Pushing Power at the Polls : Spot at end of ‘Mi Familia’ video stresses importance of Latino political participation.

“It’s why my family came to this country.”

The terse line, delivered by stern-faced actor Jimmy Smits, answers the unasked question: What’s so important about political participation?

Smits and the rest of the cast of the movie “Mi Familia” deliver the public service announcement encouraging Latinos to vote at the end of the home video version of the Gregory Nava film, released Tuesday. The movie chronicles the trials and triumphs of a Mexican American family in East Los Angeles.

The powerful spot, driven by a Los Lobos soundtrack, segues through the more poignant scenes of the film as each cast member delivers the reasons to vote: Power. Libertad. Justice.

“In my family, it was like on your 18th birthday, part of the festivities was, you went and registered to vote,” explained Nava, who unveiled the clip last month at a Downtown fund-raiser for the Southwest Voters Registration Education Project.

New Line Cinema provided about $20,000 to make the spot.

The English and Spanish versions of the public service announcement will also spearhead the Montebello-based group’s efforts to register 300,000 voters in California before next year’s presidential election. Nationwide, Southwest Voters has launched its most ambitious registration project to date: enfranchising a million Latinos by October, 1996.

“This is the first time a national Latino voter registration has been undertaken, at least of this type,” said spokesman Alfredo Cruz. “We’re targeting 400 campaigns in 20 states.”

Through a coalition of voting and labor groups, Southwest Voters will recruit heavily in California, Texas, Illinois and New York, among other states.

The fund-raiser in October also feted Jane Velasquez, the widow of Southwest Voters’ founder, William C. Velasquez, a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Velasquez, who died in 1988, greatly influenced the nascent careers of Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and Baldwin Park Mayor Fidel Vargas, the youngest Latino mayor in the nation.

Velasquez’s work “has to continue to motivate us to be effective advocates for our community, for the children of our community, and the only way to do that is through our vote,” Molina told a crowd of about 50 at the $125-per-person cocktail party.

But she acknowledged it would be hard to copy Velasquez’s successes, which included registering more than 2 million new voters through 1,800 campaigns from the founding of Southwest in 1974 until his death. Lawsuits Velasquez helped initiate brought election by district to local races in five Southwestern states--a system that greatly favors ethnic voting blocs.

When he died in 1988, Velasquez was in the process of shifting Southwest Voters’ emphasis to California, according to Cruz. The Los Angeles office opened about two years later.

California has elected record numbers of Latinos to public office, but Latino voters suffered stinging defeats last November when Gov. Pete Wilson won reelection through an anti-immigration campaign, and voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 187, which was written to deny many public services to illegal immigrants.

Latinos, who represent about 14% of registered voters statewide, accounted for just 8% of the vote in November, 1994, according to Los Angeles Times exit polls.

That failure to vote often shows on a local level as well: In June, Lucia Rivera, a school board candidate endorsed by several local Latino politicians, nonetheless lost her bid for a seat representing the Eastside and part of San Fernando Valley--a district drawn to benefit Latinos.

Still, the Wilson and 187 victories probably did more to spur Latinos to obtain citizenship and register to vote than have any political developments in recent memory, Cruz said.

Voter-registration groups now often attend the region’s ever-more-frequent naturalization ceremonies, passing out forms to new citizens eager to exercise their newly won franchise.

In drives this year, Southwest registered more than 10,000 voters, Cruz said.

“We’re seeing a civic awakening,” he said. “[Proposition] 187 was a wake-up call to everyone. Even without our activity, we’re seeing a surge in civic awareness.”

Numerous other organizations in the Los Angeles region have been working on similar voter drives, and Southwest Voters plans to cooperate with those groups here and throughout the Southwest, Cruz said.

“Realistically, we’re not going to register 500,000 new voters,” Cruz conceded, “but the goal is to have the new voters through our organizations, or just people who are self-motivated.”