By Milli Legrain
READING, Pennsylvania.
- At the end of August, messages from the popular Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny and Mexican ranchera singer Alejandro Fernández circulated on WhatsApp through the presidential campaign of Democrat Joe Biden.
Both artists lent their voices to defeat the president, Donald Trump, in two videos aimed at Puerto Rican voters in Florida and Pennsylvania on the one hand, and those of Mexican origin in Arizona on the other.
But the videos reached the cell phones of Hispanics across the country, who could sense the effort of the Democratic campaign to finally speak to them, not only in their language, but with their accent, their culture and their own concerns.
Four years ago, the relatively weak electoral turnout of the Black and Latino communities was one of the factors that caused the Democrat Hillary Clinton to lose to Trump.
But some voters and even members of the Democratic Party structure in key states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain dissatisfied, pointing out that recognition is late and asking to be heard.
In search of recognition
“There are many differences between Mexican culture and that of other Hispanics.
Not because we speak Spanish we think the same.
We are very different, ”says Raymundo Jesús Pérez, a voter of Mexican origin born in Puebla 54 years ago.
Pérez got citizenship years ago and works at a taqueria
in north Reading, Pennsylvania, a city with 67% Hispanic.
Puerto Ricans are the majority in this city, and in the disputed state of Pennsylvania they represent 49% of the Hispanic community.
Having been in the state for longer, they are more visible in party power structures and in organizations that seek to mobilize the Latino voter, such as Make The Road and Casa in Action, than other groups such as Dominicans, Mexicans, or Salvadorans.
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In mid-September, the Democratic Party launched the Pennsylvania Latino Leadership Council, led by State Congressman Danilo Burgos, to mobilize the Latino vote.
Of its 14 members, 10 were of Puerto Rican descent.
In an interview with Noticias Telemundo, Burgos, of Dominican origin, said that, since then, the list of members had been updated to reflect the diversity of Pennsylvania: they incorporated three Venezuelans, a Colombian, a Dominican and a Mexican.
The new list has not been published yet.
Fernando Treviño, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic political analyst, believes that his party "cannot afford to just talk to Puerto Ricans."
In Philadelphia, the state capital, there are groups of relatively new
Colombian, Venezuelan, Argentine, and Mexican
voters
and activists who, like Raymundo Pérez, want to be heard and recognized.
In the cities of this state of the so-called Rust Belt, the Latino vote has been Democrat in the last elections, but neglecting that group "can cost them the election," says Treviño.
What appears to be happening is a slow adaptation of the Democratic Party to a new demographic reality, to an ever-growing and evolving potential voter base.
For Treviño it is "a problem to understand emerging communities" in a state where Latinos represent 5% of voters.
The campaign arrives at the last minute
Julio Guridy, a 20-year city councilor in Allentown, an hour's drive from Reading, says that Biden's campaign was slow to reach the Lehigh Valley, one of two major pockets of Hispanics in the state, as they opened an office ago just three weeks: "We had to work hard so that there was enough support."
"We have made car caravans, meetings with community leaders, distribution of pamphlets and announcements on the radio," he adds.
Both Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, visited Philadelphia,
the largest city in the state with a high black and Latino population.
But they didn't set foot in the Lehigh Valley, where both Vice President Mike Pence and Trump himself have staged massive events in the past two weeks.
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Due to the coronavirus pandemic, most of the Biden campaign events in Pennsylvania have been virtual.
But Danilo Burgos, a state congressman, affirms that this opens a digital divide that affects people with fewer resources, disproportionately impacting the Latino community.
“Latinos like to be spoken to directly,” he adds.
In the states where the race is tightest, like Florida, Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania, the Latino vote can make a difference.
And while Biden is five points ahead in the latter state, his room for maneuver is less there.
Pennsylvania's voter registry, cited by The New York Times, indicates that since 2016 Republicans have registered 174,000 new voters, while Democrats have lost 31,000.
A new generation of voters
Jonathan Tinoco has lived the evolution of Pennsylvania's Latino community in the flesh.
Born to a Mexican father and a Cuban mother, at age 31, he was hired by the Democratic Party in Berks County, just two months before the presidential election, to mobilize the Latino vote in his hometown of Reading.
He tells how, over the years as a young Democratic activist and the son of immigrants,
he was forced to make efforts to integrate with white Americans
but also with Hispanics, which sometimes led him to change his way of being.
“I had to hide my Mexican accent.
I had to adopt a more Puerto Rican accent, ”he said.
Now he warns that "all this is changing."
The Mexicans of his generation are already of voting age: “When they talk about the Latino vote, they refer to the Puerto Rican vote.
But we are part of the Latino vote too ”.
His partner Raquel Capellán, born 25 years ago in New York to a Dominican father and an African-American mother, was also hired at the end of August to mobilize the Hispanic vote.
These young Democrats are of the opinion that the position should have existed for Latinos “years ago,” given the demographics of the City of Reading.
But Tinoco is optimistic: "I think Latinos are definitely going to change this election."
Children of Mexican Farmers in Wisconsin
Wisconsin is another crucial state where the Latino vote can make a difference.
In 2016, Trump won there by just 22,000 votes.
Now the state has 183,000 Latinos of voting age.
“Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina are going to be decided by a few thousand votes.
The Latino vote can really make Biden win or lose in those three states, ”says Fernando Treviño.
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For this reason, now more than ever, Patricia Ruiz Cantú, president of the Latino Caucus of the Wisconsin Democratic Party from 2017 to 2018, and current member of the Wisconsin Latino Leadership Council, made an effort to ensure that the Mexican community was taken into account by the Biden campaign.
“Here we have immigrants from Jalisco, Michoacán, who come to work on the farms.
They may not be able to vote, but their children can.
It is very important that they feel the connection with the campaign, ”says Ruiz-Cantú.
In the past there were events that sought out the Latino voter through tropical music such as salsa, although not all Hispanics feel that music as their own.
But Ruiz-Cantú is glad to have raised his voice within his own party, and assures that the situation has improved: “I told them that they had to provide bilingual information.
We are not made from the same mold.
What may work in Florida will not work in Wisconsin. "
Ruiz-Cantú remembers a successful event on October 23 by the Illinois Congressman Jesús García, known as Chuy, where the Mexican community felt identified with the messenger.
The congressman “made a presentation in English and Spanish, not very formal.
[…] He spoke of emigrating at the age of 10 when his father came as a bracero.
He did not speak English.
He had to start at the bottom.
His parents worked really hard.
[…] But now he has a political position.
And he identifies with the needs as what it is to receive stamps.
And that does not have to prevent them from moving forward and that we have plans for the future and that we care what happens in this nation, ”said Ruiz-Cantú.
For her part, Jacquelyn Kovarik, communication director for Voces de la Frontera-Action, an organization with an office in Milwaukee that seeks to encourage the Democratic vote in immigrant communities in Wisconsin, explains that she also had to fight to make her community heard: "I was introduced to the Democratic director of the Latino mobilization in Wisconsin just a week before the Democratic Convention," which took place there in late August although most of it was virtual due to the pandemic.
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But Kovarik acknowledges that once contact was made with Biden's team, a member of his organization was invited to speak at the convention, and his team had the opportunity to meet Kamala Harris in person in September.
"On immigration, she really knows what she's talking about," said this activist.
Trump and small entrepreneurs
The one who had already opened an office in South Milwaukee, in the heart of the Latino community, and next to the Voces de la Frontera headquarters, is the Latinos for Trump campaign.
In the face of the president's constant attacks that denigrate the Hispanic community, his policy of zero tolerance of separation of families at the border,
his detention and deportation campaigns, his policies to restrict asylum
, and how he has dismissed a pandemic That has disproportionately affected the Latino community, many Hispanics think that voting for Biden is an easy choice.
But the president's advisers are reaching out to the small Latino businessman, concerned about the economy and his business.
And some polls suggest that the Latino vote for Trump, especially among men, may surpass that of 2016.
In turn, Biden's campaign is confident that the Latino vote in his favor will be overwhelming.
“Polls show that we are well placed to reach or exceed 71% of the Latino vote that the Obama-Biden team won upon re-election in 2012,” said Cristóbal Alex, advisor to the Democratic candidate on Hispanic affairs and former president of the Latino Victory Fund. , a group founded by actress Eva Longoria, which promotes the participation of Latinos in politics.
“We are an extremely diverse population.
And we cannot consider [Latinos] as a monolithic group.
And we definitely haven't done it that way, ”Alex said.
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Alex mentions that Biden's campaign has campaign managers for the Latino vote in 11 key states.
And a strategy that targets specific small groups of female voters with "record investments in advertisements."
"We are competing for each of the voters," he added.
But civic education and the political participation of less established and traditionally marginalized voting communities
is a long-term challenge
.
Kareena Ríos, a Casa in Action volunteer in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania knows that very well.
“If your grandmother doesn't vote, your uncle doesn't vote, and they are both always working.
And you just finished high school and you're working too, you haven't had the same opportunities to excel as everyone else, ”he said.
"They have not explained why your vote is important," he adds.
And that can have consequences.
