A life devoted to crossing borders, in more ways than one

John Santos's youth, spent alternately in San Antonio and Mexico, was a far cry from life at Oxford. As the first Mexican-American Rhodes scholar, however, the film maker and author bridged two disparate worlds and opened the door for future minorities to participate in the prestigous graduate program.

To be the first Mexican American to claim one of the scholarships was an honor, Santos said, but it also was important because it represented a trend toward inclusion of minorities in the Rhodes program. "It means a lot that there have been many [Mexican-American winners] since," he said.

Santos, who will be meeting with select students on campus today, won the Rhodes scholarship in 1979 as an undergraduate at Notre Dame University, where he earned a degree in philosophy and literature while acting, playing tennis and publishing a literary magazine.

When he was not in school, Santos worked on his family's cattle ranch in Mexico. "My summers were very different from the academic year," Santos said.

Despite being born and raised in San Antonio, Santos said he spent a lot of time in Mexico during his youth. "We grew up in a way that really rendered the border irrelevant," he said, explaining that he moved frequently between the Mexican town of Coahuila and Texas because his father's family is from Mexico. His mother's family, in contrast, has lived in Texas since before the territory became a state.

Santos said he grew up very close to his family and to the cultures on both sides of the border. "I really grew up in both English and Spanish, so both literary traditions were really important to me," he said. He added, however, that he had always been more involved in Chicano and Tejano themes, and the scholarship gave him the opportunity to learn more about English literature.

"[The scholarship] really changed my life in all kinds of ways," Santos said.

The Rhodes scholarship gave Santos the chance to study at Oxford for two years. There, he read English literature more deeply than before, finding new, powerful voices such as William Blake.

He then spent a year and a half in a doctorate program at Yale, but soon realized that he wanted his life to follow a different path and returned to San Antonio to write for a local paper.

It was not long before he met an executive producer from CBS who was interested in working with Santos on a film, and in 1984, he started doing documentaries about such topics as culture, politics, religion and AIDS.

Ten years later, Santos took a one-year fellowship at Columbia University and then went to work for PBS. For his work writing and producing documentaries at CBS and PBS, Santos has received three Emmy award nominations.

In 1995, he left television to write a book, titled "Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation." Published last year, the non-fiction piece — made up of family accounts as well as Mexico and San Antonio history — was a finalist for the National Book Award.

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After completing the book, Santos joined the Ford Foundation — an organization that provides grants in the area of public media — in 1997. In his current position as a program officer, Santos reviews grant applications for new projects in production and broadcasting and works to strengthen public-interest infrastructure.