A New Latino School for Politics Takes a Wider View

Born in the era of farm worker protests and Chicano high school student walkouts, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project emerged 25 years ago as a voice of angry Latino outsiders, pushing for political power that had long been denied to their community.

They are on the inside now, as they showed recently at the group’s Latino Academy leadership program. Held for four days this month in a sprawling New Mexico conference center, the corporate-style program embodies a new spirit in Latino politics, one driven by a growing and increasingly sophisticated middle-class Latino electorate.

Formed in 1997, the Southwest Voter leadership academy--inspired by earlier efforts--is run like a political boot camp. It is meant to educate community activists and novice politicians in the nuanced terrain of contemporary politics.

No longer are activist groups like Southwest Voter content to simply rally Latinos to get out the vote and elect candidates in primarily Latino areas like East Los Angeles.

Once a young army in T-shirts and jeans solely out to register disenfranchised barrio residents, Southwest Voter has joined the cadres of Latinos now entering the corporate world of power suits and pearl earrings.

The goal is citywide, statewide and even national influence and power--a goal that means winning votes in constituencies where Latinos are a minority.

In an earlier era, it was enough to be cheered at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Boyle Heights, or be recognized in the restaurants and stores along the Eastside’s Whittier Boulevard, as was the case with former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre. He is one of the Eastside’s most popular politicians but has never run for a citywide office.

Today the game has changed. Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, for example, wants to be mayor of Los Angeles. That means he has to also have support in predominantly white community and business groups, churches and synagogues all around Los Angeles. He has to be as well liked at a candidates night at Valley Beth Shalom synagogue in the San Fernando Valley as he is at a reunion at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights.

“We have seen candidates from the barrio who have kept their barrio manner and done extremely well in their own districts,” said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Politics and Government at UC Berkeley, who has been closely involved in the Latino political movement.

But “anyone who wants to get beyond that glass ceiling has to become a more assimilated candidate” who appeals to a wider electorate, Cain said. “You can’t speak with an accent and must constantly reassure people you have common, mainstream, middle-class values.”

Aiming for More Substantial Stakes

Adopting the marketing strategies of the corporate and political worlds, this generation of Latino politicians aims for more substantial stakes as its members shoot for seats in city councils, legislatures and Congress that have broader, less ethnically defined constituencies.

At the same time, they don’t want to forget their roots, or why they got into politics.

Faced with perpetual working-class problems such as high school dropout rates and poor access to health care, the new Latino leaders seek to balance themselves between political sophistication and the social activism of their predecessors.

The Latino Academy is a tool meant to strike that balance, said Antonio Gonzalez, president of Southwest Voter and the William C. Velasquez Institute, a sister organization that helped develop the academy.

“We are training our best and brightest to bring in a new generation of leaders that will not be simply governing for the Latino community but for all the people,” Gonzales said.

To pursue that goal, Southwest Voter--once steeped in the fist-in-the-air passion of the civil rights movement--has mastered demographic charts, marketing plans and campaign rhetoric. The group aims to create a formula for success by melding the grass-roots philosophies of the 1960s with marketing and other business strategies.

“Always stay on message,” political consultant Armando Gutierrez advised novice politicians who videotaped mock campaign speeches in the Glorieta Conference Center. “The biggest mistake you can make is to stray from your message. You write the headline. You control the agenda.”

Southwest Voter President Gonzalez warned about 80 participants on their first day: “This is not a party atmosphere.” The Glorieta center is a Christian meditation resort that sits isolated about 20 miles north of Santa Fe.

Participants varied in both political experience and age, ranging from their early 20s to 82-year-old Mauricio Terrazas, an exuberant labor activist from Pomona.

“We need new blood in the movement!” he shouted to his classmates, several of them business professionals, lawyers and teachers.

Many came from increasingly Latino areas like Los Angeles, Albuquerque and San Antonio. Several were still pioneers back home, venturing into politics for the first time in their mostly white communities.

“You have no idea what I’m facing,” bellowed Eugene De Los Santos, a new magistrate judge in Roswell, N.M. “People are watching to see how I’m gonna do,” he said with a hearty laugh.

A Focus on Targets and Tactics

The participants’ bubbling cheerfulness soon settled into quiet focus during 15-hour days filled with the latest theories on target audiences, advertising gimmicks and effective fund-raising. The class--many from California--led spartan lives in the encampment, sharing dimly lighted double rooms furnished with just two beds, a shower stall and a toilet.

With no transportation outside the compound, they had no television, limited phone access and little time to eat their cafeteria meals, usually dry fish dinners or soggy hamburgers seemingly out of a public school free lunch program.

Having little else to do but talk policy, some stayed up past 3 a.m. ruminating on the essential problem of their political lives: how to adopt the techniques essential for crossing over from Latino to broad constituencies while retaining their commitment to their roots and to helping the Latino community.

“Skin color and language should mean nothing,” De Los Santos said during one group discussion. “A good leader is committed to serving anybody who is honest and hard working.”

The group also played outdoor team-building games that were designed to sharpen leadership instincts.

“You guys, we have to work together!” Wendy Estevez, 22, shouted from an island on her “acid river” (a marked-off stretch of lawn) to a group stranded on another island.

Divided into teams, the players--who had been competing against each other in a quest to build wood plank bridges across the river--eventually realized that the only way to cross safely was to pool resources.

Classroom sessions emphasized ethics and accountability, opposition research and strategies for leveraging power.

“If you want to get the mayor to do something, talk to his circle of influence, people he’ll listen to,” Texas state Rep. Dora Olivo advised some elected officials preparing issue agendas to take back home.

“Build coalitions,” she said. “Remember, there are no permanent enemies and no permanent allies” in politics.

Alfred Ramirez, who helps develop Latino leadership programs nationwide, had one group writing mission statements on which they could base their platform.

“My mission is to give back to my community,” said Alexander Marin, 32, a financial consultant who is running for the Lynwood City Council in November.

That goal is admirable, Ramirez said, but “you want to be more specific in your platform. Let your voters know what specifically you can do for them.”

Political consultant Gutierrez critiqued a few hopeful candidates videotaping mock debates and campaign speeches.

“You didn’t answer the question of why you want the job,” he said to Enrique Cardiel of Albuquerque, who avoided looking into the camera and spoke too softly for the room.

A Humble Beginning 25 Years Ago

Such intensive training is a far cry from the early days of Southwest Voter, founded 25 years ago by William C. Velasquez, who died in 1988. Velasquez, a passionate community organizer, created the group with a few volunteers focused on stirring up historically dormant Mexican American voters.

With just a folding chair, a small desk and a borrowed rotary phone in its first San Antonio office, Southwest Voter was for years high on ideals but low on resources and experience.

“When we started, we didn’t know any of this stuff,” said Juan Maldonado, who chairs the multimillion-dollar organization that also has offices in Los Angeles.

Its first donations came from churches and small private groups, enabling the organization to conduct modest, door-to-door voter registration drives that helped put a handful of Mexican Americans into office.

Eventually, the group forced scores of Southwestern municipalities to create Latino voting districts, bolstered in court by provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that outlawed gerrymandering. Those victories helped elect more Latino officials, currently totaling about 5,000 nationwide.

After more than 2,300 voter registration drives--its newest will be part of a 23-state effort to register more than 1.5 million Latinos--Southwest Voter now boasts a research institute and a host of corporate sponsors such as Disney, Arco and AT&T.;

Sister nonprofits, like the Midwest Voter Registration Education Project in Chicago, enjoy similar prestige.

The Latino Academy seeks to take advantage of such support to build a corps of sophisticated political workers without losing the idealism of the early days. Organizers stress issues important to the Latino poor and the working class.

In so doing, the academy hopes to teach recruits that “this is not just about getting more brown faces in office,” said Lydia Camarillo, executive director of Southwest Voter.

Too many leaders today enter politics out of some quest for power instead of a burning social conscience, she repeatedly told the New Mexico participants.

“The question you want to ask yourselves is: ‘What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind?’ ” Camarillo said. “Did I make a difference in my community?”

Gonzalez delivered a lecture on young Chicano politicians who were often in over their heads during the 1970s. They devoted too much energy to protests and not enough to figuring out how to change public policy, he said.

Participants admitted they needed help.

“I’m here . . . because I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” said Roberto Archuleta, a City Council candidate in Salt Lake City.

By the time he left, however, he had a detailed plan to take his city by storm.

To date, the academy has graduated more than 400 community activists and novice politicians, about half from California. Though it is nonpartisan, mostly Democrats have enrolled.

The academy is one of at least 70 new Latino leadership programs around the country, run by such groups as the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials. Several in Southern California focus on gender, nationality or specific Latino communities in the area.

Academy participant Estevez, a UCLA sociology student and daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, has now gone through several programs, including the Latino Academy.

Hoping in 10 years to head a socially conscious nonprofit for Latinos, she intends to enroll in several more academy-type programs.

“You need all that information and strategy,” Estevez said, “if you want to help the community you’re working with.”

Plus, “networking is extremely important,” she said. “I meet 10 to 20 new people each time. That means 10 to 20 new business cards.”