Latino Interests Are Ignored Left and Right

Patronized by one party and subjugated by the other, the Latino electorate is in the unenviable position of being one of the largest emerging voting blocks to have its interests ignored, its clout marginalized and its very political existence attacked with a malevolent fury in contests that repeatedly provide them with little or nothing in return.

Will they or won’t they vote? Quite honestly, both parties have cause to hope that Latinos do not. While the right has announced plans to help assure this--the always questionable practice of hiring poll “watchers” to intimidate Latino voters, a “brilliant” strategy that cost them a mere $250,000 not 10 years ago--the strategies undertaken by the left are no less stifling, if a bit more ingenious.

While the right would like to pretend that race and ethnicity don’t matter as long as you have enough money, the left exaggerates the distinction to the point of the embarrassing grotesque with its high-profile “Latino” candidates whose sole function, it seems, is to make the point of the party’s support for the rainbow masses by bleeding dry local political coffers. This has the convenient result of providing near certainty that no grass-roots-level Latino will ever see public office from the pulpit rather than supplicant side.

Keeping the Latino population supplicant remains a primary objective for both major parties. Republicans cannot fear losing what they never possessed to begin with, but commit the occasional faux pas (poll guards, drooling over the prospect of kicking small children out of school) such that they must sometimes scurry about for a token Latino on Cinco de Mayo to prove that they, too, are “sensitive” to the community and its concerns.

Or, when all else fails, find a really corrupt, sleazy Latino politician and intimate that the extortionist or adulterer must surely embarrass Latinos into staying home on election day (how many “virile” males will be similarly timid on Tuesday?).

In this theater of the absurd, we find the traditional roles reversed, with the right going for the “New-Age sensitivity” title and the left going full guns to make as much money as possible, preferably off the Latino professional establishment to support non-Latino campaigns and causes. And so we find them--those upstanding members of the Hispanic business and legal associations, professional societies and benevolent groups--spending small fortunes to rub shoulders with politicians who will return the favor only when the price is right and the connection to grass-roots leaders and advocacy groups is better nonexistent than unseen.

‘Tis a dismal voter guide we paint for the Latino electorate, but we are resilient: We are survivors. We will not be fooled by artificial accents, convenient ethnic association or the promises of patronage that never materialize.

We will take it on ourselves to train tomorrow’s leadership in-house to provide them with ethics and accountability that this country could dearly use, if only it weren’t so hung up on the “race” issue. We will be at the polls, if for no other reason than because first and foremost we believe in the democratic process.