The Myth of the Latino Vote

ENRIQUEZ: The Myth of the Latino Vote

BY DIANA ENRIQUEZ

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

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I genuinely look forward to the debates, the speeches at the DNC and the RNC and voter outreach programs that generate mountains of press. But nothing makes me grimace more than the discussion of the “Latino vote.” Because I wish it was that simple. Really, it’s a myth.

Even at Yale — in La Casa Cultural, Yale’s Latino cultural house — we are splintered into numerous cultural groups: all sensitive to our countries of origin and our traditions. The Latino population includes at least 19 different cultural groups; uniting groups across these disparate interests is a serious challenge to organizers within La Casa.

There isn’t a solid voting bloc here that can be won in its entirety through a speech by Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, at the Democratic National Convention. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio cannot win every Latino vote through his own version of the DREAM Act, a bill to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented students.

I’ve watched socially conservative preachers turn out their congregations for Democratic candidates because the party made targeted outreach efforts to these communities and addressed their concerns. Senator Rubio and other political figures appeal to voters’ social concerns and immigration interest groups in Florida. Campaigns translate their ads into Spanish and hire volunteers to answer calls in Spanish and Portuguese. The election cycle is working hard to gain our attention in every venue they can.

For some of us, immigration is the main issue on the political table. Many of the students I work alongside at Yale feel a little safer because over the summer the Obama administration offered them the deferred action program, protecting them from immediate deportation. A few of them are now protected by this status and are now reaching out to other students at Yale and in New Haven who can benefit from this government program.

This bill only applies to a very small subsection of the population. For many of us, this means our families are still concerned about our uncles, neighbors or friends whose fates are less certain. We feel there is still a lot to be done.

We live under the knowledge that the Obama administration has deported more people in the last four years than the Bush administration in eight. We watch Obama speak in carefully selected sites, like Miami Dade County, a site with a well-known majority Latino population.

For years, immigration activists have demanded that President Obama follow through on his promises to our community. Through this election cycle, he has simply repeated these unfulfilled promises and his wish to keep families together.

Many of my friends in La Casa are second- or third-generation immigrants. They primarily focus on aiding their own communities here in the United States. They see disparities in education and affordable healthcare as the most pressing issues in this election. They see their taxes increasing locally, and they have a hard time saving enough money to support their families. All of these issues come up in different spaces, at different times in our communities, and we don’t always agree on the solutions.

I am a first-generation immigrant and for every day I’ve been at Yale, immigration has been the issue at the front of my mind. My time and my focus has been torn between my community in Mexico and everything I left behind there, and my community here in the United States.

But ultimately all of us are voting for candidates who address our concerns — all we ask for is follow-through.

In the same way that some members of my community will vote for the Republican ticket because they identify with the social principles they stand for, others will vote for Democrats because they hope Obama will increase access to jobs for minority communities. For the Latino community to continue turning out at the polls, our politicians can no longer throw out empty buzzwords and unrealized policies.

Diana Enriquez is a senior in Saybrook College. Contact her at diana.enriquez@yale.edu .

From Sao Paulo, with love.

Hi MEChA!

I'm writing to you from Florianópolis, Brazil where I am finishing up some research for a project I'm doing on informal economies. It was an exciting adventure that I've been planning and working on for a few weeks now, and well... here I am!

Being Mexican means I really spend a lot of time comparing this and every other Latin American country to the one that I know best. To be honest, though, Brazil is entirely unlike any other Latin American country I've been to. Besides the obvious -- everyone here speaks Portuguese first, and then more likely English than Spanish -- there are a number of differences I see in the cities here that we dont have in Mexico. Maybe in a good way!

I ended up understanding Portuguese even better than I expect to. Awesome, considering I have virtually no experience in this language. I found that speaking slowly and clearing in Spanish and having the other person do the same in Portuguese has made this experience possible. It's funny though -- I look like most of the people here. Particularly in this region of Brazil because there are so many tiny German towns in the mountains. And when I say German town, I really mean German Town.

I'm trying to see if I can get to Blumenau tomorrow, which is a small village in the mountains on this coast settled by the German immigrants who came to Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is one of a few German towns in this region. Best known for its knitting products and Oktoberfest... Strange, since we always think of immigrant villages in the US as being people of color. Here, it means they are very European.

And really... they blend in pretty well.

Something that has surprised me about southern Brazil is how European everyone looks. Today was the first time I had seen villages full of people with different racial backgrounds... and trust me, I've been looking...

When I asked a local professor why Mexico has such a mixed population compared to Brazil, he answered me very plainly: The indigenous people of Mexico had jungles, mountains and other areas of the country to hide in. Most of Brazil's indigenous people did not. Save some of the still isolated tribes in the Amazon. Many of our indigenous people died during colonization (at least, compared to Mexico).

An appropriate conversation for me to have, since Monday is Columbus day. Or really, as we've come to respect it through MEChA, it is indigenous people's day. It's a chance for us to celebrate the original cultures of this hemisphere -- or really, learn more about them. Since the US does a pretty good job pretending that they dont really exist. Ok maybe that is unfair. I do remember my 5th grade class spending the year researching different tribal groups in the US, including some who lived very close to me in Massachusetts. Still, we could and should all learn more. A lot of this rich cultural history of the United States is lost and overlooked in the regular curriculum.

More reason for Ethnic Studies! (We all know that was coming...)

So Happy Indigenous People's Day! I hope you take this chance to learn a little more about the ancient history of the United States.

Tchau e tenha uma bao noite!

Creating an Activist Network at Yale

by Alejandro Gutierrez '13

Two weeks ago I met with an old acquaintance, one of the first people I met at Yale, and we found that over the past three years we had developed many similar concerns over student life, the University’s relationship with New Haven, and society at-large. It felt a little serendipitous, a little astonishing, since we hadn’t really spoken much in those 3 years, but in the middle of discussing our views and identifying as activists, I had another thought  – how many more of us are out there? And where are they? I know students at Yale certainly care about their own specific issues, but why hadn’t we met like this?

I had been to the extracurricular bazaar, the Dwight Hall bazaar, and read flyers on the bulletin boards, but it always felt as if each group was fighting for its own niche – why weren’t we communicating and collaborating? And maybe a year ago, that would have been it. We wouldn’t have answered that question, or if we had, we wouldn’t have acted on it. But all of a sudden, things seem a little more dire – on Yale’s timeline for us, we only have one year left, one year to begin building something that we wished had always existed here: an activist network. So now we’re acting. We’re issuing a rallying call for all activists and all those interested in activism to come to the first-ever Activist Bazaar at Yale.

Isn't there already an Activist Bazaar? The truth is, no. There is a service bazaar through Dwight Hall, but activism is different from service in that it works to change social or political institutions, whereas community service (while extremely important) does not. We must differentiate the two and encourage students and community members to think critically about how to engage in activism in a way that creates positive structural change in their respective communities, be it on campus, in New Haven, or in the world.

It seems there’s been a rise of administrative clamp-down on university regulations at wide-ranging scales, from the founding of Yale-NUS to the forced registration of off-campus parties to the extremely limited student input in choosing Yale’s next President. Yet judging from the activism, or lack thereof, within the student body one would think that Yale students are not aware that their voices are being further and further suppressed.
 
That’s because Yale students are not, in fact, often encouraged to challenge the status quo, and instead are repeatedly told how lucky they should feel to attend Yale. To belong at a school that grants you $2,000 to bike across the country and write about it and call it “research.” To participate in community service via Dwight Hall’s Day of Service (after which you can call yourself an involved member of New Haven, I suppose). The name of the game here is compliance, it’s community service. But over the years I always wanted to hear more about organizing and more about activism.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful to be a student here. Trust me, as a first-generation college student, a child of former undocumented immigrants living paycheck to paycheck on Section 8 housing, I more than understand the privilege that comes with being a Yale student. But that’s exactly why I get so angry; I think this place has so much more potential than funneling students into corporate finance jobs or machine politics. At Yale we’re asked to critically analyze everything except ourselves. Why don’t we ask more self-critical questions?

Repeatedly, progressive reforms such as Yale’s approval of a new jobs-pipeline, the creation of CCE after Title IX investigations, and financial aid reform, have all made something quite obvious -- changes, and discussions of changes, do not come from the traditional channels that those in power have so graciously offered. It is activism, student-led platforms, that have created the most meaningful changes.

In an attempt to further empower students on campus, an Activist Bazaar will be held for the first time on Monday, September 10th at 6:30 PM next to the Women’s Table. The event will allow students to take a look at what other activist groups are doing on and off campus, as well as encourage these groups to start a conversation amongst themselves and ask one another difficult questions. Most importantly, the Activist Bazaar creates a much-needed alliance among activists at Yale.

edited by Carl Chen '13 and Marc DeWitt '15

Si Hay Imposición, Habrá Revolución

Chanting "México sin PRI," "si hay imposición habrá revolución," and "Peña entiende, no eres presidente" -- among several more colorful chants -- some 200,000 protestors marched yesterday in Mexico City from El Angel to El Zócalo, decrying another round of fraudulent elections masquerading as "democracy." 

A few protesters marched with signs in English, including "Tell everyone around the world that democracy in Mexico is a fraud!"

More photos from la "Mega-Marcha"...

Reflections on a plane ride to Mexico...

            There is a long line at the baggage drop off. I am silently angry that I didn’t leave earlier. I start to mess with my hair because I am nervous, tired, and disgustingly hot. I try to fumblingly hold on to my bags and fill out papers for my entry to Mexico. In the mist of being nervous and nauseous, I notice two little boys. I find them really adorable with their cowboy hats and paisa look. I soon see that they’re at the verge of tears. Maybe, they are as frustrated with the long lines and having to wake up early as I am.

            Two hours alter, I see the same two children crying, as we are to board the plane—they are alone. For some reason, I want to hug them, ask them what is wrong, and tell them everything will be fine. I want to cry and I don’t know why; I start to create stories about these boys. Immigration stories of torn families come to my mind because unfortunately they are too familiar. It finally hits me, I am transferring all the feelings of the recent deportations in my life to these boys.

            These two boys remind me of two boys I know who were ripped away from their home due to the deportation of their mother. Their mother was deported for a minor traffic violation and unpaid parking tickets. As a consequence, the two boys had to fly alone to a country that they didn’t know to be reunited with her. I begin to wonder how did they fill out this paperwork and if they were confused. They do not speak Spanish that well. What will be of their education? I start to think of all of the educational and economic opportunities that they will miss out on even though they are US citizens.

            But most importantly, the woman who was deported was my friend. She is a single mother who worked incessantly so her kids could have a better life in the United States. She motivated me to attend a university like Yale. She used to pick me up from school and take me to college counseling appointments, community college, performances, and any place that helped me enrich my education. I remember crying a couple of times in her car when I felt frustrated or stressed. She always encouraged me to pursue higher education and pacified me. For last five years of my life, I have probably spent more time with her than with some of my family members. It finally hits me that I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see her again. I suddenly find myself crying quietly in the back of an airplane heading to Mexico. I feel like a child again crying in her car again. However, this time she is not there to make it better. I don’t think any immigration statistics or politician can rationalize what I am feeling. This is the sad truth of immigration.

-----

Roselyn Cruz

Saybrook College 2015 

Estamos hasta la...

Nobody was surprised, really, when Enrique Peña Nieto emerged "victorious" from Mexico's presidential elections, held July 1. When the Instituto Federal Electoral announced at 11:30 p.m. that night that EPN was the likely winner, with around 38% of the vote, I wasn't shocked -- just filled with dread.

After all, during his six years as governor of the Estado de México, EPN accomplished quite a bit:

With that kind of track record, I don't even want to think about what the next six years will bring. I am sure, though, that whatever EPN "accomplishes" as Mexico's next president-turned-dictator, he will provoke some serious misery. But let's not get ahead of ourselves -- EPN won't take office for several months. 

So for now, we would do well to think about the lies, distortion, and violence surrounding the supposedly "democratic" elections held July 1. 

Here are some reasons many mexican@s ya están hasta la madre:

Unheralded violence at the polls. I spent election night in Ecatepec, a city of 2 million outside Mexico City, in the Estado de México. Ecatepec was highly militarized on election night: soldiers guarded polling stations, helicopters flew low overhead, the municipal police was out in full force. But the military's presence on election day did little to keep organized crime (often with links to the PRI) away from the polls. The next morning, newspapers reported on armed robberies of ballot boxes, some of which resulted in the deaths of would-be voters. The picture below is from the state of Coahuila. Bonus points for getting the Yale reference. 

Alarmingly prevalent electoral fraud. According to PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of Mexico's 143,000 voting booths, 113,855 reported irregularities -- almost 80%. 

Brutal repression. On election day, many attempted to report irregularities to the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE). The federal government responded by stationing hundreds of riot police in front of the IFE offices:

As if police intimidation weren't enough, many of those who denounced electoral fraud have been disappeared. For instance, in the Estado de México, student activists from the movement #YoSoy132 were kidnapped, including a student who had recorded PRI members buying votes. And on Twitter, many say the spokeswoman of #YoSoy132, Andrea González, was kidnapped in Mexico City this week. 

Media lies. In its election-day coverage, The New York Times said nothing substantial about the obvious and well-documented electoral fraud and the violence at many polling sites. Instead, they reported, "There were also reports of security problems at some sites," which hardly approximates the violent reality of election day. By neglecting to cover the PRI's serious manipulation of electoral processes, the New York Times left readers with the impression that the Mexican electorate democratically elected EPN. Ultimately, as a friend of mine pointed out, the international media has reported fairly accurately on the near-coup in Paraguay last month. But by continuing to portray electoral processes in Mexico as "democratic," the media is merely perpetuating a farce. 

Obama. As the Mexican paper La Jornada reported, not only did Obama call EPN to congratulate him on his electoral "victory," but the White House issued a statement congratulating Mexicans on their highly democratic voting system: "una vez más, han demostrado su compromiso con los valores democráticos mediante un proceso electoral libre, justo y transparente." Mentiras, mentiras y más mentiras...

To close with a ray of hope, here are some photos from Monday's 15,000-person march in Mexico City denouncing the outcome of Sunday's elections.

Enrique Peña Nieto: asesino, feminicida, ignorante, corrupto...

In the wake of Obama's recent decision to stop deporting DREAMers, discussion of the future of immigrant justice has focused on the Obama-Romney race. As the New York Times reported last week, "Mitt Romney struck a more conciliatory tone toward illegal immigrants on Thursday than he took during the Republican primary season." (Well, NYT, so much for the Drop the I-Word campaign.) 

But there's a third, lesser-known candidate -- a future president whose decisions will undoubtedly have significant repercussions for Mexican and Central American migrants. And whereas Romney has a shady past and dirty politics, he looks downright angelic next to this candidate. 

Meet Enrique Peña Nieto, the PRI candidate likely to become Mexico's next president on July 1. While I read with horror of Romney's homophobic high-school bullying, those incidents pale in comparison to the violence for which Peña Nieto is responsible. 

This video, narrated by Mexican singer Regina Orozco, offers a succinct (and gut-wrenching) introduction to Peña Nieto, who served as governor of the Estado de México from 2006-2011. For those who don't speak Spanish, it compiles some of the most notable moments of Peña Nieto's political career:

• His first wife, Mónica Pretelini, died mysteriously in 2007. In interviews on TV, Peña Nieto has not been able to articulate the cause of her death; many think he killed her.
• As if his wife's death were not already suspicious enough, Agustín Estrada, a teacher in Ecatepec,  Estado de México, says he had a relationship with Peña Nieto that lasted seven years. Peña Nieto later ordered Estrada raped and tortured. Human rights organizations took up his case, and he has been living in the U.S. as a political exile since 2010. 
• His ignorance is on par with that of Bush: he can't name three books with their correct authors, and he doesn't know the minimum wage in Mexico or the price of tortillas (which is irrelevant to him, as he pointed out, since he's not a housewife). 
• He chose Carlos Salinas de Gotari, Mexico's president from 1988 to 1994, as his "jefe de campaña" (campaign manager). Salinas violently imposed neoliberal privatization during his term -- and he signed NAFTA. 
• He gave the orders for Atenco, a 2006 incident of massive police brutality in which 207 were subjected to cruel and degrading treatment, including the 26 women who were subjected to sexual torture.
• 922 femicides were committed during his term.

As this video suggests, Peña Nieto's career has been marked by virulent, internalized homophobia and violent misogyny -- but that's just the tip of the iceberg. 

At the second, massive anti-Peña Nieto march in downtown Mexico City, held June 10, many marched decrying Peña Nieto's cozy relationship with Televisa:

Others protested a return to PRI rule:

...and this poster, which features Salinas de Gotari (seated) Peña Nieto (shooting), sums up nicely the PRI's violent history of repression. 

So when Peña Nieto wins another rigged election in Mexico on July 1, here are a few things for immigrant rights advocates to keep in mind: 

• If the Agustín Estrada case is any indicator, the U.S. will likely see more political and LGBT asylum cases from Mexico
• We can count on the Mexican government to continue lobbying for policies like NAFTA, which displace poor and rural Mexicans, limit economic opportunities in Mexico, and spark more waves of immigration.
• We can expect the death tolls from femicide and from the militarized drug wars to keep rising. And femicide and militarized violence are issues of immigrant justice -- consider, for instance, that a large proportion of femicide cases and drug-war casualties so far have been Central American migrants.

I'll close with a recent video of testimonies of sexual torture from Atenco. Peña Nieto gave the orders for Atenco, then later boasted of the police operative's success. The poster below carries one of my favorite anti-EPN slogans: "If your daughter had been raped at Atenco, you definitely wouldn't find him so attractive." 

En solidaridad,

Natalia

Coyoacán, México D.F