Joining the Pack

By FRANK FERNANDEZ

DELTONA -- Whether you're a boy from Puerto Rico or Pennsylvania, there's something cool about a "blood circle".That dangerous-sounding geometry is what 8-year-old Elian Seda (yes, he's named after that Elian) was demonstrating recently at a meeting of Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts in Deltona.

Elian stretched out his arm while holding his folded pocketknife, then moved his arm in a circle around him, the blue knife tracing an imaginary circumference."A blood circle is a circle you have with your knife and make sure that nobody's there," Elian said. "And if somebody's there you have to tell them, if they can please move because you are going to use your knife and they could get cut."

For the Boy Scouts of America, Elian himself is a demonstration of a group the organization is trying to bring into the fold -- Hispanics. The Girl Scouts is also working to increase its number of Hispanics.

The importance of Hispanics is summed up by Christopher Luciano, executive director of the Boy Scouts' Tuscarora District, which includes Deltona, DeLand and Pierson, areas where Hispanic numbers are high.

"To be relevant for the next 100 years, we need to reach out to the growing Hispanic population," Luciano said in an interview last week.Leading that recruitment drive for the Boy Scouts in Central Florida is Eric Santiago. Santiago said he plans to visit churches throughout Volusia County and eventually Flagler to extol the virtues of scouting to Hispanic families. It's not always easy. Sometimes he has to debunk some misconceptions, such as Scouting is militaristic.

"A lot of people think that we are about shooting guns and we are not," Santiago said. "We are about trying to help our youth and instilling life-long values in them".Santiago added that immigration status is not significant.

"Whether the children are here legally or not it's really irrelevant to us," Santiago said. "We just want to make sure that all the children here in the United States are provided an opportunity to have these experiences."

Santiago said that before he starts a scout troop he finds and trains bilingual leaders, so parents who don't speak English will not be intimidated."The scouting program is a true family program," Santiago said. "Our biggest challenge is reaching into those communities that wouldn't approach us mostly because of language."

The Girl Scouts of the Citrus Council has increased its number of Hispanics every year, said Pam Lennox, chief executive officer of the group covering Volusia, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Brevard and Seminole counties. Of the 18,000 girls in the council, 7 percent are Hispanic.

Lennox said the council will soon announce a committee of prominent Latino leaders to help increase Hispanic membership.

"There is not a high level of familiarity with Girl Scouting in our Latino culture so one of the things we do is to help raise awareness and let parents know the value of Girl Scouting," Lennox said.

Lennox said high-achieving women frequently say that their experience in Girl Scouts helped make them successful.

The Girl Scouts have had to make some adjustments. Hispanic families are less willing to send girls away on overnight excursions so the group is offering more one-day events, Lennox said.

The Girl Scouts organization is also aware of differences in Hispanic cultures. Lennox said she is from Southern California, where most Spanish speakers are Mexican. But in Central Florida, Hispanics hail from a greater variety of places, such as Central and South America and the Caribbean."It's not one Spanish-speaking culture in our area," she said. "They are multiple cultures."

For one thing, that means being careful with words, said Teresita Matos, coordinator for the Hispanic Initiative for the Citrus Council."We have to be very careful in the language we use," Matos said. "What means one thing for Puerto Ricans might mean something else to someone from Colombia."

For 39-year-old George Seda of Deltona, Scouting means continuing a family tradition.

"I was a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout when I was young in Puerto Rico," Seda said. "And I want my boys to have the same opportunity I had when I was young."

And they do. Gabriel, 12, and Diego, 10, are Boy Scouts, and Elian, 8, is a Cub Scout. (George Seda said he and his wife liked the name Elian, so they named their youngest child after the famous Cuban rafter.)

George Seda himself serves as a Scout leader."We teach the boys how to be more independent, how to be a leader and that's very important these days," Seda said. "I saw a big change in my older son since he joined the Boy Scouts and now he is a leader."

Pablo Lopez, 36, who is Puerto Rican and a leader with Troop 310, also believes Scouting will help make leaders out of his two sons, Esteban, 10, a Cub Scout, and Cristofer, 11, a Boy Scout.It will also help open tent flaps.

"When sometimes you speak to a person who is a business leader, when you say you are a Scout, their eyes brighten and they say 'yes, I was a Scout, I was an Eagle Scout,' " Lopez said. "You can see there was a leader. They always help you."

Esteban said one of the things he enjoys about Scouting is improvising some games when out in the woods. "You get to play with the sticks, we get to play swords with them," Esteban said.

Cristofer was showing signs of that leadership ability recently as he taught some younger Scouts how to tie a square knot. To help them remember, Cristofer held a rope in each hand and explained the process in terms of a pair of snakes hugging each other.

Ask Cristofer about recent Scouting activities he's enjoyed and serpents slither onto the scene again."We went to a snake museum and we saw a bunch of different snakes," Cristofer said.And what could be cooler than that -- except maybe blood circles.