By Adriana Gomez Licon
Associated Press
Annette Taddeo walked to a podium overlooking Biscayne Bay in Miami and told the audience how she had fled terrorism as a teenager in Colombia and now feared for the safety of her 16-year-old daughter in an American public school.
A bright blue and orange bus behind the Democratic congressional candidate carried this message in Spanish: "A future without violence."
“Latinos are here for the American dream, and it's very difficult to do that when you're worried about the safety of your children,” said Taddeo, a state senator who is challenging Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar.
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland High School shooting, during a rally in Miami in 2018.AP
In few places have Democrats suffered as many setbacks in 2020 as in South Florida, when many Latinos favored Republican candidates and unexpectedly lost several races.
Trump carried Florida by more than three percentage points.
Democrats are campaigning differently this year, as they aim to connect party priorities with the personal experiences of a group that often feels ignored in national politics.
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The effort comes at a volatile time for Latinos in Florida.
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis drew media attention after he moved a group of Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, as part of a state-funded relocation program for immigrants in the country without authorization.
While some Venezuelans and Latinos affiliated with the Democratic Party denounced it as a "cruel trick," some exiles applauded DeSantis's actions.
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, wrote a column in Spanish for a conservative online platform apparently siding with DeSantis in arguing without evidence that migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico could be criminals freed by the leader. Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro.
Meanwhile, gun violence is a particularly hot issue in Florida, where two of the deadliest mass shootings in recent years have occurred.
Spanish-language media have given extensive coverage to both the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a predominantly Hispanic area, and the criminal trial of the killer who attacked a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
In an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in June, 35% of Latinos mentioned gun-related issues in an open-ended question that allows people to identify up to five issues the government should work on during next year.
That compares with 18% at the end of 2021 and 10% in 2020.
“This issue has become relevant in the Latino community,” said Stephen Nuño-Perez, a polling analyst with the firm BSP Research, which investigates concerns among Latino voters for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund. (NALEO, for its acronym in English).
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A gun control group founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a 2011 shooting in Tucson that killed six people and wounded more than a dozen, supports Florida candidates.
Giffords' political committee gave $15,500 to more than three dozen Latino candidates around the country, and so far the group has invested $1 million in Florida for these elections.
More and more children in the United States are dying from gun violence.
In 2021 there were 1,562 deaths of children under 17
, according to the Gun Violence Archive website, which tracks shootings from more than 7,500 police, media, government and business sources.
Although Latin American countries have stricter policies on firearm ownership, firearm death rates are higher as a result of smuggling from the United States.
[Sending migrant buses to Democrat-led cities divides voters]
For some Cubans, however, gun control is out of the question.
Isabel Caballero, a 96-year-old woman from Cuba, said she would not support any gun restrictions.
In the years after Fidel Castro and his rebels overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Cubans were encouraged to register their weapons, and authorities then used the list to go door-to-door encouraging people to turn them in.
“'Weapons, for what?'
That's what they used to say.
People handed them over, and then the only ones who had weapons were them,” Caballero said, speaking about Castro and his allies.
"Lesson?
Don't let them take them away from you.
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But other Cubans who immigrated to Florida in recent decades said they are willing to support change, because they believe it is wrong for children to be afraid in schools.
“You can find weapons everywhere, anywhere.
You have 400 dollars and you can get them.
It shouldn't be like that,” said Amauris Puebla, who arrived from Cuba in 1994.
Puebla was playing a game of dominoes in Little Havana when Taddeo and Rep. Val Demings, the Democrat challenging Rubio for the Senate, got off the bus on which they tour that park.
Demings asked if he could play.
She won.
