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Tavis: Fernando Espuelas is the founder and CEO of Voy, a company aimed at building a bridge between Latinos and mainstream America through a wide range of media and pop culture. He is also the author of 'Life in Action: the 12 Voy Principles of True Happiness and Success.' Fernando, nice to see you again.

Fernando Espuelas: Nice to see you, Tavis.

Tavis: You've been all right?

Espuelas: Very well. How are you?

Tavis: I'm well. Happy holidays to you.

Espuelas: Thank you. Same to you.

Tavis: There's so much to cover with you in the time that we have, but let me start with this very pointed and direct question: what are you trying to do here? What's the mission? When I say you're trying to... When I say Latinos, mainstream America, what's the mission here?

Espuelas: Well, the mission is to bring them together. There's been so much emphasis on the difference between Latinos and everyone else, but in fact, what I think is happening is that there is an evolution of the Latino community. Specifically, 63% of Hispanics were born in the U.S. and 75% of the growth in the market over the next 20 years will come from people born in the U.S. So this is no longer a market of immigrants per se, although there's lots of immigrants, including myself. It's now Americans who happen to be Latin, and I think that's driving a whole shift in how the mainstream perceives Latins, but more importantly, how Latins are informing that mainstream and that shift.

Tavis: OK, tell me what the mainstream media, to that point, gets about this growing populace and tell me what the mainstream media doesn't get about this growing populace.

Espuelas: Well, I think mainstream media gets that there's an economic opportunity. By 2007, Hispanics will have approximately $1 trillion in purchasing power, which makes it the biggest Latin economy in the world, bigger than Brazil and Mexico, so they get the economic opportunity. What they don't get is who we are and what we want. I'll give you an example.

When you look at--and statistically, the association of Hispanic journalists have actually documented this. There is 14% of the population that's Hispanic, but fewer than 3% of characters on television are Hispanic, which in itself is bad, but beyond that, 80% of the characters are negative stereotypes: the drug dealer, the--you know, the wetback, that whole mentality. Well, that's not who we are. We're Americans who are trying to be as successful as anybody else in this society, and if you look at, for example, network television, there's one show, 'The George Lopez Show,' which does very, very well, one show with a Latin theme. Around that show, all we get to play normally is either the drug dealer, the corrupt cop, the maid, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Tavis: I've heard this story somewhere before.

Espuelas: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I mean, this is exactly--I mean, this is a poisonous situation, because if you show sufficient Latinos or African Americans in negative stereotypes, we will even begin to believe that. And we limit ourselves, I believe, when such a powerful influence as media tells us that that's what we do.

Tavis: On the other hand, though, Fernando, small as it may be and one may loathe their politics, Alberto Gonzales at the Department of Justice, Mr. Gutierrez at the Department of Commerce...

Espuelas: I think that those are wonderful examples of how the country is changing, and, you know, I wish a Kerry administration had put them in office. That would have been great, but, you know, it's wonderful that it's happening, and it's wonderful that it's happening across the board. I think the political class in this particular case, which is unusual, is the leading edge of what's happening. There's a sense of inclusion. I mean, no one puts anybody in office for just to be nice. They're trying to get votes, which is great. That's how democracy works.

But if you look in the media's face, the big problem, at least from my perception, is that there really aren't Latin executives at high enough levels in any of these big media companies to make a decision. So basically, you have people in many cases, very well intentioned, trying to translate their lack of understanding of what Latinos want into programming, and then you get shows like 'Kingpin,' which was the first episodic show--hour of network television, which they were all very excited about. It was on air for about 3 months because the Latin community just freaked out over it, and basically it was the drug dealer. They were all very good-looking, highly educated, and they put all this education to work in the drug world, and so, you know...

Tavis: Did I say I've heard this stories somewhere before? Yeah, I think I said that. OK. Let me ask you this, 'cause we've had this debate inside of black America. I know you've had it and are having it inside of Latin America, stateside, here, right now, I suspect, at least.

Is it-- Zora Neale Hurston, a great figure in black history once said that, 'All of my skin folk ain't my kinfolk.' In other words, you can be of my color, but not my kind. Is it more important, at this propitious moment in your community's history, is it more important to have somebody there by any means necessary, even if you don't agree with what they're pushing? Is it more important to have Gonzales and Gutierrez and others just because it's important to have them there? More importantly, just to get a Hispanic on the Supreme Court or more important, would you sacrifice that and hold out for the right people?

Espuelas: I'm a political partisan, but I think that what we're witnessing is a shift in how this society is constructed, and to have Hispanics and African Americans and other people in positions of power should not be because of-- I mean, we shouldn't notice. It should be irrelevant.

You know, Martin Luther King's whole premise of don't judge people by the color of their skin, but by their character. Well, we're still doing it. I mean, we're amazed that the attorney general is gonna be a Hispanic. Why? Who cares? And so, from my point of view, I think this is a very healthy development. I wish the Democratic Party would be much more aggressive in fomenting the participation of Hispanics at a much higher level.

Tavis: You do so much good stuff. This book, 'Life in Action: the 12 Voy Principles of True Happiness and Success,' let's pick a couple of them and get you to share with our audience why they're important enough to be included in this book.

Espuelas: Well, this book really came out of my own searching in a moment of crisis in my life. I started my last company with a credit card. It became a $12 billion-- 12 billion--I wish--$4 billion company. And I'd never sold a single share or stock option, because I thought it would be unethical for the CEO to be telling the world, 'Buy my shares,' and then selling them, and so I purposely, consciously, rode the shares down. I lost about $500 million in that exercise, and after that, I had to ask myself...

Tavis: 'Am I stuck on stupid?' Number one.

Espuelas: Exactly. I mean, what's missing in the old brain, there, and why am I doing this? And so I started really to analyze for myself why do I start companies? Why is that an interesting thing for me? And I realized yes, I've been poor. I'd rather have money than not have money, but in the end, what entrepreneurialship is for me is the ability to manifest my creativity in this channel.

So this book really was written to me, you know, essentially to discover who I was to myself. And then what I found--I'm a historian by training--what I found was that my experience and the experience of how people overcome those great adversities is in fact something that is across time, across cultures, a human reaction. And that's what I tried to capture here, and I tried to use partially my story to humanize it, but also many examples of historical figures throughout time that behave this way.

So, for example, one premise here is deconstructing the future, which sounds vaguely like poetry, but in fact, all it is, is visualizing this goal in some future time and taking it apart step by step so you're able to put it together and have that happen in your own life. This is not magical, and it's not a revelation that I saw. In fact, it's just a reporting of how people have been doing this successfully through the ages, and I found it helpful for myself to write it down to remember how I got there, and I think it could be helpful to other people as well.

Tavis: 'Well, since I'm writing it down, I might as well sell it once I write it down.'

Espuelas: Well, we are in the U.S. I mean, this is a wonderful culture.

Tavis: And if everybody else can do it, the Latinos can do it, too. Might as well sell it. You ought to be on television.

Espuelas: I'm trying to be on television, yeah. Thank you.

Tavis: No, I say that seriously because I think that what is missing in this moment where Americans are afraid of so many things and so hopeless about so many things, be they political, social, economic, or culture, I think what's needed--what we need more of on television are people that can give us a reason to believe and reason to hope, so why not try television?

Espuelas: Well, I am. We've taken the book and actually made it into a TV show. We built a pilot around it, and now we're in the process of talking to station groups, and there's some interest, and we'll see. As you know, it's a very long, arduous process to get yourself on television, but I'm fascinated by the opportunity of sharing this message with other people. I think, you know, in my own life, I arrived as an immigrant with 100 bucks. My mom worked as a housekeeper...

Tavis: And couldn't speak English?

Espuelas: No. English is my second language, and we lived in a very rich town in Connecticut, but we lived on Railroad Avenue, which is not metaphorical, above a deli so that I could go to a very good public school, so I've had tremendous opportunities. And more than anything, I've never felt, for whatever reason, that I was limited by the circumstances of the moment. I mean, I've lived through, as many people have, through the humiliation of being poor, of being fat, of being the spic, and all those things, but all through that, I had this energy and drive, which as I explain in the book, is really very common throughout human history and throughout human society.

Tavis: Let me ask you very quickly, and this is unfair to ask you with a minute and a half to go. We could do a seminar, a series of shows on this one subject matter. We've talked separately in this conversation about black folk and brown folk. Increasingly, it occurs to me, though, that there is potentially tension between black and brown. It's no longer a dynamic of white vs. black. In the inner city where you grew up, in the inner city, you know, we see this black-brown tension. What do you make of that, and how do we navigate, as people of color, our way through this?

Espuelas: Well, I think it's an unfortunate tendency of humanity to divide as opposed to bring people together, but in the end, it comes to leadership. On the way here, I was asking the gentleman who drove me, who are some great African American politicians? And he, you know, 'Mmm...you know, Jesse Jackson, but he's sort of, you know...'

We don't have leaders, you know, in the Hispanic community. We have some leaders, but really, we don't have a Martin Luther King that can bring us together yet, and I think that that person is alive and is walking around somewhere in this country, and we need that to reconnect us.

Tavis: Well, maybe it's not a person. Maybe it's persons.

Espuelas: I think it's a movement in the end.

Tavis: Nice to see you, Fernando.

Espuelas: Great to see you, Tavis.

Tavis: The book by Fernando Espuelas is 'Life in Action: the 12 Voy Principles of True Happiness and Success.' I don't often do this, but I recommend it highly. It's a good read, and you'll be empowered, enlightened, and encouraged by it, and maybe one day, we will see Fernando on television, although, hopefully, not in late night. Nice to see you, Fernando.

That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR, National Public Radio. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching, good night from Los Angeles, and as always, keep the faith.