in the hotel.
I don’t think that anybody in their right mind can say that immigrants aren’t having an important effect and making a contribution to America.

HM: You’ve said that working on the MATT.org project has made you feel young again. Why do you feel so excited about the project?
LS: It’s knowing that we can possibly make a little bit of a difference in improving people’s lives through the ideas of the people that log on to www.MATT.org. Microlending is one idea, the people finder is another idea. A lot of people were telling us, “Hey, I can’t find my husband,” so we launched a people finder. Someone wrote, “I want to expand my business into Mexico,” so we launched MATTSmart for classified ads, though we need to work on that further.
There’s just all kinds of services that people need to make their lives better, and there’s all kinds of things that I think MATT can do to inform people about how to navigate the American system, for them to know that in this country they have rights, that there is the rule of law, that this is really the land of opportunity, and that it is not like Mexico or Central America or wherever they came from. Here they really can contribute and their contribution will be appreciated, and I think overall it makes for a better life for a whole lot of Latinos throughout Mexico and the U.S.
HM: What’s next for Lionel Sosa after MATT?
LS: I think next year I will be concentrating 80 percent of my time on my painting, but the paintings will be all dedicated to taking the Latino into American museums. You can go to almost any museum and why is the Latino so absent? That’s because there haven’t been quite as many depictions so far, so I’m going to make my contribution.
I’m doing a series of oil paintings, which are life-size, that I call Hidden Heroes: The People Who Keep America Working, and [the images are of] real proud workers, whether they are working building a building, or paving the streets, whether they are working in the kitchen or vaqueros working in the fields or wherever, the men and women who are kind of behind the scenes, undocumented and documented, the people who do the hard work that is the foundations of this country.